"Bella, sit."

* ignore *

"Sit!"

* ignore *

"Bella, sit!"

* ignore *

"Bella, I fail to believe that your smelling my crotch while I'm peeing can possibly be anything enjoyable."

"For either of you, actually."

So, yeah, I lost my sense of smell a couple years ago. Before the loss, I had a very good sense of smell: I could smell Kris' morning coffee on him at bedtime; I could often smell what he had for lunch in the evening, too. The smell of Kris was (is) one of the most wonderful smells in all of the world.

Turns out, I didn't complete lose my sense of smell. Instead, I lost my sense of smell for good things. I could still smell crap: the dogs' crap, their stinky butts, the offensive woman at OSCON, the dog poop at the park, the old lady at the bank. Yeah, the bad stuff, but not the good stuff.

I mentioned that I had lost my sense of smell to my naturopath, who had suggested a natural remedy for sinus problems: essentially penicillum shot up the nose. Nearly desperate to try anything, I used the homeopathic solution, to good success.

For about a week.

And then my sense of smell started disappearing again. The root cause wasn't solved, so it was just a matter of time before it disappeared again.

A couple weeks ago, when I mentioned my lack of smell to Heather, she commented that I really should look into the problem. Head trauma and stroke, as well as other underlying physical causes much worse than dog allergies can cause a loss of smell, and finding the root cause is important.

So, back I went to the naturopath. Back I went to snorting penicillum. And, thankfully, back came my sense of smell.

Happy, happy, joy, joy! I can smell! For the first time in over half a year, I can smell Kris. I can smell the morning air.

With the sense of smell, however, comes the downside to scent. The smell of Annie's butt. The smell of Bella's breath. The smell of the neighbor's cigarette smoke.

And, then there's today's little incident with a coworker, a pair of feet, and a desk top.

Yeah, my sense of smell is back. Let's hope it lasts longer than a week this time.

Emails like this one from Beth are wonderful, too.

I heart kitt.

That is all

B

Drunken emails like this crack me up.

Yaaaaaaaaaay for Kitt! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

You ar ea rock star.

owaoiojioeowoooooooooooooooo
woooooooooooo
woo wooooooooooooo
that's a train sound
wooo woooooooooooo
I am watching The Office, last season, woooooooo.
JJ is gone at his bachelor party.
I am home and drunk on wine.
Yum
I heart you Kitt.

yaaaaaaaaaaay for kitt!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-L

Today was the last of the three days I've spent training the next developer for a previous client. The sheer amount of information I had to dump on the new developer surprised even me. I hadn't realized just how much I had developed and maintained for that organization. Three days was clearly not enough time.

I tried very hard to keep my personal opinions of one particular person at the organization out of my interactions with the next developer. Very, very hard. I did okay in my effort, not great, but okay. He understood, however, that there are issues between our two organizations, and did his best to avoid the landmines.

Yesterday was a particularly bad day at work. The above mentioned person that I tried to keep my (not positive) opinion to myself, antagonized Mike to the point of unbelievable anger. It was an eye opening experience for me. I've never seen Mike mad, much less so mad that I feared he might physically damage something (say, a wall or a chair). No client relationship is worth the stress this client has caused me, much less the health of my business partner.

The experience had one very good outcome, however.

I am done with this client. Completely done.

When I said goodbye to the new developer this evening, the stress with this client disappeared. Gone. Poof. As I file through my index cards, looking at what I need to do, I'm crossing out the leftover items from that client. I'm done. Completely done.

The interesting moment will be tomorrow, when I receive some communication about some process at the client's site is failing. I've been composing the response in my mind. It'll go something like, "Most people learn cause and effect by sixth grade, and understand that actions have consequences. You've been rude to us. You've been mean, and nasty, and disrespectful to both partners of this company. Your actions have consequences, and the answer is no."

Done. Completely done. With no regrets.

It's time to spend the time and effort I've been putting into other's projects into my projects. Time to start those projects go, go, going.

Also known as, "Time to do cool shit."

After I said goodbye to the new developer, with the phrase, "Good luck! You're fucked!" echoing in my head, I went to practice.

I haven't been to practice in a long while, from both being gone at OSCON, New Mexico (Kyle!), and Phoenix for pretty much the last three weeks, and injured from GRUB. So, my whole goal today was to keep going, work as hard as I can at the moment, and keep going.

Inspiration comes from interesting places. We were playing five pull, and ended up having to run four sprints at the end of practice. I lined up two people from Tyler, who decided to run the last sprint backwards. Three steps into the sprint, I realized he was actually running backward faster than I was running forward.

Along the same thoughts as earlier, I thought, "No fucking way is Tyler going to beat me running backwards. No. Fucking. Way." and ran as hard as I could.

He didn't beat me.

And I finished the practice as I wanted to: working as hard as I could.

Thanks, Tyler, for the inspiration.