Greetings From Buffalo

It was about as painless and easy commute to the airport that I've had in years of travel. Who knew the most effecient and easiest mode of travel between Penn Station and my castle high atop Second Ave. was to walk? I left almost a full hour later than planned but arrived at the LIRR platform a serendipitous 5 minutes before my train was departing for Jamaica. I pulled into the station in Queens and found I had an hour and a half to complete the final leg of my journey to the airport. I found myself happily dialing up friends and family, smugly relating how I was planning on casually making my way toward my listed terminal.

Of course, I hadn't counted on my carrying an expired non-driver's ID getting me pushed into a line of suspect travellers that were sent through metal detectors, interviewed and scanned again with a detector wand. I hadn't counted on my luggage being swabbed with some sort of cloth device and having said cloth loaded into one of those new-fangled "sniffing" machines. I most certainly didn't expect the machine to emit a series or warning beeps, at which point my "Safety" inspector began stomping her feet and swearing at, I assume, the prospect of having to actually do something. And I definitely didn't have an answer when I was informed that my luggage had tested positive for explosives. I resisted the urge to offer a theory that me and mine tend to test positive for things (THANK YOU! I'll be here all week!). But after answering a series of what seemed to me completely lame questions and having my suitcase and man-purse opened and emptied, I was set free to explode whatever I intended to.

All of which still left me with plenty of time to buy a newspaper and bottle of water and relax for a few minutes before my flight began to board. So here I am, safe in the bosom of my passive-aggresive family. I've been told I look good "now" as opposed to last time I visited when I "had them worried". Oh.

Expect regular updates, in between me trying to breathe some life into mom's tired old PC. I don't think she's run a window's update ever and it looks like her anti-virus software hasn't been updated since my last visit.

I hope all your travels this week go as smoothly as mine did. Minus the suspected terrorist part, of course.