Day One-7am. Sleepless in Buffalo. Bags in my hands, bags under my eyes. Not quite the romantic comedy one would hope for. Through my dreamlike haze I do remember being grateful for my pedicure as I revealed my stubby, shoe-less toes through security...I also remember being peeved just seconds later that there was now airport funk on the bottom of my previously clean feet. Gritty, brown, dirt-ay, funk.

Thanks to those terrorists, now I gotta stand one legged like a drunken flamingo in a public restroom as I wet a papertowel and remove the funk. About that time, I wouldn't have minded having the physical address to Abu Ghraib in my little Black-berry book, so I could conduct my own personal torture methods on the 9/11 suspects. It would go a little something like this...

"Sir, please remove nearly everything you have on--including your dignity. Also, do that in front of hundreds of strangers under flourescent lights at an ungodly hour of day."

"Now brace yourself as this retangular device will woosh a contained tornado at your body. Please note, reacting or moving as a result of the gale force winds searching out every crevice of your body, will only further delay your freedom."

We all know that terrorists, being from dry, arid desert regions wear sandals. So...

"Sir, please remove your sandals and place your bare feet on this deceptively clean, tiled surface."

The terrorist will then grimace in pain and utter dismay only to find that no! it is not a shiny floor of purity offering harbour to his naked foot soles, but instead is a surface of bacterial horror with its splattering of dirt and grit and North American imported funk clinging to his arches in dirty delight.

I will extract confessions from the terrorists and defeat their pockets of regime with my inhumane and non-UN approved methods of torture...

But for now, I've got a layover to catch and a stale airport bagel to eat that's supposed to hold me over 'til lunchtime.

rlr