Ah, the joys of modern travel -- you walk up to the kiosk, swipe your credit card for a ticket, walk aboard and relax a bit while the crew takes you to your on-time arrival.

Too bad I'm taking here about Metro-North Railroad and not American Airlines. Getting to the office each morning this week was a piece of cake compared to getting my ass back to Berea-Rose Wednesday evening. Once again, the aircraft didn't get to LGA until way past our scheduled departure time -- but does American update that in their system? No way -- so Andre and I cut short our pizza-eating and head over to the third-world squalor of LGA. I sat on a wobbly bench across from my gate, trying to read, often distracted by an increasingly bold mouse that kept venturing onto the stained carpet, further and further each time until I finally stood up and chased it under a door.

We left about an hour late and when we got to CLE there ws apparently no ground crew available to bring the plane to the gate so we waited more. Which just goes to convince me further that most of Cleveland is run by assholes.

NYC, on the other hand, is a bit of a madhouse this time of year. Plenty of people congregating at Rockefeller Center, gawking at the big Christmas tree. It's lit with LED lights you know -- just like we do it here in Berea.