Following last night’s red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York, here I sit in JFK, awaiting a-w-a-i-t-i-n-g my connecting flight to the travel destination nightmare better known as Syracuse. I only chose this flight on jetBlue because I had a voucher from last year’s CCCC in New Orleans. On the way home a year ago I had no choice but to stay over an extra night (put up on the airline’s dime at a divey Days Inn). I also accepted a credit for the full value of that trip, good for one year. The short (and miserable) of it is that I’ve been sitting in JFK since 7 a.m. this morning, holding out for an 11 a.m. hop upstate: home again (for a few more months, anyway). Only: delayed! I’m trying not to look at the monitor over gate G9 because every time I look the staffBlues bump the boarding time ahead another 15 minutes. 12:00 p.m. 12:15 p.m. 12:30 p.m. I’m afraid that if I look again it will roll over to 12:45 p.m.

No, I can’t really complain about the free wireless in the fancy new jetBlue terminal. It’s nice, very nice. But I can say, plaintive though it it sure to sound, that these hours of waiting are intensely uncomfortable, time slowed to a creeping pace, after flying through the night for the first leg of the return trip.