I'm on the plane to Edinburgh (Scotland!) (well, on the plane to Manchester, then on to Edinburgh) to do shows with Neutrino during their run at the Edinburgh Fringe Fest. Matthew Perry just kissed Bruce Willis' head in The Whole 10 Yards.

I decided the best way to avoid jet lag was to sleep the whole flight. So I drank a beer between gates M9 and M19 before I got on the flight and now a lil' bottle of white wine has got me a lil' tipsy.

I think I have less room on this flight than I did on the road-trip to New York last week. And, of course, that I'm sandwiched between two strangers, rather than up against my girlfriend.

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Fitful sleeping, and the end of Walking Tall (the new one with The Rock and Johnny Knoxville) and now I'm in Manchester airport, with a four hour layover until my next flight. They gave me a boarding pass in Chicago for this flight, but no one here seems to know which gate I'm supposed to be at. I'm not stressed -- I'm going to wait until an hour or so before the flight to start asking around again.

The clock in the corner of this laptop says "2:05 am" but I've already set my watch to local time (8:05 am) and I'm following my usual jet lag plan -- set all my clocks immediately to local time and just bull on through the day, ignoring my body's protests.

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Well, I was in the completely wrong place. Being in the right place is good for my impressions of Manchester Airport -- the waiting lounge is much nicer than gates 3A-3C waiting area. And I have some local currency and a juice now. Though, being in the wrong place was also good for me -- it was much quieter and it doesn't look like there are any outlets here. But the bathroom is much nicer up here. Life is about compromise and trade-offs, my friends.

Ack! I didn't even think to check until just now. There's wireless up here! I'm gonna email and post like crazy!

Ah crap. It's not free.

So, back to generalizing -- American airports want to get you to the gate as soon as possible, to get you on the plane as early as possible, to get the plane out on time. Manchester (I'm not going to generalize to other UK airports) seems to want to corral you in a central waiting lounge until 30 minutes before the flight is scheduled to depart. American airlines want to be putting you on the plane 30 minutes before departure. And just now my little sign has lit up to tell me to "Go to Gate."

Man, and the security. I had to show my boarding pass and have my picture taken to get into the lounge and then they checked it on the way out.

OK, I'm on the little Buddy-Holly-killer to go up to Edinburgh. Almost there!