Mainely, I'll be off-line

The 19 Minutes staff is checking out for a week or so. We'll be off consuming an unhealthy amount of lobster and fresh dairy ice cream along the midcoast of Maine, with a brief stop along the way to eat pastries. We'll be blissfully off the grid, in a cabin on the beach and out of cell phone and internet range. That much said, I might try to sneak in a blog entry, if only to update you, the general reading audience, on how much lobster I've actually eaten.

It was a late night of packing last night, which of course means that I managed to pack nothing at all. My wife and I have vastly divergent styles when it comes to getting ready for vacation. She spends the three days leading up to our departure getting progressively more and more stressed out. Then, she manages to pack exactly what she needs in exactly the space available, pausing only to ask whether she looks good in a particular shirt.

Being a standard representative of the guy gender, I ignore the need to pack until the last possible moment, then toss a random amount of clothes in the suitcase (hey, you never know - I might need four sweatshirts in late July), wedging it into the available space. I don't stop to consider how I'll look in a particular shirt, mainly because I look pretty much the same in my World's Largest Ketchup Bottle t-shirt as I do in my Zetor t-shirt.

Then, she politely unpacks everything I've packed and repositions it in such a way that my underwear doesn't spring forth like the stuffed snakes in a fake can of peanut brittle when the suitcase is opened. And if historical trends bear out on this trip, we'll get to Maine to discover that I've packed 12 pairs of underwear, 10 shirts, 7 pairs of socks, 3 sweatshirts, and no pants.

For most guys - myself included -- this is not a problem. Unless you're planning a trip to the Boundary Waters or rural Kazakhstan, you'll probably have at least some access to a place that sells pants. Indeed, with just the right spin, Emergency Backup Clothes turn into swell souvenirs. ("Remember when I bought these shoes? yeah, the night before that wedding...") I have, indeed, bought shoes the day before a wedding, a neck tie the day of my wife's college graduation (an amazing accomplishment in Mt. Vernon, Iowa), and a dress shirt the day of a journalism awards banquet.

Of course, with a 13-month old along for this vacation, it takes us to a whole new level of clothes it's possible to forget. But frankly, I'm looking forward to a hunt for onesies in Damariscotta, Maine. Just as long as we remember to bring her bibs along. I think I mentioned this -- I plan on eating a lot of lobster.