Well this time tomorrow I’ll be relaxing comfortably in our hotel room in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We’ll be spending a week there, which I hear is plenty of time to put back on all that weight that I so carefully lost after Christmas. Local folklore has it that there’s a restaurant nearby that serves pretty much nothing but shrimp, shrimp, and shrimp – so it looks like I’ll be eating a lot of shrimp, then. That is, if I’m able to put down the tequila long enough to shovel some solid food down the hatch – a contingency I’m fully prepared for, since I’m sure shrimp and tequila are not, in any given dish, mutually exclusive.

We leave LAX tomorrow at 11-ish in the morning, which, if I get up at nine-ish, should give me just enough time to pack before heading out the door. This is, of course, in stark contrast to my wife Lizzy, who finished her packing sometime back in the late 90’s.  We’re different like that. I’ve even gotten the impression – however vague – these last few days that my refusal to pack early has been making her a bit uncomfortable. I mean, it’s probably just in my head, but we’d be having a conversation about something, and I’d be mid-way through a brilliant verbal treatise on, say, why I believe that Jiffy Lube should have more home and garden-related magazines in their waiting room, and when I’d look away from the mirror to face her she’d be gnawing nervously at the skin around her thumb-nails and tapping her feet, her eyes darting back and forth to the empty suitcase on the floor by the bed.

I try to tell her that she should be happy about my procrastination. As any man worth his salt knows, there are three specific qualities that render any member of the male sex suspicious, and they are: if he doesn’t curse like a sailor after a few drinks, if he actually wants to have kids, and if he packs earlier than the morning of a trip. If the first is true of your man than something’s wrong, if the second is true he can not be trusted under any circumstances, and if the third is true – well then, all I can say is I warned you.

So anyway, I’m off tomorrow morning and won’t be online for the week. I know, I know, but dry your eyes – I’ll be back on the 20th of Jan, and I’m sure I’ll be bursting at the seams to write all about our trip.  Until then!

Jason