Bobert, if'n you'd lived a more rattletrap life, you would know that every marriage comprises a stay-at-home spouse and a going-away spouse. Now chez Thomas, the stay-at-home spouse is the female one (me), while Himself spends most of his idle hours -- I swear -- thinking up radical, expensive ways to be hundreds of miles away from the most comfortable reading chair in NATO, sleeping in clammy motel beds and wondering just why in hell people who work in restaurants can't fry a gawddamned egg so it doesn't wobble when it sits on the plate.

And that's when he's not fantasizing about -- shudder -- camping. I don't know what's the matter with the man; give him more than 48 hours without a requirement to show up at the office and he wants to hit the road.

For those of us who prefer the comforts of home, the sensible thing to do is to let the world-traveller think up the plan and do the irritating stuff like finding lodgings. Then, agree to do the things you'd never let the party of the second part do anyway -- in my case, plot the route and pack the car so the load doesn't block the windows. Make sure to take something to read, and your own pillow.

There times when it's not only gracious to give in, it is the better part of valour. And I've noticed that I end up going places I would otherwise never have heard of, such as a certain hunk of sloping real estate in backwoods Maryland ...