I packed up all the kitchen glassware last night. There were a couple dozen pint glasses, a dozen or so wine glasses and scads of other drinking implements. When all was said and done, however, I left out two pint glasses, a highball, an iced tea glass and a beer tasting glass that Max often uses for milk and juice.

Barbara, as you might expect, was not particularly sympathetic.

"We've got to pack everything. You can drink out of a plastic cup for a week. We'll get this stuff out next Friday when the truck arrives."

My response was simple, if short (a rarity for me): "I can pack it, but I don't want to."

Here's the thing: beer tastes terrible when served in plastic. In particular, beer tastes terrible when served in those disposable plastic cups I used at every keg party I attended in college. I'm not sure why this is, but I know it to be true. There is a reaction of some sort between the beer and plastic (beer foams up much faster in plastic), and that reaction tends to stifle the flavor of the beer. Maybe the plastic stores more static electricity. That would explain the excess foamage. But in any case, plastic and beer do not mix to good effect.

I didn't have to explain any of this to Barbara. She hates beer in plastic as much as I do. She was willing to make the sacrifice for one week. And I wasn't. As we have plenty of other things to stuff in boxes, Barbara gave in and went back to work in another room. And I kept the glassware out to live another day. Most likely, it will be packed in with the last-minute kitchen stuff that gets thrown in one of our cars for the trip up to Takoma Park, Md., on Thursday. Fine by me.

This seems like a trivial argument, and it is. There's no real sense to it. We're talking about five pieces of glass. But it does illustrate different notions of getting things done.

I'm a big fan of doing things in comfort--my definition of comfort. When traveling, I always like to spend more money on beer and food than on lodging. By and large, Barbara agrees with this theory.

But when it comes to the "big" things, like packing a house, Barbara wants things done, period. None of this "I'll hold something out until the last minute because it will make things nicer." So the bedside lamp in our bedroom was packed last month, replaced by a desk lamp that simply isn't up to the task. If either of us wants to read in bed, we've got to turn on the overhead lamp. This isn't a big problem, of course...though since neither of us likes the overhead light when reading, it simply means we don't read in bed any more.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you.

Everything's a trade off. This whole move is a trade off. We're trading a house we love in a neighborhood and city we love and a job Barbara loves for the chance to live in D.C. (or very close to it, anyway), which is something we've always wanted to do. We're moving away from a large number of friends (including all of the friends Max has ever known) to try out a new place for a while. Is it going to work out? Sure. As well as we'd like? I dunno.

One thing is certain, though. If I'd packed all the glassware last night, I wouldn't have to worry about squeezing five glasses in somewhere on Wednesday night. And I'd be drinking good beer and scotch out of plastic all this week. Turns out that's a trade off I'm not willing to make.

Jon Worley filled his glassware this evening with the Duck Rabbit Imperial Stout.