The plan is to show up at an Apple store in the morning to see what obstacles exist to Internet In My Pants. I was unable to rationalize the iPhone’s first release since I knew the 3G was on the horizon, and frankly I’m impressed I waited this long. I believe the ability to annoy Kelly (and anyone in earshot) with “if I had an iPhone…” every time an unanswered question or bit of trivia came up was partly responsible. Resisting giving AT&T money also helped.

But I can wait no longer to consolidate many devices into one. Turns out, the laptop doesn’t quite fit in my pocket, and fails at simple phone calls. My old Motorola (already once replaced) continues to fall apart, while T-Mobile has recently been delivering SMS messages between 1-12 hours late – they’re just asking me to jump ship. My iPod… I may have lost it again. Or Kelly’s hiding it.

I’ve already downloaded a few apps for it, including NetNewsWire, Twitterrific, Yelp, Exposure, and Remote, even though I’ve resisted consuming too much time with pre-acquisition activity.

I expect I’ll still be countering random unanswered questions with “if I had an iPhone,” but now will get to produce one with mock surprise and amuse myself. Also, it’s shiny.

I’ve probably just jinxed my ability to find one.

UPDATED: 19:20
Well, if you followed along with Twitter or caught us on IM, you already know we brought home iPhones today.

I expected a smaller line and a faster queue when we showed up at 8:30 AM, but the Apple and AT&T activation processes were either slow or not responding altogether, resulting in a longer morning than planned. Charlotte was incredibly well behaved despite missing her naps, but there was plenty to distract, and as she was entertaining, we played a good deal to pass the time.

Around 1:30 PM we made it into the Apple store, and knowing exactly what we wanted, the transaction was quick and painless. Even the transfer of our two lines from T-Mobile was a non-issue, which I didn’t expect. They did offer to take the last activation step (the source of so many delays) if we wanted to try, but shared we could also do it from home as well if we wanted to escape. And so they could sell more to the drooling masses, I’m sure, though everyone in line wasn’t leaving until they had their hands on an iPhone.

Including waiting for the AT&T account transactions, I think we spent less than 20 minutes in the store after about a 5 hour wait.

After running some other errands, we came home to plug in the iPhones for activation, and they woke up nearly immediately. I think we avoided many of the direct account frustrations while in line, though it certainly still consumed most of our day.

If we did not have plans for vacation in a few short days, we would’ve just done this later without lines or logistical problems, but we wanted to have mobile internets (which ones? all of them!) while we were gone, and knowing something would go wrong meant we wanted at least a day of padding to reconcile any issues.

So! Now we have these phones. I’m sorry, iPhones. I’ll spare you the gushing over new toys, but they were totally worth the wait.