Free vacuum!

Andrew Hicks

We did not end up going to the Magic House today. The drive in and the trip to the zoo wore me out more than I’d anticipated, and then I still went out for awhile last night. Just over to a really good old friend’s house. Sat outside for a little bit and talked about people I haven’t seen in months or years, then we went inside and watched the new SNL with her boyfriend. Also caught an end-of-season highlights episode of “An Idiot Abroad,” the show Ricky Gervais produces that features Karl Pilkington, who is a true reality-comedy personality. I’ll be watching more of that show soon.

On top of it, last night was the night you push your clocks ahead an hour. So it became 3 am pretty quickly, and aside from a couple wakeups from baby Silas, I stayed in bed far past the Saturday morning cartoons. Lazy stay-in-bed catchup sleep happens sometimes, and Magic Houses go unvisited. The zoo felt like plenty, though. None of this is the buildup to a joke, either. This is one of those paragraphs that looks like a nice, full-bodied chunk of writing until you get deep enough into it to realize nothing of substance is actually being said.

I spent some time today rooting through my old supply of floppy disks. I have backup disks that go fifteen years or more into the past, and nowhere along the line did I convert it to CDR or ZIP or any form of storage technology popularized in the new millennium. I have a laptop new enough that there’s no A drive, so I haven’t been able to get to that stuff. Now it’s on my in-laws’ hard drive and I’ve beamed it up and back down onto my hard drive. I’ll be combing the archives. From now until May, I may be slipping in jokes from 1997. Beware any forced reference to Chumbawamba.

This afternoon, Tiffany and I drove to a popular landmark in St. Louis — the gas station/car wash that has like 8 free vacuum stations. We’ve been there a few times and have always had to wait for a spot. Access to a free vacuum for your car is perennially in high demand. In-laws were watching the kids, so this was our most thorough visit yet. I was pulling stuff out of the trunk that I haven’t seen since George W was in office. A Six Flags Season Pass coupon book from 2007 and sheet.

Walked over to Lion’s Choice for a bathroom break during all this suction, and I spotted a seed spreader garden implement emblazoned with the brand name “Viagara.” One letter off from Viagra, and it made me wonder if anyone’s ever misspelled the name of the popular ED treatment pill and ended up ordering a garden tool by mistake. Then I Googled Viagara and got nothing but Viagra matches, so that thought was thereby scratched.

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BABY PICTURE OF THE DAY