Big doings today

I got up this morning, had breakfast, screwed around on the computer, checked the daily funnies online, and whined on the Comics Curmudgeon website that I couldn't find the tenth missing ping-pong ball in today's Slylock Fox.

I then took a shower, got dressed, and drove over to my (still unoccupied) house across town to drop off a 50 lb. pail of calcium chloride pellets (the best and least damaging de-icer I know of), a sack of leftover cookie-making ingredients, and several dollar-store LED flashlights. (I use them at work, and keep spares in storage.) I also took advantage of the sudden warm spell (temperatures hovering above freezing!) to nail down a loose board on my front steps. Then I drove a few blocks to do some banking, and headed out to a car wash to wash the grime and road salt off my car.

Next came the big stop of the day: tire rotation at Sam's Club. I waited an interminably long time while I watched one tire guy do his thing on a truck in the one open bay in the three- (or is it four?-) bay garage. One of the other bays was occupied by a pile of tires, while a third was being used by two other tire guys to assemble a wooden playhouse of some sort, which seemed odd. All three of the workers were arrayed so that none of them had a clear view of the window or the counter where customers would wait. Just as I was about to barge past the NO CUSTOMERS BEYOND THIS POINT sign, open the door to the work area, and shout "HEY!", one of the workers accidentally looked at the window and I began to wave vigorously.

I was told that tire rotation would take about an hour. I took this opportunity to visit the Kohl's next door - a store I had never been in before today, and after today will probably never be in again. (Not that anything bad happened, I just found the place completely uninteresting.) Next I stopped at the recently-opened Office Depot store just on the other side of Kohl's, which now sports a banner that reads "STORE CLOSING." I picked up a few discounted items which were massively overpriced to begin with.

By then my tire rotation was done. I headed to the Wyoming Valley Mall, where the Waldenbooks which has been a fixture of the mall for thirty-eight years is closing. It is closing tomorrow, actually, though the remaining books (and there are a lot of them) are still being offered at only 40% off. I didn't buy anything. (I got a copy of The Black Dossier there on Wednesday - I had never noticed it in the store before.) Maybe I'll stop in one last time tomorrow.

Came home, ate supper, went online, and read this e-mail:

Missing ping pong ball‏
From: Bob Weber
Sent: Fri 1/23/09 11:39 AM

You might want to take another look at the snake.

-Bob
http://www.kidcartoonists.com/

Bob Weber, Jr., creator of Slylock Fox (and son of Bob Weber of Moose Miller fame), had e-mailed me with a hint on finding the last ping-pong ball in today's Slylock Fox! BEHOLD THE AWESOME POWER OF THE COMICS CURMUDGEON! BEHOLD THE IMMEASURABLE COOLNESS OF BOB WEBER!

So, you know, anything else that happens today just kinda pales by comparison.