The following just came in from Alexander. (If this keeps up, I’m going to have to give the boy his own login to the website…)

---

So my mother and I were watching the beginning of the animated movie, “Robots.” As those first few minutes went by, it was revealed the robot babies came from… assembly kits.

So I said to myself, “You know, that has got to be a father’s favorite private joke.”

Think about it. If a child comes up to him and asks, “Where do babies come from?” and the boy’s about eight, he can’t just give him the birds and the bees talk, can he?

So the dad sees an opportunity for a joke. “Well,” he says, “most people go to the store, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.”

The shocked kid exclaims, “I came from SEARS!?”

With a smile, the dad shakes his head and replies, “No, but you were a blue light special at K-Mart.”

Mom cracked up at this story, and immediately demanded that I send this to you.

~Spud

Oh, where do I start?

• Mom called, full of remorse that she’d missed my birthday but wanting to wish me a happy one nonetheless. Except, of course, she actually called three days early. I’m expecting another call Thursday.
• My computer arrived, and my monitor! Yes, that makes this the best Monday in a long time, automatically.
• Ben got in touch. Maybe that doesn’t sound momentous to you, but I’ll have you know it’s been years since I knew anything about what he’s been doing with his life. (Hopefully he’s been enjoying it, but we’ll find out.)
• On the downside, my spiffy new X-Fi sound card? If it’s not actually pre-owned, the box contents have been riffled through. The installer CD is missing, as is the helpful sticker that’s supposed to go on the back of the sound card so I know which jack is what. As long as the card itself works, though, I don’t really care. It’s not like there aren’t newer, better drivers available at the manufacturer’s website, eh?
• My “no-graphics” purchase option workstation came with… a graphics card. This card, I feel it necessary to point out, came with no cables and is missing one of its cable screw-in posts. I can’t make much use of it, but I wasn’t going to anyway. As long as I don’t get charged extra, I suppose I can just laugh it off. It’s not like I don’t already have a drawer full of video cards I never use, right?
• Today is day one of my three-day work week. I’m taking my birthday and the following day off, partly as vacation and partly to help a particular someone move into her new abode. I’m such a great guy!
• I sent a sales query to Infinity Internet on the 16th and the 21st of February regarding the possibility of getting some upgrades done on this webserver. The form-letter autoreplies (“we have received your query and will be contacting you, blah blah blah”) showed up in my email this afternoon… in reverse chronological order. Oh, goody.
• Those magazine subscriptions I didn’t make but got dinged for anyway? I got my money back from them both. That’s the good news. Unfortunately it looks like I also “subscribed” to at least one more title (in this case, Time) so I’m facing the prospect of at least one more of those terribly entertaining phone calls. Argh. Remind me never to shop at Suncoast again, ever.
• My boss gave me his old scanner. There’s nothing wrong with it, he just prefers his new sheet-fed scanner over the flatbed style he used to use. I guess this means I should actually clean my desk enough so I can actually use a scanner, doesn’t it?

For hours, every time I thought I was done with this entry something else would happen which simply begged to be included in the list. Nothing new has come up in the last forty-five minutes, however, so I’m going to click “Publish” now.

What a day, huh?

The thought had never crossed my mind that people might get implants for their buttocks in much the same fashion that they get breast implants. I learned this from an episode of CSI a few weeks ago, and this morning a stray thought crossed my mind:

If you undergo this particular implant procedure, could I say that you’ve had a rebuttal?

…Maybe not.