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There have apparently been fabulous advances in textile technology as of late. A couple weeks ago I was shopping for some new dress socks (these are socks you wear with nice shoes, not a dress) and ended up buying a three-pack of a brand that said that their socks had the ability to keep moisture off of your feet or some such thing. I thought it sounded shady and wanted to see for myself whether or not they were lying. Dress shoes (see above) typically don’t breath very well and have a tendency to make my feet sweat more than they do in regular shoes [note: I read somewhere once that the average person loses 1/4 cup of sweat through their feet every day] so I was hoping that their claims weren’t fraudulent.

So I’ve worn a pair of these socks two or three times now, and I can say that you may officially color me amazed. I am not sure how it works, but they really do keep my feet dry. Kudos, Science. Although I am impressed, I think you should quit worrying so much about my feet and get cracking on the flying cars and/or teleporters. I can teleport myself home and grab a fresh pair of socks if my “old tech” pair gets too gross.

YOU GUYS. TELEPORTERS - NOW!

Now that the weather has warmed up, I’ve been getting back out on my bike again (something I was sticking to pretty well in the fall until it got too cold to ride). I came home from class last night and immediately changed and headed out for a ride since it was still kinda light out and I knew if I wasted any time inside I’d end up not going.

So I’m about 3/4 of the way around my second lap when I round a corner and see a little boy standing in the street. He was probably about 18 months old, and there wasn’t an adult anywhere in sight. I slammed on my brakes and double- and triple-checked the area to make sure there wasn’t someone working in their yard or something and the little tyke had just wandered away for a second. Not a soul around.

He ran right over to me when I stopped and got off the bike, so I dumped my bike on the sidewalk and picked him up out of the street. The house he was standing in front of had the storm door closed, but the main door was open, so I put him in the middle of the yard (I would have felt weird bringing a kid up to someone’s porch) and ran up to the house and heard a lady inside yelling for someone. I banged on the window and a slightly disheveled-looking woman poked her head around the corner. I waved for her to come out front. She sort of half-jogged down the hallway, and when she opened the door, I pointed at the kid and said, “Is he yours?”

She seemed relived to have found him, but not as outwardly demonstrative of it as I might have expected. Weird. Anyway, I hope he doesn’t get out of the house again. If I was making the same lap in my car instead of a bike, he would have been a lot harder to see. Kinda scary.

In an unrelated incident, when I got in my car this morning to come to work, the song cued up on my iPod was “This Boy Is Exhausted”. Completely fitting.

This little monster, which I suspect is half-centipede/half-demon, was waiting for me in my laundry room last night. I walked in and started the dryer, and when I turned around this thing was nearly on top of my foot and moving pretty fast. I said “HOLY F—!”, grabbed a pair of needlenose pliers, and slayed the beast before it could multiply (the pliers are the reason it’s missing several legs on the near side of the picture).