I spent a beautiful, summer Saturday afternoon in a dark hotel room with the curtains drawn. Why? Because family, that’s why.

We started the day off at one of the strangest estate sales I’ve been to in a very long time. The pictures online were all of tiki decor, but I didn’t see much once we got to the house. The house actually looked a bit sparse, but maybe they had a good day yesterday.

Today, it was a lot of crap. They had lots of cassette tapes, but they were all bible stories. They also had a lot of VHS tapes, but nothing that interested me. The one thing that really piqued my interest was an electronic device with an analog meter, switches, dials, an antenna, a phone cord, and a 1/4 inch jack. I had no idea what it was, what it was for, or if it was all there, but I knew I would regret leaving it behind.

When I got home, I looked it up based on the only words printed anywhere on it, and I discovered that it is a device used for detecting wire taps on your phone line. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but it was only $1.17. Actually, we bought 17 items for $20, so it comes out to $1.17 per item. That means the VCR I bought was also only $1.17.

This afternoon, my dad and stepmom came to town. Instead of coming to our house, though, they invited us to hang out at their hotel. I thought we were going to hang out by the pool, but we ended up sitting around their hotel room. The sun was hurting my stepmom’s eyes, so she closed the curtains and then, over the course of an hour, turned on each of the five lamps in the room, one by one.

It was here that they informed me that they put my name down as heir to the pug they just adopted. It’s only seven years old, so there is a better-than-average chance that I’m going to end up with this loud, disgusting animal. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that.