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Just recently, I bought two new pairs of shoes. The pair I had bought last spring were just about dead, and after I found out that simply walking a couple miles or so was enough to give me a baby blister on my heels, the matter was sealed.

So, I did a trip to the local outlet mall and hit one of the shoe stores. While I was there, I decided that I'd get one pair of regular shoes, and one pair of shoes I'd wear for playing basketball, the idea being to figure out whether it was just wandering around or playing basketball that was driving (or, walking rather) my shoes to an early grave. On the way home, I realized that either way, I'm buying a new pair of shoes next spring, so I don't think this is one shopping scheme I'll be repeating.

Anyway, so I've got my regular shoes, my basketball shoes (worn once so far, nice little bloodstain on the inside where the blister on the ball of my foot ripped open in the last game), and my old shoes, which have become the grungy-work shoes.

Now that you're all caught up with my legions of shoes (really, I feel a little like Imelda here. I used to be perfectly happy with my one regular pair of sneakers, my one pair of topsiders/boat shoes (for sort of dressing up), and my one pair of black dress shoes (to be worn to weddings or funerals), now I've got the grungy shoes, the regular shoes, the basketball shoes, and the topsiders and funeral shoes. ), I can get on with the story.

I was in the kitchen microwaving my lunch, just sort of idly wandering around the side of the kitchen by the drink machine when I saw a spider begin its mad dash along the base of the drink machine.

I have no idea where it was going, or what it was doing. It might have been running to the spider doctor to get some vaccine for the spider flu that its wife and kids were suffering from, I don't know. Instincts that my wife has worked hard to instill in me (I almost typed install there) kicked in, and I stamped hard on the spider.

I picked up my foot to check the corpse (splut or curled up, you gotta check), only to see the spider continue its mad dash now that the light had come back.

There's a disconnected sort of feeling that you get when the desired effect isn't achieved in response to a series of steps that have reliably produced that response in the past. If you've ever walked into a room, flicked the lightswitch, and the light didn't come on, you probably experienced it. Once I pushed the Off button of a computer, only to have not turn off. That was disturbing. Sort of like watching a spider that should have been good and squished continue to run across the floor.

I stamped again. Looked. Spider kept running. Stamp, look, run. Stamp, look, run. Finally, I stamped and draaaaaaaaagged my foot along the floor. That did it. Then, since the microwave still had 45 seconds or so to go, I examined the bottom of my foot, looking for gaping holes, extradimensional spaces I had previously overlooked, or something similar. Nope. However...

My shoe has a lot of raised ridges running left-to-right along the bottom of the shoe. And maybe, just maybe, there's enough space there so that when I stamp down, not enough of the actual shoe touches the ground, allowing the spider to escape being squished.

I can just see this is going to come back to haunt me some day, when Liz asks me to splut a spider and it takes me three or four stamps to remember that I have to stamp and drag. Can't shoemakers make a shoe that has reasonable actual surface area on the bottom? It's not like all those little ridges actually do anything. Really, who's fooling who here?

Link du jour: The Parking Lot is Full. Click on the Archives link at the top and start going. My favorite is either the Steak Conspiracy or Eat the Stick.