Sam & Marcy’s big Saturday adventure.

Last Monday we received a postcard offering two free round-trip airline tickets to anywhere in the United States if we’ll sit through a 90-minute “travel presentation.” That’s not such a bad deal, right? Sam and I sit through 90 minutes of horseshit all the time, such as a crappy horror movie like 20 Million Miles to Earth, so why not waste an hour and a half to get free airfare? Sam called to find out more and then set us up to attend a presentation yesterday at noon hosted by Five Star Vacations in Dallas. There were six couples, all ordinary and middle-aged, and a handful of peculiar yet eager sales Einsteins (ours was a twentysomething named Samantha in shorts and stilettos) trying their damndest to sell $8,995 travel club memberships that offer “exclusive” opportunities to buy discounted trips to places we’d never visit in a million years. Following a slide show — complete with agonizing typos — during which we were promised we could just say “no” at any time if we weren’t interested, Samantha continued to push Disney World, desert golf resorts and beach vacations in Fiji even though we told her repeatedly I can’t fly, we don’t have grandchildren and nobody likes golf. At that point she sent her manager to give it his best shot, but that didn’t work out very well, either. We even told him our dream vacation is a road trip to Arkansas with breakfast at Denny’s. (Which happens to be true, coincidentally.)

We left at 1 p.m. with a bogus-looking brochure and a $50 hotel gift card; on Monday we’ll call an 800 number to get our airline ticket vouchers. Whether or not any of this crap is legitimate still remains to be seen, so don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the thrilling final chapter. And now a word from our sponsor!

The primary activity on today’s agenda here at Howdygram headquarters is LAUNDRY. I’ve got mountains of it, leading me to conclude that we’re either exceptionally clean or exceptionally dirty. I’m leaning towards the former. We change clothes a lot and Sam is admittedly addicted to fresh socks.

I’ll try to write another post later between loads, okay? Thank you for reading this.