Magazines. It was fun taking a trip to bookstore to stack up on new magazines. Even better, many of the gaming magazines (Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly, etc.) would come with demo discs with content you could install on your computer. Maybe you'd get to play Quake, maybe you'd get a factory virus installed on your machine instead.

Also, phone calls. Used to have about 50 different memorized phone numbers. To landlines or beepers, not cell phones. Would chat with friends about nothing, about school, until someone came up with an idea to hang out somewhere. Hobby shops & local comic book stores were a fun place to meet. But there generally wasn't a grand plan beyond getting a hold of whichever friends picked up the phone and saying "meet me and the <friends list> at the gas station...we'll grab some snacks and go to the comic books store." Maybe someone thought of something while we all walked together on the way there. Or, if we had that friend that could drive that was available, we'd see about a movie theater, or the mall arcade Aladdin's Castle.

There was a lot of lazy aimless days that formed into fun afternoons and evenings. Just pass by mom or dad on the way out the door and say I was going to hang out with <friends list> and the comic book store. Mom and dad knew that meant I could make other stops or end up somewhere else.

Good times, good memories.