In the year of 45

When nellorat comes home from work, she takes the subway as far as it will go into the North Bronx. She calls from the subway to let us know she's nearly there, and then supergee or I (or, frequently, both) drive down to pick her up. For a variety of reasons, the best place to rendezvous with her is in the parking lot of a Burger King just north of the station.

To thank them for the use of their parking lot, I try to give a little business to the BK, so if I/we show up early, I go in and buy a soda. They have a 12-ounce "value soda" for $1, which is fine for what I want. Annoyingly, with tax it's $1.09 and annoyingly I always forget to bring change, so I end up paying $2 and getting back a fistful of coins, which I then dump on my desk at home because I dislike carrying loose change and so the cycle repeats.

On Sunday just past (Aug 15), I actually remembered to grab a quarter before leaving the house, so when I got to the front of the line, I asked for the "value soda" and pulled out $1.25. The cashier looks at me and says, "53 cents." I'm flummoxed, then hand him the dollar. As he hands me my change, I ask, "Why was that half-price?"

"Senior discount."

So I've officially had my first Senior Moment.

Judging a book by its movie

On the recommendation of sarah_ovenall, nellorat and I just watched Twilight, the only way we could bear to: with Rifftrax.

While I know it's unfair to judge a novelist by the quality of the films made from her or his novels, for all the discussion I've seen of the films, very few commenters have said anything like, "Well, it doesn't capture the rich inner lives depicted in the novel." In fact, all of the discussion has been about how fair the films are to the novels. And based on that, let me just say that, compared to Stephanie Meyer, J. K. Rowling is freaking Flannery Shakespeare Tolstoyovich O'Joyce.