The city that goes to bed early

So, I went ahead and bought my ticket to the upcoming Decemberists show yesterday. On my way to the Ticketmaster outlet, I stopped at Burger King for breakfast, and had two Croissan'wiches. It's been a while since I've had any of those, and I like them quite a bit. I generally find fast food breakfasts to be enjoyable. While eating, I overheard some old guys talking about cavemen, and I swear one of them said they lived 6000 years ago. Maybe I misheard, though. Then I went to Barnes & Noble, to see if they were selling the new Terry Pratchett book at a discount. They were, but it was only 20% off, so I passed. Actually, there was an additional 10% off for club members, but since it costs $25 to join their crappy club for jerks, that wouldn't have been a good deal at all. (Well, I guess it's okay if buy a lot there in a year, but I don't.)

Speaking of Terry Pratchett, I saw him in the evening! His talk and book-signing at Borders was supposed to start at 7, but he actually got there around 6:30. So he decided to start signing books then, and pause for the talk at 7. I wasn't too far from the front of the line, so I was able to get all my stuff signed before the talk. I had brought the Discworld Mapp, a paperback copy of Mort (largely because it was the book I was currently re-reading), and a copy of Hogfather (because it was a book that I had in a nice hardback edition [1]). Terry was doing one personalized message per person, so I chose the Mapp for that. He wrote, "To Nathan, you are here" on the map itself. Maybe I'll scan it at some point, if possible.

The talk he gave was, fortunately, full of the same kind of humor as his books. He started out by saying that, in the United Kingdom, he has almost as much money as God (and God has almost as much money as J. K. Rowling). On the other hand, he was largely unknown in the States until a few years ago. He told a story about how, when he was having heart surgery, he thought he saw a man with sandwiches. (It was much better when he told it, of course.) Apparently, the next "adult" Discworld book will be about football (i.e., soccer) on the Disc. Terry said he was born without the sport gene, and that he doesn't care about who beats whom at football "as long as we beat Australia." He also said a bit about how he likes writing familiar characters from different perspectives. Overall, it was quite enjoyable, and I'm glad I finally got to see Terry in person.

Because I'd had my books signed early, I was able to get out of Borders before 8, but pretty much everything in Philadelphia was closed. I don't know why this is, but Center City closes really early. There are still people on the streets, so you'd think the local merchants would want to keep their businesses open in case any of these people had the sudden urge to purchase some goods and/or services, but such is not the case. I managed to get to the Chick-fil-A in the Gallery Mall right when they were closing. They only had chicken sandwiches left, but fortunately, that was what I wanted. I had two, along with a large lemonade. That's my typical Chick-fil-A order, although I sometimes get fries if I'm really hungry.

Last night, I had a dream where I was looking at the board to some game that very closely resembled Monopoly, but there were a few differences. I think there were two Free Parking spaces, for instance, and something about negotiating on the Jail space. There was also something about losing a few turns to get your car inspected, and the board (which kept changing, as objects in dreams are wont to do) eventually had some Sorry!-style slides.

( Stella quiz result )

[1] It did, however, have this ugly American cover. I mean, the colors are okay, but Death is supposed to be a tall, impressive skeleton, not some kind of weird Pac-Man clone. The American publishers apparently thought that would sell better than this.

I am the Batman, drinking Bud Light

This afternoon, bethje and I finally saw Batman Begins. There was only one other person in the theater with us, and he was a guy who laughed loudly at the preview for The Pink Panther. ( Some minor spoilers for the movie )

After the movie, we took Beth's dog Dewey and cat Wally to the vet. The vet told us that most cats are left-handed (left-pawed?), which I'd never known before.

I feel like I should add something else to end this entry, but I can't think of anything. I did have some good pizza for dinner, so that's something, I suppose. So, yeah.