A couple of remaining odd bits from the world of the cruise: my parents had apparently advised my brother and sister-in-law to bring along stocks of canned soda because the cost on the cruise would be prohibitive. In fact, the price turned out to be $1.25 for a single (twelve-ounce) can, which I would call a bit high but is not really a struggle once you have enough money to go on a weeklong cruise, or $7.50 for a day pass with unlimited cans. Again, it's more than I'd pay if I weren't in a confined space under a single sales agent hundreds of miles from any alternative, but it's still not exactly crushing. My parents have been known to economize in bizarre ways. I do the same, I admit.
And we got take-out for dinner. An abundance of take-out places was one of the criteria when they were shopping for a house, as was the nearby location of a Wawa (or an equivalent convenience store), which is almost within speaking range, and a White Castle which is down the road just far enough to begin suspecting, if you'd never been there before, that you went in the wrong direction. The White Castle I'd been to before, since I like White Castle and my brother had left me a coupon for two free burgers which he got by filling out a customer satisfaction survey online. It turned out that White Castle was not expecting or ready to handle free burger coupons, and the cashier -- after asking for help -- rang up two more burgers and then took their cost off my bill. She also gave me an invitation to fill out a customer satisfaction survey online, which if completed will turn into a coupon for two free White Castle burgers. Apparently White Castle is recursive.
In this case, we didn't use the take-out feature so much as the sit-and-have-them-take-it-to-you feature, something that I've done maybe three times in my entire life. On my sister-in-law's prompting I got a plate of dumplings as the appetizer; she did too. They were, I agree, quite good. I just didn't know what to make of her not eating half of hers. She always saves half the appetizer to be the next day's breakfast-or-lunch. That would never have occurred to me; I'm just not a leftovers kind of guy. My brother got a soup as his appetizer, none of which was saved for breakfast.
Trivia: The 8 September 1966 debut of Star Trek earned an average Neilsen rating for the hour of 20.7, an audience of about 11,360,000 viewers. Source: Inside Star Trek, Herbert F Solow, Robert H Justman.
Currently Reading: The Collapsium, Wil McCarthy.