Weekend Miscellany

Over the weekend I went to a newish place nearby with an 'Irish pub' theme very similar in menu to a place many of us in the ATPo gang visited in Vancouver last year. It's arranged a bit like the bar from the old "Cheers" show with most of the seating at the bar. They probably get quite a bit of traffic in the evening from the nearby movie complex. On Saturday noon it seemed to be mostly older folks like me who wandered in. The food seemed good enough. (It was too early in the day, for me anyway, to have a Guinness.) I might see if my sister would like to go there sometime.

I picked up the Sunday TV section of the newspaper yesterday and discovered a wrapper on it stating 'This is your last free issue (of the TV section).' Now I don't know what genius thought it was a bright idea to tell subscribers that something they'd paid for for years had been free all this time, but I don't approve of it. I think if they'd informed me that the newspaper subscription price was going up by the small amount they're asking for the TV section each week, I'd have sighed and paid. But I only look at the TV section once a week. If it will cost me somewhat less to do without it, I can... Just the latest bad business decision in what must be rough times for the newspaper. It was only a few months ago they stripped all the ads and feature stories out of the TV section to reduce the cost of printing it. Now they want to put everything back and instead of charging more for the Sunday paper, charge separately for the TV section. There will surely be people who'll ask to drop their Sunday paper subscriptions and just subscribe to the TV section (probably won't be possible) and many folks like me who'll decide a glance a week isn't worth paying extra for just one section... It's probably going to drive the delivery people insane from trying to keep straight who gets what.