No particular place to go

I was wandering about a Radio Shack without much purpose except perhaps to see if they sell replacement Tivo remotes, since my parents' is still not recognizing the 2, 3, 5, and 6 buttons, and it looks like neither they nor anybody else on the continent do. I'm sure there's some reason for this, and it's probably an annoying one. But the thing that was curious is in the section of not-quite-recognized brands of DVD players that they have (plus LG players), they had one little box from Philco. I had no idea that Philco was still in business. I'd supposed that what with it not being the 1950s and there not being much demand for nine-inch black-and-white television screens set in furniture cabinets ten feet long and three feet thick that they'd been assumed into a discorporated corporate heaven. What are they doing making cheap DVD players? I mean besides the obvious.

My father took about fifteen minutes after getting back in before telling me that I really should have been at my cousin's wedding. Perhaps I should have been, but the fact is I'm not that close to her, and she didn't invite me, and a wedding is not the time to make up on fifteen years living several states away from the bride. From reports, though, it was quite the wedding, not quite exceeding the time my mother's youngest brother got married and learned to his surprise, two days before the event, that it really was customary to have a specific place for the wedding ceremony arranged in advance. (As near as I've been able to determine he figured that hey, the township tennis courts are usually pretty free on a Thursday morning, so why wouldn't they let them hold a wedding there?)

In an amusing sideline my parents discovered that there are no places to get food in Delaware. Setting out they had figured they'd go early, stop in at someplace equivalent to a Denny's somewhere in the Lower Counties, and they found that you just can't do that. There must have been people and therefore restaurants in Delaware at some time, but come to think of it, do you know anyone who lives there now either? And can you prove they don't just go to Maryland to eat? My mother was also, apparently, rather taxed that after living in central New Jersey, where you can get to a Starbucks by walking in any direction for at most 350 paces, the path to her sister's is, outside New Jersey, several hundred miles with not a one in sight. My father says my mother counted the miles, and except for this one which was on the wrong side of the highway and which my mother (whom I'm sure was driving) didn't want to make a U-turn for, there was nothing except the Starbucks in the supermarket by my aunt's place. That Starbucks was closed.

Trivia: Robert Bunsen never patented his burner design. Source: The Genie in the Bottle, Joe Schwarcz.

Currently Reading: 1927: High Tide of the Twenties, Gerald Leinwand.