Movies: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The earth gets blown up. A back-up version of the earth is recreated. There's stuff that happens in between, including the line above, but I slept during much of the middle of the movie. I've found that this allows me to combine two of my favorite pursuits - napping and movie-going - and still get the gist of the movie. This was a pleasant enough film, just faithful enough to the Douglas Adams book, but rather lukewarm overall. One can only hope that The Restaurant at the end of the Universe and Life, The Universe and Everything pack a more passionate punch.

As I was driving home from the movies, there was sign near the railyard that today was the Annual SEPTA (the local, perennially broke, perpetually grimy mass transit system) Railroad Rodeo. How big are the lariats they use to lasso those rail cars? Is this why the passenger trains always are in disrepair?

Books: How to be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward. You want this lost family to be happy, to end well, to come together. You know they won't, that after all these years the threads that appear to move toward healing will remain frayed and separate. But then you get to the last page, the last paragraph, the final sentence...