Somewhat Disturbing Begging Letter

I get a lot of charity solicitations and, not surprisingly, a significant percentage of them are from Jewish organizations.

However, they are usually straightforward about what they are. The Shemierah Bidrachin Insurance Program from Ashded Mercaz Chinuch, however, has a unique twist. The idea is that you pay for children to pray for you and the purity of their souls will protect you from road accidents.

An even more interesting twist is that, since this is marketed as an "insurance policy," the donations do not appear to be tax deductible.

Apparently they mean Jovian hours ...

I know I am the last person in North America who uses film. I do have a digital camera, but I travel with 2 cameras because the film is still higher resolution. Also, it is against my fundamental nature to give up on anything that works.

What that means is that I sometimes have need to get film developed. In this case, 5 rolls of film. (I also took about the same number of pictures with the digital camera, by the way. And I will dig out the USB cable and download them Real Soon Now.)

There is a "one hour photo" place in the Crystal City underground. But they did a so-so job the one time I used them and they're pricier than Ritz Camera (who have done a better job in the past). I did think of the convenience of them being just a gerbil trail away but when I stopped in on my way between my offices the other day, their machine was down and they told me they couldn't develop the film that day. So Ritz Camera it would be.

Today after work I finally got around to going over to Ritz Camera over at the Pentagon City mall. The "one hour" part there apparently applies only to single rolls of film. And, of course, since I am the only person in North America who still uses film, I couldn't be so snarky as to ask them what happens if they have more than one customer an hour. They told me to come back in an hour and a half or two hours.

So I kill time at the mall, browsing and speculating on who might ever actually purchase a mango pitter and mentally kvetching about how Nordstrom's no longer has cute cotton pajamas with pictures of cats on them and how I really would enjoy shopping ever so much more if I had a time machine and so on. I go back to Ritz Camera ... and the clerk starts talking to some other clerk about "hey, isn't that the one you had a hard time making a CD of?" and the other clerk has no idea what he's talking about. Eventually they figure out that: 1) they actually did have more than one customer who had actual film and they had some problem with the other woman's CD and 2) their machine was not working properly so they hadn't actually finished and I need to come back tomorrow.

This is an interesting definition of "one hour photo." It's all the more interesting since I have used this very same branch of Ritz Camera at least three times a year for the past few years without any of this drama.
I'll run over at lunch time tomorrow and try to talk them into giving me a discount for my inconvenience.