I ran a delivery up north of the Indy Saturday night. Wasn’t a busy night, but it was steady until about 10:30, so I was appreciative for that. I get to this person’s house and knock on the door. There’s no answer, so after thirty seconds of waiting, I ring the doorbell. No answer. Now I knock AND ring the doorbell. No answer. It’s a not gigantic townhouse. How does this person not know I’m here?

I take out my cellphone and dial the number on the delivery slip.

“Hello?” an old crone answers.

“Hi! Did you order a pizza from the Indy? I’m the driver, and I’m here.”

Pause. I’m thinking I misread the number on the box and this woman is about to hang up on me. “What do you mean you’re here?” Her questioning tone turns hostile. “I was told forty minutes for delivery! I don’t want no goddamn raw pizza!”

Okay: this is a new one, I’m getting yelled at for being faster than the quoted time. “No, that’s a delivery estimate. I got back to the store faster than the inside help estimated. It’s fully cooked.” Seriously, it takes like five or six minutes to bake a pizza, depending on the oven’s two Ts: temperature and temperment.

“I’ll be right there,” like she’s doing me a gigantic favor.

About an eternity later, she opens the door. “It’s hot, right? It’s hot?”

“Fresh from the oven!” I say, putting a jolly expression on my face. Putting? Forcing. I don’t add: “It was hotter five minutes ago when I pulled up here, lady, but you seem to have a problem opening your fucking door.”

She takes the pizza and hands me some cash (about a $3 tip, not bad, not great) and as I back away from her townhouse, I can see her in her kitchen examining the pizza for any sign of undercookedness. She didn’t call back to the store, so I assume the pie met her rigerous standards of cooking. Rob got very indigent with me when I related the story to him: “I told her forty minutes!”

“I know! She was upset because I was early!”

“Who gets upset because they get their pizza faster?”

“Apparently, she does!”

So, that’s a lesson to me. Next time, lady, your pie’ll be forty+ minutes to your door.

The Powers That Be have decreed: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows shall be split into two movies. This, by the way, had been the original plan for Goblet of Fire, until Alfonso Cuarón talked TPTB out of it. Meanwhile, I’m laughing at this quote from the article:

The books got progressively longer – the first, the Philosopher’s Stone, had 223 pages while Deathly Hallows has 776 – and fans have complained chunks of later novels have been left out of films.

Yeah, and Order of the Phoenix has 870 pages (here’s an oddity: the UK version, according to Wikipedia, has 766 … smaller font?), the movie was the shortest to date, and the adaptation was, by far, the best of the series.

But, hey, I’m really not complaining, especially since I give much credit for OotP’s success to the screenwriter, one-time Potter scribe Michael Goldenberg, who was replaced by the returning Steve Kloves (so I’m expecting Half Blood Prince to be about on the same level as Goblet of Fire … but I’m hoping to be surprised!)

HT: AICN.