Costco Executive Membership Barely Profitable This Year

Our Costco dividend check arrived this week. It's for $68 and change. That's disappointingly less than last year's nearly $114 but at least is still enough to more than break even on the $60 premium we pay for Costco Executive membership vs. the basic Costco Gold.



BTW, the way the $68 is figured is it's 2% of our purchases at Costco, excluding gasoline. I figure our dividend is way down this year because we didn't really make any big-ticket purchases. Though we do continue to shop at Costco regularly.

Breaking Bad S5E9-12: Breaking Slow

It's been a while since I've blogged about Breaking Bad. ...Well, not a long time. My last journal entry about it posting yesterday! But since writing "How Much is Enough?" regarding episode S5E8 I've now watched four more episodes before wanting to write again.

Why go four episodes before writing? Frankly it's because the episodes are slow. It's lots of relationship drama, lots of stuff that in a book would be interior monologue, lots of people calling each other and leaving tense voicemails because nobody wants to actually talk.

I tell you, if I were watching this series live and having to wait a week for each new episode I would probably scream. These four recent episodes have not been worth waiting a week apiece. Fortunately I haven't had to play the previous-century TV waiting game because I'm catching up on these episodes via streaming. They're all right there on demand. If one episode sucks but I'm still in the groove and want to see some action, I can click "next"— or, actually, just let the system do it because it's the default— and see if the next episode has any cool action like, I dunno, someone actually answering their phone.