updates

Interesting...well, that YouTube video of our wedding from endless love productions has been taken down. I contacted my videographer and he asked them to take it down. Funny, that was fast.

And I did find a buyer for the HD DVD player! I actually had an initial buyer who backed---get this, because he already had a Blu-Ray player and didn't think it was necessary to have 2. Duh! I had a 2nd guy who was interested but didn't realize he needed an XBox in order to use it. Man, craigslist is full of idiots. Anyhow, I hope my current buyer doesn't back out--we've agreed on a price and now it's a matter of just meeting up.

On travel news, we finally bought tickets to.....ICELAND!!! This is a trip that we've been talking to our friends, Debbie & Saevar, about for awhile. Saevar himself is Icelandic so not only do we have a place to stay but also fabulous tour guides. Coincidentally, it'll be around our 1st year wedding anniversary...so happy anniversary to us!

endless productions?

In searching for "matt and audrey" on YouTube, I came across a wedding highlight montage of our wedding...but not from our videographer! It's by Jeremy Almeda and "Endless Productions" and looks slightly different from what we finally received from our videographer. WTF? I'm confused. If anything, there's a *teensy* bit of coverage here that I've never seen, so that's cool...but still....isn't there a creative rights ownership issue here?

After having it for only a couple months, I'm now trying to sell my XBox 360 HD DVD player + some movies and hoping some idiot out there is unaware of the death of HD DVD, thinking they're getting a fabulous deal on a player. (hence, the price I'm hoping to get for it---also, partly based on the fact that there are others selling it for the same, if not higher, price) We'll see what happens. I knew the format war was over, but I was hoping to squeeze more life out of my player with my Netflix account.....until I got this e-mail today:

We're Going Blu-ray Dear Audrey, You're receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well. While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements. Toward the end of February, HD DVDs in your Saved Queue will automatically be changed to standard definition DVDs. Then toward the end of this year, all HD DVDs in your Queue will be changed to standard definition DVDs. Don't worry, we will contact you before this happens.

Well, that about did it, screw that. Time to sell. Cross my fingers that this works. And damn, I really liked having Knocked Up and Children of Men. Oh well. I'd turn around and get a Blu-Ray player but they're too freakin' expensive right now. I guess I'll have to wait til the pricing for those go down....

Weekend was fun -- went to the symphony Saturday evening where we ran into Miss Amanda Darling, a fellow Smithie Lamonster who moved to Seattle a few months ago, and her boyfriend, Zack. We ended up getting drinks together after the symphony over at the Triple Door to catch up which was pretty fun. It's crazy to think that I first met Amanda 12 years ago--eeks!

Sunday night, we checked out DJ Shadow + Cut Chemist (who was also the random chemistry teacher in Juno) over at the Showbox which was awesome. Kid Koala opened for them and he was equally amazing.

And yes, I was one of thousands of Americans caucusing for the first time in their lives on Saturday. It was honestly quite interesting -- I felt like I was in one of those old 1950's movies where everyone gathers in town hall to discuss who should be the next mayor. My particular precinct caucused at the Seattle First Baptist Church around the corner along with 7 or 8 other precincts. It was insanely hot inside and pretty chaotic with so few people knowing what to do. After checking in and waiting around, they "officially" closed the caucus and started explaining all the rules while each precinct leader tallied up the votes from everyone. We then all broke out into our precincts. In my precinct, there were 95 people total -- 72 for Obama, 16 for Hillary, 5 for Kucinich, and 2 undecided. With 8 delegates, that translated into 6 Obama, 1 Hillary and 1 undecided. With the undecided delegate needing to go to one candidate, we then broke out into a totally unorganized discussion to sway the undecided over one way. I was lucky and happened to be standing right behind one of the undecided, listening in on how the Obama and Hillary supporters were trying to sway him. To be honest, if I were a judge at a debate tournament, I would've awarded the Hillary supporters as their arguments were more solid and persuasive...at least with this particular individual. In the end, I think he was swayed over to Hillary as the final tally was 75 Obama, 18 Hillary, 2 Kucinich --- so delegate-wise, that was 6 Obama and 2 Hillary. Next, came the volunteering of delegates which I watched for a bit but it wasn't too entirely exciting. I listened in on speeches from another, rather-large (160) precinct as the comments being made were more interesting....and then left. All in all, it was 2 hours out of my day on Saturday, but 2 good hours. I'm glad I caucused.

less plastic in my pocket

I just cancelled 3 credit cards. Like that. That feels good. What's even more awesome -- in the process, I reduced the APR on a current travel credit card and got more flight credits added. See, I have 2 Chase credit cards. It's totally unnecessary to have both, so I called to cancel one. In the process of doing so, to keep me as a customer for the other one, they reduced the APR and gave me 2 add'l flight credits. Yay. As for the other credit cards, quite frankly, I barely use them. For one, my last purchase on it was January 2004! I'm happy as one of my New Year's resolutions was to cancel unnecessary credit cards....which got me thinking, what are other resolutions I want to make? Well, here goes:

• Get more healthy/Lose weight. I lost an incredible amount of weight prior to the wedding, which I was very proud of; however, I immediately gained it all back within a few months after the wedding. Boo. I just let go of all the good habits I had started developing pre-wedding. It's time for me to get back on that wagon.
• Learn pilates. I'm signed up beginning tomorrow at Element!
• Become more of a morning person. I say this every year. I never really get any better but it's still a lofty goal. I made my pilates appointment at 8:30am, so hopefully that will be a starting incentive to help me become more of a morning person.
• Travel somewhere I've never been. Hopefully, if all works out, this year it will be to Iceland. This is also a resolution I make every year---last year, I made it to Tahiti :-)
• Make an investment. I cashed out my remaining Amazon stock last year and the money has just been sitting in my Charles Schwab account since. Now, it's not a ton but I could be doing something with it other than having it sit there. I've been meaning to re-invest it into something long term.
• Take the bus more to work. In the brief time in which my eyesight was bleh at the end of last year, I was taking the Commuter/bus to work, which was great. Since, I've gone back to driving in again all the time. I'd like to make it a goal to bus it in more often. Save the environment. yeah.
• Get my taxes done on my own. Okay, I'm married now. We should file jointly. I get my taxes filed by the family tax attorney every year. Yeah, it's convenient...but it also means I know nada about taxes.
• Finish changing my name. My maiden name is still on a number of documents...and hopefully I can switch everything over by the end of the year.

Okay, that's probably a good number of things.

fresh delivery

Sure enough, at precisely 8:02am, the phone rang with the Amazon Fresh delivery (I scheduled it for between 8am - 9am). Moments later, Dirk, the delivery guy, showed up with a big smile on his face and all my groceries. He quickly offered to bring everything into the kitchen and had me sign a sheet before taking off. Everything was in my order including the very late night order of skin cream, just to see if I could really add something to my order at midnight the night before. As a pleasant surprise, I even got a bonus free bag of produce, which included a bell pepper, carrots, snap peas, orange, tomatoes and an apple.

So far, I'm a happy customer!

weekend recap

Saturday evening, we had dinner over at the Plambecks in Issaquah along with Matt and Asayo. It was like...a real adult-like dinner in the sense that Suzanne went all out with great appetizers (like apricots topped with goat cheese and roasted pistachios) and serving delicious grilled shrimp and rack of lamb with arugula pesto. It was great to catch up and also see their kids, Matthew and Thomas, who are quite energetic lil' boys! We walked in around 7pm with the 2 boys running around like crazy and yelling...Chris turned to us and said "this is what it's like every day I come home from work. It's insane!" Ha Ha. Anyhow, great evening.

Today, we headed over to Pierre's for a Superbowl get together. He and Matt Joe went all out with a meal fit for carnivores: cocktail shrimp, pate, beef tri-tips, and a delicious pork rack of ribs. The game was crazy exciting to watch even though it ended with a shocking upset (not surprisingly, the Sousa household is a Pats one). I have to admit--even though I'm not really one to watch football, my eyes were very much glued to the TV in those last 5 minutes of the game. My jaw dropped when the Giants made that touchdown with only 30-something seconds left. I couldn't believe it...I thought for sure the Pats had it. Boo.

Tonight, I decided to try out Amazon Fresh. We had talked about the service a little bit over at the Plambecks and it peaked my curiosity. It's a little odd for me to use this service considering we're all of 1 block away from the nearest QFC. I guess it saves the hassle of waiting in line at the store. I can't really tell how comparable the prices are--one savings was that Amazon paid for the sales tax, which was super cool. The delivery is tomorrow morning so we'll see how it all turns out. Meanwhile, I'll comment on my first shopping experience thus far---first the good:

• As mentioned, they pay for the sales tax. It seemed to be an "introductory period" sort of thing so I don't know how long this will last. For the mean time though, I like it
• Delivery is free after spending $50 -- that's because I need to have an in-person type of delivery living in a secured access condo; otherwise, if they could drop it off, the price point for free delivery would drop. Either way, this wasn't hard to reach as there were a ton of things I could buy.
• Overall, site usability was great. Adding items to the cart didn't require a refresh of the page.
• Explanation of the potentially-confusing delivery service was clear.
• I liked how after I made my purchase, I could keep adding to my order if I wanted to. This made it convenient when a couple hours later, I remembered something else I wanted that cost maybe $2. It was nice to just add it to my existing order.
• I think the prices are fairly comparable.
• Decent selection...reminded me of what I could get at QFC but not at Whole Foods.
• It seemed somewhat hooked to my Amazon.com account in that it automatically pulled in my credit card information when I checked out. That was convenient.

Things I would like to see:

• Better selection of cheese. I mean, I want a Whole Foods sort of selection. That's part of the reason I go to Whole Foods.
• No wine. Boo.
• The ethnic food section sucked. I looked at Asian foods and it was the basic run-of-the-mill Joyce Chen type of stuff. I'd be impressed if this went beyond the QFC selection.
• I wish I could buy things in bulk, like my cereal or paper goods.
• I wish it would list the price breakdown based on unit (i.e. $0.57/oz.) so I could comparison shop
• Why not add reviews? Good way to expose myself to new foods...especially the deli or pre-prepared meals from Amazon Fresh.
• I'd like to see Nutrition Information since I often look at that when grocery shopping.