end of an era
It finally happened, you guys! After having an account for fifteen years, I canceled the DVD portion of my Netflix subscription. From here on out, it's streaming only.
Shobhit was obviously reading yesterday's post when he texted to ask how much the DVD account costs. I hadn't even looked it up in a while. It's $14.99! For two discs at a time, which for at least a few years now have commonly sat unwatched at home for weeks, sometimes months at a time. How stupid is that? It finally hit me, all at once: I am getting zero value out of that.
Now, the $10.99 (before taxes) I've been paying for streaming -- I still get massive value out of that. But an additional fifteen bucks? For old, increasingly damaged discs that often sit unwatched for far too long? In this case I canceled that part almost immediately after the question had been posed. Shobhit has a good point when he says I can get DVDs from the library, which is true, although their collection is still but a fraction of Netflix's. And, for instance, the next double feature Laney and I have planned is for Airport '77 and The Concorde: Airport '79, neither of which is available at the library. But, even if I rent both of those from Amazon Prime to stream, that will only cost me eight bucks. It's still cheaper than paying for the Netflix DVD mailers.
I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I should have made this change a while ago. With the DVD account, I've really just been handing over free money to Netflix.
Anything else? Oh, because I was tight on time, I actually bussed home yesterday -- I walked to the bus stop at 1st & Denny after leaving work 5 minutes early, and the Rapid Ride D came up right as I arrived. I rode that down to Pike, where within minutes I got on a #11 up Capitol Hill to my condo building. The stars aligned and I got home at 5:00. It took me 35 minutes on two buses. I was genuinely surprised it was even that fast, even though it still seems dumb to me for it to take that long to go less than two and a half miles of distance. To be fair, sort of, that's largely because of the start and end points and how few other people go the same total direction.
Anyway, I helped Shobhit make pasta for dinner, and it was barely ready in time for me to pack it in a container and take it with me back on the bus downtown to catch the #74 from Convention Place Station to the AMC 10 in the U District and see the third and final set of 2019 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Documentary. And guess what? These were better than either the animated shorts or the live action shorts. Also, I can't recall having ever gone to see the documentaries before. I know I didn't last year.
I took the bus back home again, and was done with my review by about 10:30, and was ready for bed at about 11:00. I got all of about six hours of sleep last night but whatever, it's fine.
Ivan arrives for his visit this evening. Something occurred to me just this morning: having not seen him since October, I think this four month stretch is the longest I have ever gone without seeing him since we first met in 2014. Really it's because December just wasn't a good month for it, but I'd sure like to try to keep from going that long again. We already plan to spend time together during my Birth Week at the end of April, so there's that.
[posted 12:35 pm]