Got it Maid

When I resigned my lease this year, as a thank you for my loyalty, my apartment complex offered me either a free carpet cleaning or a free maid visit. I selected the maid's visit since I feared getting the carpet cleaning would require moving all of my furniture out of the apartment. So today the maid came to visit! Happy Valentine's Day to me! I wasn't entirely sure what the maid was going to do exactly but they definitely dusted, vacuumed, threw out my trash, threw out my recyclables, mopped the floors, cleaned my stove, cleaned the bathtub, sink, and toilet and made my bed. They definitely cleaned more thoroughly than I do; that's for sure. I'm kind of excited at how good it looks and am even thinking I might fork over the money to do it again, depending on the cost. I've seen Groupons, etc... that offer cheap maid service.

I'm a Winner!

Our management company at work hosted a holiday party on Friday, with hors d'oeuvres and punch and desserts. There was also the opportunity to enter a drawing to win one of several gift baskets so of course I entered. And I won! I love winning stuff. Here are pictures of both the front and the back of the gift basket I won. Quite honestly, most of the stuff in the basket was kinda lame and mostly things I do not eat. However, the basket itself was a black leather magazine basket which is really nice, useful and actually matches the decor in my apartment. It's always awesome to win stuff!

Shecky's Girls Night Out

I mentioned this briefly the other day but I attended Shecky's Girls Night Out on Weds. and one of the big draws with that event is the gift bag. This time didn't really disappoint, as you can see all the freebies I got in the picture below.



Another benefit of the event is the sampling of alcohol. I tried the Michelob Ultra Pomegranate Raspberry, which has an interesting non-beer flavor. It would have been a great option before I enjoyed the taste of beer. I also tried Budweiser Select 55, a beer that boasts only 55 calories. It honestly didn't taste any different than any other light beer, but with far fewer calories, I suppose. I wanted to try the Bacardi Silver Sangria, but they had run out of it by the time I got to the bar.

Advance Movie Screening: Amelia

I get these free advanced movie screening passes every so often (seems like once a week lately) and last night was no different. I got to see Amelia, starring Hilary Swank as Amelia Earhart. I'm a huge fan of Amelia Earhart's. I wrote my first in-depth research paper in college about her and her feminism, plus my grandmother always claimed that she was a distant relative of ours. I never really believed her since she never could explain the connection but who knows? Anyway, I was eager to see the movie because of the story it told, not so much because of Hilary Swank. She is one of those actresses that I'm not a big fan of. Personally, I mean. When I've seen her on talk shows, there's just something about her that I don't like. Her acting is fine enough. That being said, I found her really grating as Amelia. There is talk (supposedly) of her being nominated or even winning another Oscar for this portrayal and wow, I hope not. Maybe Amelia herself was grating so Hilary did a bang-up job but I think it was more the performance that was grating. I was more fascinated with how they were able to make her so full of freckles, which I'm pretty sure are not natural to Hilary.

As far as the movie goes, it was your average biopic. They overdramatized some stuff and left out a lot of information but it showed an interesting snapshot of her life from the time she was asked to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic until she passed away - basically it's Amelia in her 30s minus one flashback. If the ending happened exactly as portrayed, then it's ridiculous that there have been any rumors that she survived. They were literally in the middle of nowhere.

I would recommend this as a rental or a wait-for-cable viewing unless you are desperately fascinated about Amelia Earhart.

"Netflix to stream early seasons of 'Lost,' others"

This news about Netflix streaming the first five seasons of Lost plus some of the older seasons of Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives is great news to me, even though I've already seen all those seasons. Now that I have a Tivo, I'm able to watch their streaming stuff directly on my television so anytime I want to watch an old episode of Lost, it will be easy to pull up on my TV!! (via)

That reminds me that I've meant to do a review of my Tivo. I should do that soon.

GI Film Festival

Last Wednesday, I found out I won a free VIP pass to the GI Film Festival! It was an all-access pass to all the movies that were playing, including some VIP movie showings and receptions. Plus, it included a gift pack with some free T-shirts, movies and other swag. Pretty exciting! They promised celebrities at the receptions and well, say no more, if there are going to be celebrities, I'm there!

So the first VIP event was Thursday and it included a showing of Valkyrie as well as a reception afterwards. The movie was actually pretty good (even if we all know how it turns out) and one of the producers was there to answer questions and talk about the filming. It was pretty interesting. As far as "celebrities" go, there was Faizon Love, Karri Turner, and Leann Tweeden (who I'm shocked to learn is only 35 - sorry). No I did not know who they were, other than possibly having heard their names before. Then, at the end of the screening, the organizers announced that Stephen Baldwin was also there! Finally someone I'd recognize on sight. And, indeed, he was there. I saw him myself. Also possibly at the event was the notorious Scooter Libby. I might be wrong but I swear I heard someone being introduced as Scooter Libby and the picture on Wikipedia looks enough like him that I'm just going to go with it. I don't know if I've ever knowingly been in the room with a convicted felon before!

On Friday night, there was another reception and then the showing of Taking Chance, which debuted on HBO recently. It was really enjoyable and supposedly, Kevin Bacon and the movie's director and co-writer were supposed to be in attendance. Uh no. However, the real person who Kevin plays was there and told us his story and answered questions after the movie so that was pretty cool. As far as celebrities go, Stephen Baldwin was there again and so was Jeffrey Ross. Who we talked to!! My friend Elizabeth saw Jeffrey first and decided we should go talk to him and before I could say, "What will we say?" she was already there talking to him!

Here's how our conversation went:

Elizabeth: I was really rooting for you on Dancing with the Stars. It's too bad you got eliminated.

Jeffrey: Thanks! But you should watch on Tuesday! I'll be there to roast the finalists.

Me: Oh yeah, you're a great roastist!

Me: Wait, is that what it's called... someone who roasts?

Jeffrey: Hmm, I think it's "roastmaster?" But roastist... I like that!

Elizabeth: Good luck!

And that was about it. So if he uses the word "roastist" tonight, you can thank me. Because I'm sure a well-paid, professional comedian relies on random strangers to provide him with vocabulary. Anyway, it was exciting and he couldn't have been nicer. A side note: We didn't even try to talk to Stephen Baldwin. However, I should have offered my hand for him to shake. I shook Joan Rivers' hand a few months ago and she went on to win Celebrity Apprentice. He could use my special powers as he heads off to do I'm a Celebrity... Get me Out of Here.

Inauguration Day

Yes, I went to the Inauguration on Tuesday! We got the day off of work plus I live about 2 miles from the steps of the Capitol Building, so why not!? And before that, on Sunday, I went to the We Are One free concert that took place in front of the Lincoln Memorial and which apparently you can watch online from that link. My pics of the two events are below (Click on it for more):

Inauguration Events

There were a LOT of people at both events but I think things went mostly smoothly. On Sunday, the bridge we would have walked over super conveniently was closed so we took the Metro and yes, it was crowded, but there were no problems. It wasn't even that cold. And we got a pretty decent spot even though we didn't really get there until about an hour before the show. On Tuesday, we had zero problems. We walked over from my apartment, it took about 30-40 minutes, and yes it was crowded, but everyone was relatively polite and friendly and we just kept walking towards the Capitol until we could not walk anymore, so we ended up near the Washington Monument, which is not close at all really, but again, we probably got there an hour or 90 minutes before the ceremony started. We couldn't even see the Capitol from where we were standing. And, it was much colder on Tuesday but definitely bearable for the four hours or so that we were outside. For both events, I would estimate 95% of people had to watch via the Jumbotrons anyway so we made no extreme effort to get there extra extra early to get a front row spot. But it certainly was fun to be there!

Finally! General Hospital available online

I found out that ABC.com has finally added General Hospital to the shows it offers online! It's been a long time coming, with every other network offering its soaps available online for quite some time. If only ABC's media player didn't mess up every time I tried to watch it on my computer. Access the free episodes here.

Sell your books online!

Book store Powell's Books has started allowing people to sell their used books to them online. Instead of putting your books up on something like eBay or Half.com and waiting for them to sell to some prospective buyer, you can enter the book's ISBN on the Powell's Web site, they'll tell you how much they'll give you for the book and if you accept, will send you a postage paid envelope in which to mail them your books. Instead of getting cash money, however, you get store credit. So it seems pretty win-win if you have any books you want to get rid of!

Museum Day

Tomorrow is Museum Day, sponsored by Smithsonian magazine. Museums across the country are taking part and providing free admission. It's always nice to save some money! If I were back home in Cleveland, I might take advantage of the free admission to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. What a deal! Unfortunately, most of the museums on the list in the Washington, DC, area are already free. Also, I was going to go to the National Book Festival tomorrow. But I guess if it rains, I might be heading to a museum.

Religulous screening

I was excited to go to a free advanced screening of Bill Maher's documentary Religulous last night. I enjoy Bill Maher and I enjoy seeing people try to explain their beliefs. It was definitely interesting and I enjoyed it, although I have to say if people want to spend their lives blindly devoted to God, why does Bill Maher care? Well, he does bring up some points and explains why he cares a bit but for the most part, I think he should let people do what they want to do just as I'm going to let him date models and porn stars half his age and hang out nonstop at the Playboy Mansion.

However, the truly interesting part of the evening was that the movie theater apparently installed the third reel incorrectly and so when it started, it was upside down and backwards. And instead of just stopping the reel and trying to correct it, apparently it had to play all the way through. So we had to sit there for like 25 minutes with nonsensical noise and upside down images. They talked about trying to fix it but then decided to just finish the movie and give us all coupons for another movie. So I missed about a half hour in the middle. But considering it was a documentary and Bill's point of view is pretty clear from the outset, I'll just wait to watch the rest of it on DVD. And go see another movie for free with my coupon!

Sales Tax Holiday!

This weekend is Virginia's annual Sales Tax Holiday weekend, good on school supplies under $20 and clothing under $100. It seems like it might be a good weekend to go shopping!

Cake Pans! At a Library

This week's AL Direct has a story about how a library has Wilton cake pans available for checkout and even has them in their online catalog. Turns out the library is the Reed Memorial Library in Ravenna, OH, part of the Portgage County system. Although the library apparently won't offer them for InterLibrary Loan, they do allow outsiders to get library cards to check out the cake pans. It's not that convenient for my friends/relatives back in Cleveland, but it's not that inconvenient either! So if you want to bake a cake in the shape of an object or famous character but don't want to spend the money to buy a cake pan you'll only use once, this is a great alternative! I bet a lot of the pans are discontinued too.

In other TV-viewing news...

I just got a Slingbox! I'm very very excited, as I've been interested in them for at least two years. At my current apartment, we decided to not get cable, and while it's been fine for the most part, I also do really miss it at times. But now I can watch the cable from my parents' house via my computer! The picture is pretty awesome. You can control it via a remote control image that shows up on your monitor and is identical to the actual remote control. Plus, it only costs the amount of the set-top box. It was pretty easy to set it up, too. Last night, I was excited to be able to watch the Project Runway Season 5 premiere. And next week, I'll be able to watch the second season of General Hospital: Night Shift. And also cool is that I can now watch Indians & Browns games that air on Cleveland television!

The Daily Show on Hulu

This week, Hulu.com started featuring episodes from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I find this exciting news because since I don't have cable, I often catch episodes of The Daily Show online. However, the video clips available on its official site always stutter and need buffering over and over again. Overall, it's not a great viewing experience. Hulu, on the other hand, is a platform that's given me very little problems in the past. And I've watched quite a bunch of programming through Hulu. The only problem is that it's only a test apparently and might not last and also, only the last few weeks episodes are up. Oh and The Colbert Report is on there too!

Here's a short clip from Hulu with Jon offering some advice:

Free version of Photoshop

Adobe recently launched a free online version of Photoshop, which might be useful. I haven't had a chance to check into it too much but I have used a previous version that you had to purchase so it's nice to have some basic photo-editing options available for free from a name you can recognize.

I'm a winner!

Thanks to the Washington City Paper, I won a free pass to see the new Imax concert movie U2 3D at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History! It's just one pass so I guess they expect me to go alone but it sounds pretty cool. And I love winning things!

Online TV

My latest addiction (although that's a bit of an overstatement) is online TV viewing. All of the major broadcast networks are streaming some of their shows online, usually available the day after they air on television. What's nice about this is that you can catch episodes that you may have wanted to catch but missed when they aired. It also basically eliminates the need for a Tivo/DVR/VCR recording device. And, it's free, did I mention that? Of course there are services like iTunes where you can pay, usually $1.99 an episode, for the same thing but I doubt anyone would argue that free isn't better. I've watched episodes of (or parts of episodes, anyway) Lost, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, Survivor, The Biggest Loser, Heroes, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Cribs over the last month.

I've sort of been looking for a good web site that provides links to all the places one can view shows online and haven't found anything exactly to my liking (perhaps I should make one of my own) but: TV Squad offers a list by network or site (AOL & Yahoo! offer some programs thanks to tie-ins with certain networks) and TV Guide Online offers a daily blog listing some of the best online TV viewing of the day.

With that all being said, as far as the major networks go, I think the ABC service is the best by far. Not only can you watch past episodes (most of the other networks only let you watch the most current episode) but I also haven't had any streaming problems at all.

Things I like, part 3: AllaboutSP.com

This Web site is awesome! While graphically it is a bit busy and the framing is enough to drive someone to drink, the content is pretty sweet for any fan of South Park. It seems pretty thorough although honestly I'm not too interested in participating in South Park forums or reading the pseudo-bios of the characters (if you can even read Kenny or Kyle's over the walllpaper). The exciting part of it all is that it features ALL episodes of South Park for streaming viewing! Not just the episodes, but also the South Park movie, early pre-show cartoons featuring the South Park guys and other rare media, like Robin Williams performing "Blame Canada" at the 2000 Oscars. Although nothing is downloadable, it all seems to be commercial-free and in pretty good shape. It's really pretty great and was a big help when I decided I wanted to catch up a bit on the show I hadn't watched since like 2002. It even has that controversial episode about Scientology that caused Isaac Hayes to leave the show. Like I said, pretty sweet.

P.S. The site is in the process of moving to an easier-to-remember URL - the one in the title of my post, AllaboutSP.com.

Things I like, part 2: Free stuff!

Who doesn't love free stuff, though? I feel like I've gotten more free stuff in the last six or seven weeks since I've been back living with my parents than I'd gotten in the last six or seven years - and I'm not even talking about the fantastic things like free room and board and a free vacation.

Let's see... first, I got a $10 coupon from Express for my birthday. While I know the idea behind the coupon is to get the person to go in the store and spend MORE than $10, I found a cute and comfy tank top for $9.99. Free tank, yay!

This week, I happened to be in the right place at the right time and got a free pass to see John Tucker Must Die, which wouldn't exactly have been my first choice of a movie to see right now but it wasn't bad. (I saw it last night.) At the movie, I picked up a free poster, too. Free movie, free poster, yay!

I filled out this online survey from Lucky magazine and they say I will get a free T-shirt, so yay! (Although, honestly, I will believe that when I see it.)

My mom had two $10 coupons to use from Kohl's and although technically she only got them after she spent $50 or more in purchases twice, she didn't want them and gave them to me. So they were free to me! And, just like Express, I'm sure they expect you to spend more than $10 each time you redeem one of them but, just like Express, I was able to find two items I wanted for less than $10 each! I got a nifty lunch bag for $9.99 (along the lines of this, although I like mine better) and a nice blouse to wear under my suits for $8.80 (should I ever have an interview!) so not only were they two free items, but they were two practical items as well. Yay!