Redbox and Lots of Polish

I, once again, have cancelled my Netflix account. This 2nd time, I only had the streaming plan (no DVDs) so it wasn't that terribly pricey; however, there also wasn't a whole lot I was using with Netflix. When it comes down to it, Amazon Prime Instant works just as well. In fact, they seem to have the same contracts so it was really kind of useless to be paying for both (to be fair, I have Prime for the free 2-day shipping (regardless of order price point) and not for the Prime Instant, that came a year or so after I started with paying for Prime). The only real plus to Netflix over Amazon Prime Instant is the "next episode" auto play (or option) on Netflix. Amazon Prime doesn't have it (makes sense since some things you might have to pay for), but I wish they could figure out a way to make it do that. I strongly dislike having to exit out of my full screen, find the next episode, hit play, and then go back to full screen. I know...what an absolutely harsh life I live (aka #firstworldproblems), but...come on!

At any rate, I'm really interested to see how Redbox does their streaming service. Their service has been "coming soon" for a few months now and I'm really interested to see how it's different than Netflix. It's fairly cheap (cheaper than Netflix at $8/month for unlimited streaming and 4 DVDs out per month) and if it carries the NEW DVDs on streaming, it will be well worth the money.

Let's do some math:

1 DVD = $1.30 (tax included)
$8 subscription / $1.30 movie = ~ 6.15 movies/month
6.15 movies * 12 months = 73.8 movies/year

Let's round up to 74 movies. I watched 101 movies last year and 16 of them were in theaters (I rewatched 2 of them in theater too, but that's not in my count). That's 85 movies I did not watch in theater and all of them but one (to my recollection) I rented from Redbox. That's 84 movies! And also $109.20 for the year (really not a large number for watching 84 movies...). So, I basically get to watch 10 movies for free or save $13.20. Not a large sum, admittedly, but let's factor in my potential wait times (I still haven't been able to track Frankenweenie down) and also sometimes out-of-the-way driving to return a Redbox (why isn't there one at the Monterey mall or anywhere near the mall?!). Not to mention I lost out on a $1.30 once because I reserved a movie ahead of time, but when I got there, the machine was broken (last time I've reserved a DVD...). So, based on time and convenience, it's worth the money. The fact I actually do save money (if I watch at least 75 movies), it's like icing on a cake. With that said, it'll mostly be worth it for me if it carries the new movies. If I have to wait weeks after a new movie comes out, I might make do, but since I'm currently caught up, I'm going to have an awkward lull; however, I could go check out a physical DVD too, but it also sort of loses its appeal for me. So, anyway, it'll be interesting. If it carries the new stuff, it'll be ahead of Netflix and Amazon Instant (no clue with iTunes). If it doesn't, what's the point? I will say that Netflix is relying more on its TV show availability than its movies, so, we'll see!

Had some good and interesting nails the past week or so. I've been trying to cleanse my palette lately (i.e., I've been in a nail funk), but I had two recent incidents that required fancy nails. Both were a pain to do and only one turned out really good. Not to say the other one is bad, but it's definitely not my favorite and lasted a sort of 2 days. LoL My current mani is just pretty. :)

Before I get to the photos, though, I was looking at some blogger photos of a new Valentine's Day collection from an indie brand. I saw one of the polishes and instantly went, "GUM!" Gum, as in bubble gum. I sat there thinking about it for a minute and then figured out WHICH gum it reminded me of. I went and found a photo and, yup, I'm a dork. I know I love my gum (goodness knows I eat enough of it and try all sort of flavors regularly), but I didn't realize I was starting to become a connoisseur of gum!

This is what I mean:

        

Left: Pointless Cafe's swatch of Nail Junkie's Bouquet. Right: Ice Breakers Ice Cubes in Bubble Breeze.

See what I mean? Pink (not sure why that shade of pink always says "bubble gum," but it does) base with blue glitter. That gum is pink base with blue flavor crystals! Of all the gums in the world, I think of this gum. I will say that I've only bought that particular flavor twice too. I enjoy the kiwi watermelon one the most. I just tried the new grape, which reminded me of Dimetapp grape flavor. It was, by far, my favorite medicine as a kid. LoL So, I didn't NOT enjoy the grape medicine flavor of the new grape Ice Breakers Ice Cubes gum. :P

Anyway, on to photos...

 

(Click photos to enlarge) Glitter Gal Lizard Belly for the tips, China Glaze Devotion for the silver stamp, BM 16 for the stamp, and Northern Lights in silver for the holo glitter in the clear base. I did this to show a co-worker I could do something similar to what she wanted (leopard on a gold base). This was more me than doing an animal print. :) I have never done something like this so it was a total shot in the dark and it turned out really good! I really liked it. Some of my tips could have been angled a little more, but it still looked good. This took a LONG time, though. Base primer, base, Northern Lights, tip color, tip stamp, top coat. Yeah, work! I had to wait for Northern Lights and the tip color to dry before the next steps too.

I had a meeting that was going to be a Superbowl theme (meeting was focused on teamwork) and we were asked to wear our favorite team's colors or jerseys or whatever. I don't watch football, but my manager and a co-worker are 49er fans. To honor that, I did 49er nails. Red is nubar Fiery Red and gold accent is Zoya Goldie. The gold moons are nubar 24k. The logo are various nubar nail art pens. I knew I was never a moon person (the crescents at the top), but I decided to try it. Yeah, first off, I didn't really like how I drew my moons and, second, I just didn't really like them. It's just weird to me. Then I drew the SF 49ers logo and it took a ridiculous amount of time to do and I did NOT like how it looked. There were flaws all over it and it drove me nuts. Sure, it's better than most people could do, but the flaws drove me bonkers. I wore the logo for a day, but the rest of the colors (had a white plain nail) for 2 days. I had a male customer said he liked my nails. It was funny.

Luckily, for those polishes, I already had red and gold polishes. I bought them for my Gryffindor colors (every nail person should have his/her Harry Potter house colors in polish!), but then people started pointing out to me they all thought it was Iron Man. Hm. The red is a smidgen darker in person, but whatever. I can see it (and started seeing Iron Man towards the end). It's scarlet and scarlet is bright, which is what it is on the color wheel and what Gryffindor's colors are. :P So...They're my Gryffindor colors!

 

Above the Curve Risen Angel. This is a loose linear (I think it's linear) holo and it's PRETTY! It's like a purple-gray color and the holo in it is amazing. It's really distracting to look at because the shift is really neat. I like linear ones because it's a strong rainbow, but this loose one is almost more distracting because it's softer and is ALL over the nail. The two left photos are in artificial light, but show the color shift. The right one (excuse the dry cuticles...ick) is in the sun just to show it's all sparkley! It looks better in person.

I also stamped the ring fingers, but it's hard to see and sort of moot when you've got a pretty holo polish! It's BM 306 with China Glaze Devotion, though. This is what the polish looks like without the bling going. :)

With that...Not much going on. Work hasn't been fun, but what are you going to do about it? Hopefully not murder anyone, I suppose...*sigh* Watched Frankenweenie, but will post about that later since I'll be watching Hotel Transylvania this week. Started doing my taxes too. Fantastic that Goodwill pays me just enough to mess me up, but not enough to really live on. *rolls eyes* My student loans ended up saving me and also being a renter in the state of California. Who'd of thunk...

Anyway, I'm off!

Redbox, Musings, and Fantastic Nails

I, once again, have cancelled my Netflix account. This 2nd time, I only had the streaming plan (no DVDs) so it wasn't that terribly pricey; however, there also wasn't a whole lot I was using with Netflix. When it comes down to it, Amazon Prime Instant works just as well. In fact, they seem to have the same contracts so it was really kind of useless to be paying for both (to be fair, I have Prime for the free 2-day shipping (regardless of order price point) and not for the Prime Instant, that came a year or so after I started with paying for Prime). The only real plus to Netflix over Amazon Prime Instant is the "next episode" auto play (or option) on Netflix. Amazon Prime doesn't have it (makes sense since some things you might have to pay for), but I wish they could figure out a way to make it do that. I strongly dislike having to exit out of my full screen, find the next episode, hit play, and then go back to full screen. I know...what an absolutely harsh life I live (aka #firstworldproblems - yes, for not Tweeting, I do know some of the common hashtags thanks to the FB/Twitter integration...), but...come on!

At any rate, I'm really interested to see how Redbox does their streaming service. Their service has been "coming soon" for a few months now and I'm really interested to see how it's different than Netflix. It's fairly cheap (cheaper than Netflix at $8/month for unlimited streaming and 4 DVDs out per month) and if it carries the NEW DVDs on streaming, it will be well worth the money.

Let's do some math:

1 DVD = $1.30 (tax included)
$8 subscription / $1.30 movie = ~ 6.15 movies/month
6.15 movies * 12 months = 73.8 movies/year

Let's round up to 74 movies. I watched 101 movies last year and 16 of them were in theaters (I rewatched 2 of them in theater too, but that's not in my count). That's 85 movies I did not watch in theater and all of them but one (to my recollection) I rented from Redbox. That's 84 movies! And also $109.20 for the year (really not a large number for watching 84 movies...). So, I basically get to watch 10 movies for free or save $13.20. Not a large sum, admittedly, but let's factor in my potential wait times (I still haven't been able to track Frankenweenie down) and also sometimes out-of-the-way driving to return a Redbox (why isn't there one at the Monterey mall or anywhere near the mall?!). Not to mention I lost out on a $1.30 once because I reserved a movie ahead of time, but when I got there, the machine was broken (last time I've reserved a DVD...). So, based on time and convenience, it's worth the money. The fact I actually do save money (if I watch at least 75 movies), it's like icing on a cake. With that said, it'll mostly be worth it for me if it carries the new movies. If I have to wait weeks after a new movie comes out, I might make do, but since I'm currently caught up, I'm going to have an awkward lull; however, I could go check out a physical DVD too, but it also sort of loses its appeal for me. So, anyway, it'll be interesting. If it carries the new stuff, it'll be ahead of Netflix and Amazon Instant (no clue with iTunes). If it doesn't, what's the point? I will say that Netflix is relying more on its TV show availability than its movies, so, we'll see!

I was going to have a few musings, but my Redbox sort of turned into a musing. My main thing was going to talk about life and death. A morbid musing for sure, but it's been a rough first part of the year for me with a family death, my housemate's grandfather's death, and I found out today a regular customer I like (and hadn't seen in months) was diagnosed with cancer in October and given a year to live (reason I haven't seen him in months). Not to mention pet deaths (two, so far) and they were dearly loved. Partially from all of this, I was talking to my housemate (and co-worker) and we got into a discussion about if there was a way to stop our cells from aging or to continue to reproduce, would we do it? We discussed it in a hypothetical term of taking a pill and we threw in the whole you can stop taking the pill if you wish to "die." That brings up other thoughts about assisted suicide (or suicides in general), but it was an interesting discussion about whether 1) Would people want to take "the pill"; 2) How would the world/class system be affected; and 3) If whether people would stop wanting to take "the pill." I actually associated this all with the movie In Time with Justin Timerblake and Amanda Seyfried. My co-worker has seen it and it almost perfectly illustrates how I feel it would end up. In that world, time is currency and when you run out, you're dead. I don't think time would end up being the currency since our lives can't be tied like that, but it's pretty similar. If you stop taking the pill, you'd die. If you run out of money, no more pill, no more life.