Teevee or Not Teevee ...Netflix and Cable

Ughhhhh... so Netflix turned out to be a bust. Boo. Terrible selection at a great price. In Canada at least. And then there was that threatened bandwidth cap. Good gravy. If the selection improves on Netflix though, I am not entirely opposed to give it another go.

When our little family moved to Rossland last summer we made the big decision to get rid of our cable . It was only at the time the choice seemed so monumental. In retrospect it hasn't really been missed, really everything that we would watch on cable is available online. Even CBC Kids.

We ended up getting cable back though, so that we might host our annual Oscar Party. This Deal-with-the-Devil includes a 3 month promotion and HD channels at a low, low price. Which ends up still being ridiculously expensive. Ridiculously expensive. I thought, "man, it will be H to the ARD prying the PVR from my daily life schedule once again.". However, I find myself checking the calendar regularly to see if our cable promotion is over yet so we can get rid of it. I am frugal not stupid.

Shocking, I know. I never thought I would prefer a life sans television, but I do. I am amazed at how quickly it has turned the poppets into tiny marketing machines. Isla, who has never been to, or even seen, a Red Lobster, now professes her undying love for the company. Egads. Jack begs for all manner of toys and is quickly developing an unhealthy perspective about germs.

Just the other day I caught myself singing the five dollar footlong jingle.  Isla shouts "skunk" whenever someone farts. Classy. Incorporating as always, and this might have been the straw that broke the cable's back, Isla called me a "five-dollar-skunk". A tidy, albeit unfortunate, amalgamation of pop culture.

The love affair is over.

On the Road Again...

For the past ten years my husband and I have shuttled back and forth from the Coast of BC to visit our loved ones in Calgary. From Vancouver, the journey always begins in the wee hours of the morning, travels through several majestic ranges, up and down passes hemmed in by picturesque mountains, then we are finally pushed out into the breathtaking Big Sky Country that is Alberta.

It is a remarkable trip that we have down to an unremarkable science. He drives, we sleep (which is a nice change from "Isla screams").  We drive from full to fumes, sometimes rolling into gas stations just to make the very best time we can. Before kids the trip took around ten hours. After, it could take upwards of twelve. Rossland is smack in the middle, almost a perfect 600km bisector between Vancouver and Calgary. It now,  in theory, takes half as long to get to either end.
















I always envy my dear friend who stops. She stops in Osoyoos and lets the kids play a round at the mini golf. She stops at parks and she lets the kids out to play, completely disregarding how this effects the "time" she is making from point A to point B. As much as I "know" life is about the journey and not the destination somehow I never was able to make the literal jump!  We decided to stop and smell the proverbial roses.

Frank Slide sits at the foot of Turtle Mountain and neither Mike or I had visited the site for the better part of two decades. We left the dogs in the truck and went in with the kids to the lovely new interpretive centre. It was a wonderful digression. We watched documentary films, played with touchable exhibits, read heaps of first hand accounts and relearned about this historic, and preventable tragedy.

90 minutes later we returned to the vehicle ready and eager to get back on the road. Mike opened the door and was met with a terrible stench. Velma had unleashed an epic and entirely preventable tragedy of her own. We had left her out of her kennel. It was all over Isla's car seat and everything surrounding it. Not unlike most trips into the city we were returning at capacity and the kennel needed to be collapsed to fit Santa's booty into the wayback. That was a mistake. The mess only seemed to have hit porous, absorbant surfaces. Ughhh. I think we used an entire box of baby wipes to little or no avail. We lamented the remaining hours in the reek. As it turns out, nothing gets rid of that new car smell like a dog with diarrhea.

Netflix

My husband and I are movie aficionados - some might say snobs - but we enjoy great films and then discussing them with equally snobby friends! Maybe it is a theatre thing. Stick us in a room with a screen or a stage as actors or audience and we are two immensely happy people!

In this season of our lives though we don't get out to see nearly as many plays or movies as we would like. In fact we have patronized far too many animated movies in the last two years then I would care to recount here! With one exception. The Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of the all time family faves of 2009. With great film snob friends in tow we went to the theatre for Isla's 2nd birthday and I was filled with pride knowing that my two small children enjoyed their first Wes Anderson film as much as I remember enjoying mine.

To remedy this situation in part, for Michael's last birthday I gifted him (and myself!) a mammoth plasma and surround sound system. We LOVE watching movies at home. Put the kids to bed, close the door, turn down the lights, turn up the volume and we are ready for our best viewing experience! In Vancouver I had recently discovered the $2 movie machine at Safeway. I think we are almost caught up on the new releases from the past few years - finally.

There is no such magical movie machine here in Rossland and I am having a hard time reconciling myself  to spending $6 to rent. We are falling behind again. My computer lacks the room and I lack the computer prowess to procure movies any other way...until now.

Netflix is coming to Canada. I am so stoked!!!!!