A serendipitous evening

Posted on February 5, 2010
Filed Under Boston, Family, Food, Friendship, Love, Movies, Music, Society, Technology, Television, Travel, Weather, Winter |

This week is starting to look a little brighter, partly because it’s Friday and partly because I had a serendipitous night out yesterday. I met up with Carly for an early dinner at Match so we could take advantage of their ladies’ night special of $5 entrees. (The only catch is that you have to buy one drink–so worth it because they have yummy cocktails and wine.) While at dinner, we noticed the restaurant was having a special promotion for free tickets to see the movie “Valentine’s Day,” which Meg, Carly and I all wanted to see together, but you had to order a special drink that we weren’t really feeling. But then, at the end of the night, our waitress asked if we wanted some free passes to the movie anyway! So we scored three free tickets and are going to see the flick on Monday night.

You may remember that I wrote about my and Mike’s troubles with Comcast and how we were never really able to come up with a good solution. Well, that has changed. Mike got an indoor antenna (yes, we’re going totally Hollywood Hillbillies, straight out of “Deliverance,” etc.) that receives basically all the channels we are currently paying nearly $20 per month for. So I’m canceling our Comcast TV service today and we’ll supplement the antenna with Boxee, a cool new service that a co-worker told me about. It basically puts all sorts of online media–Netflix, Hulu, etc.–in one place that you can stream on your television. There is even an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch so we can control it from the couch! So we’re simultaneously entering the 21st century and the styx at the same time.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been really into the singer John Prine lately. I first heard about him in the movie “Into the Wild” when Kristen Stewart and Emile Hirsh perform his song “Angel from Montgomery.” I loved it from the very first time I heard it and recently, Mike bought one of his CDs. Since then, I have been listening to it all the time. I love Prine’s tawng and his lyrics are so relevant to today, despite the songs being decades old. The music is wonderful, a little bit country, a little bit folk, it’s the perfect blend. I highly recommend checking out his music if you haven’t ever given it a try.

The whole family is off to Florida for my grandpa’s celebration of life and brother bear and I will be joining them tomorrow. I’m having some trouble checking in on Jetblue’s Web site, so hopefully that doesn’t foreshadow any problems we have on our trip. They did just do a technology overhaul, so the problem may have something to do with that. Luckily I don’t think we’re going to have any trouble with the bad weather that is supposed to bow through the mid-Atlantic states, but for anyone reading down there, bundle up and enjoy the snow! And to everyone else, have a safe and fun weekend!

UPDATE: Just tried to cancel our basic cable and guess what? If we do, our Internet will go up $15 per month, which is conveniently how much we pay for our TV service. So basically, Comcast is just totally roping you into buying an additional service. I have had a terrible experience with Comcast since we were forced to switch to them when we moved (our house is not wired for Verizon), but mark my words, when we move again, my first question is going to be “Can this house have Verizon?” Because I am switching back (or to someone else, like RCN) as soon as possible.

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