(Apologies for the random photos; my phone died midway through our day trip to New York, so all I got were some weird shots of Lance at Steak n’ Shake Express :-/)

There are not many Broadway shows that I have to drop everything to see.  While I appreciate the skill, discipline, and talent involved in staging these often elaborate, mostly intensive shows, it’s not in my blood like Lance (who owns the cast recording of Sunset Boulevard in six or seven different languages.)

Still, we hadn’t been to NYC together in almost a year, and with spring in the air, Lance was itchin’ to visit the Great White Way.  And this time, I was actually excited to see a show: the revival of Pippin, but  my enthusiasm had nothing to do with the show itself.

Y’see, I’ve mentioned loyalty programs before; most of the time, your “loyalty” is rewarded with a hill of beans, but every so often, if you play your cards right, you can hit the jackpot.  Today’s example: Audience Rewards.

Audience Rewards is the loyalty program for big-time theatre productions, mostly in New York.  Every time you see a show, you earn Audience Rewards points, the objective being to earn enough to redeem for free tickets to a stage show.

Well, like a lot of airline loyalty programs, Audience Rewards also couples with other loyalty programs, like Delta Airlines’ SkyMiles or Starwood hotel group’s Preferred Guest (SPG) program, where you can opt for your points from Broadway ticket purchases to go to one of these other programs instead.  Sometimes, they even offer a bonus.

This is why I was so excited to go up to New York for the day and see Pippin (and, with rush tickets, the fabulous off-Broadway production Peter and the Starcatcher).  See, for every Pippin ticket you purchased, you got 5000 SPG points, so between the two of us, that’s…well, you can do the math.

That may not seem like a lot, until you look at what 10,000 SPG points will get you: three nights at the Sheraton Garden Grove near Disneyland in California, a hotel that goes for over $130 a night.

Since we were already thinking about going to California this fall, these bonus points from Pippin will end up saving us almost $400!

As with any of this loyalty program stuff, the trick is not spend any more (or significantly more!) than you would normally spend in the pursuit of points.  It just worked out that we were looking to see a show, and this promotion happened to sync up with that.

Disneyland, December 2013, baby!!

Thoroughly enjoying brunch at Boma in Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge.

So I’ve been lazy.  Definitely not busy.  Just pretty lazy.

Do you ever get writer’s block, that kind of motivational constipation, a case so bad that it just seems to shut off all “creative” (a liberal use of the term) valves in your brain?  I’ve had no gumption to do anything blog or doodle-related in several weeks now, and I’m gonna chalk this up to a few things:

• Back into the city: though we’ve had our fair share of drama recently (including an impending major dental procedure), for the most part, Lance and I have been much more content, happier in the last few months since we escaped the suburbs.  Without that tortured soul, I haven’t been able to snark enough about anything in particular.
• My un-commute: Now that we live in the city again, and I can see my office building from our apartment, I don’t have to spend two hours commuting to work every day, a chunk of time which allowed me to come up with post ideas.  Now, my walk to work is so gosh-darn pleasant that I don’t think about much of anything!
• Up in the air: As I’ve alluded to on here many times, I obsess about traveling, and have not-so-recently been piecing together a potential trip idea to Disneyland in California.  I would (and still do) check Kayak and Room77 several times a day to see if airfare and hotel rates went down, hyperventilating when prices would spike.  Thankfully, now that our travel itinerary has solidified a bit (which I’ll get into in a later post), I should avoid any “are we or we not going to Disneyland???” panic attacks.

All that being said, I’ve begun dipping my toes again into the world o’ blogging, this time for my pal, kellybakes.  Kelly’s currently galavanting around Walt Disney World, so I put together a list of the top 5 Disney food items you shouldn’t miss–especially someone like Kelly, who hasn’t been to Disney World in over 20 years.  Go on and take a gander at my guest post on her blog, and poke around beyond that for some great recipes and beeeeautiful food photos.

And, I PROMISE, I actually have some brand spankin’ new posts (to go along with this brand spankin’ new look!) on the horizon.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow!

“Oh my God,” Lance whispered.  We had just gotten onto an airplane, so the last thing you want to hear is any sort of concern or panic.

“What’s wrong?” I said, fastening my seatbeat.  Maybe if I acted cool and followed normal procedure, everything would be fine.

“I can’t find my ring,” admitted Lance, patting himself down, reaching into pockets, digging through his backpack.

“What?” I asked, a half-chuckle, a half-WHAT??? “What do you mean, ‘you can’t find your ring?’”

“I don’t have my ring!” he said.  Dozens of people were streaming past us, hefting their enormous luggage into the tiny overhead compartments.

I was, as usual, sort of confused.  ”Were you wearing it? Maybe you left it at home?” I offered.  Lance often doesn’t wear his ring because his knuckles are enormous and trying to get the ring on or off is like attempting to free some kid who got his head caught in the bannister (see Full House, season 3, Episode 14).

“No, no, I definitely had it…” said Lance, trailing off as he retraced his steps in his head.  We were on a flight to New Orleans for a sort-of family reunion, the first time Lance would meet my legendary aunt and paternal grandparents.  Of course he was going to wear his ring.

“Okay, okay,” I said, the obvious filler word anytime you’re trying to calm down somebody whose fretting is building exponentially. “When’s the last time you remember having your ring?”

“I took it off when we went through security…” said Lance.

Um. This puzzled me.  ”Why’d you take your ring off to go through security?”

Lance shrugged. “I didn’t want the metal detectors to go off. I put the ring in my shoe to go through the x-ray…”

!!!, I thought.  ”But…what? It’s not going to set off the metal detector!!” In that moment, I was struggling to see the logic here, which manifested in my voice going from calm reassurance to accusatorial shrieking in the span of a sentence.

“How do you know that?!” Lance shot back defensively.

Ack! “If they stopped everybody who wore their wedding rings through the metal detector no airplane in the history of aviation would ever depart on time!”

Lance slumped down in his chair. Usually, Lance is much quicker on his toes in an argument than I am, and knows how to escalate and deflect quickly, which means he often wins just by sheer overwhelming force.  This time, though, he was stumped. “Hrmph,” he resigned.

“Well,” I said, trying to backtrack a bit.  It wasn’t like it was that expensive of a ring. “I’m sure you have it somewhere. It’s probably in a pocket or something you haven’t checked yet.”

It wasn’t.  Lance really did lose it at the airport.  The ring, from TeNo Jewelry in Soho, cost somewhere around $400 and was to serve as both an “engagement” and a wedding ring (we were going to engrave something on the inside for the wedding, which we’ve never actually done).  Though, knowing Lance and his at-times diva tendencies, I suspect this was really his sneaky attempt to force me to buy a second ring.

We never did find the ring. I called the Lost & Found at Philadelphia International Airport (“It’s got a reeeeeally tiny diamond in it,” I described) multiple times, to no avail.

A few days after losing the ring, Lance admitted that there might have been another place where it could’ve been misplaced:

“…At Wendy’s.”

“…Wendy’s?” I asked, a little flabbergasted. Who loses their wedding ring at Wendy’s?

“Yeah,” said Lance. We had eaten at the Wendy’s in the airport’s food court before boarding our  plane.  ”I think I might’ve put my ring on the tray while I was eating and accidentally thrown it out…”

So, there you go, folks. Lance probably lost his engagement ring while eating a loaded baked potato at Philadelphia International Airport.  Ah, love.

Us, along with Christie (left) and Mandy (right) at our wedding reception.

There’s no real way to do justice, in writing or doodling, to what happened five years ago.  Still, it’s something Lance and I refer to often; as our friend Christie says, life at that moment “was divided into two eras: ‘Before the Accident’ and ‘After the Accident.’”

I was in graduate school at the time, killing time between classes when I got the call from one of Lance’s co-workers.  ”Lance was in a car accident,” she said between rapid breaths.  ”We didn’t have your number…Lance told us your number…”

There wasn’t any more information: just that Lance had been hit by a car and was in the hospital across town.  I hopped in a cab, my heart racing as fast as traffic was slow.  Lance’s boss called me while I was in the cab.  ”He’s in Trauma,” he said.  ”He’s talking. Christie and Mandy were hit, too.”

Trauma?  What did that mean?  Was it traumatic? What is “traumatic” in hospital-ese? What happened to Christie and Mandy?

I finally got to the hospital.  Lance’s boss, Mark, was there in the ER waiting room.

“Can I see him?” I sputtered.

If you’ve ever been in an inner-city emergency room, you understand that it’s the place where a million nightmares are born. Screaming, crying, apologies, a frenzy.

Lance was on a gurney up against a wall in a hallway, neck wrapped in a brace.  My heart skipped a beat.

“Hi honey,” he said, a weak smile on his face as I approached.  This was the first time I ever cried in front of Lance (the handful of other times are reserved for sad sequences in Pixar films).

“Are my teeth okay?” Lance suddenly panicked.

“What?” I asked, befuddled.

“My teeth? Did I chip a tooth??” Lance is fiercely protective of his nasty-ass brown teeth.

“No, no. They’re fine.” I answered.  ”Can you…are you okay?”  The neck brace…

“Yeah, it’s just a precaution, they said,” Lance responded.  ”They cut off my jeans.  I don’t have any pants.”

The EMTs at the scene found Lance unconscious on the sidewalk.  Lance and his co-worker, Mandy, had gone for a coffee run with our friend Christie, who also had to stop at a nearby animal adoption center for work.  While walking along the sidewalk, they stopped at an intersection, where a guy happened to run a red light, hitting another car and pushing it up into the sidewalk, right into Lance, Christie and Mandy.

Lance’s jeans were cut off while trying to stabilize him for the stretcher. The EMTs went for his jacket, too, but Lance somehow regained consciousness and the strength to fight them off. “This jacket is discontinued! It can’t be re-bought!!” I believe is what he said.

Mandy was rushed to a different hospital, where we found out later she suffered a pretty severe concussion after being thrown against a brick wall. Lance broke his leg.  Christie…we didn’t know anything about at first. People were telling us “it wasn’t looking good,” but we had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

We were to find out over the next several hours, days, weeks, months, as Christie underwent an extensive list of surgeries and physical therapy, that she’d suffered serious injuries in the accident.  Eventually, Christie would have to amputate the lower half of one of her legs due to the amount of muscle loss.

Like I said, I don’t have the skill to do justice to what happened, especially since I was only tangentially involved in the experience.  It’s that sort of thing that lingers in the back of your mind but is always there; it never goes away.  At the same time, though, it served as a weird, twisted bonding experience for Lance, Christie, and Mandy.  It’s something they’ll always share, for better or worse.  They’re more connected because of it.  Lance and I had our wedding reception at Christie’s beautiful house, three years after the accident.

Oddly enough, this experience also led to my first meeting with Lance’s family.  At the time, I was the “caring friend” who went back to Lance’s apartment to get a fresh set of clothes for when Lance was discharged.  Though everybody knew who I really was, we all played along given that the situation was bigger than any squabbling about religion and identity politics.

So, in a hamfisted attempt to end this on a positive note, since Lance broke his leg, he was given the week off from work following the accident.  Of course, between the trauma and inability to move around all that much, we just ended up eating a lot of take-out in Lance’s bed (this was before we lived together officially).  Lance would stuff chicken sandwiches and pizza into his face all day long. Lance gained like ten pounds.

Still, I come from a family of stoic, non-confrontational types.  But we’re also opinionated non-confrontational types, so passive aggression is our tool when dealing with conflict.

Of course, passive aggression and a relationship/marriage/living with a roommate/whatever don’t usually mix too well (as you can read about here and here).  I will usually internalize issues I have, thinking they’re individually not worth putting up a fight over, until I’m so overwhelmed with pet peeves that I end up exploding over something like having peas instead of broccoli as a side for dinner.

It’s the turn of the seasons, though, and with that, comes a renewed outlook on my approach to life.  And since I don’t like directly addressing problems or concerns that I have in a normal, healthy manner, I’ve resorted to singing my issues instead.

Take this one, for example, from this past weekend:

Oh Ripley,

Why isn’t Daddy #1

Making the beeeeeed?

I make it all week looooong

And take you on all your walks

He can at least make it

Once and a whiiiiiile….!

(So, not only am I singing–and not making much of an effort at rhyming–but I’m singing to the dog instead of my husband.)

This is me breaking out of my non-confrontational shell.  At least I’m verbalizing my issues now!

…In verse…

…and off-key…

…hrm…

…This might cause more problems than it solves.

A quick post today since, well, this week is gonna suck.

It’s probably the second-busiest, emotionally-draining time of the year at the university where I work as an academic advisor.  Some students are planning for summer research or work opportunities, while others are struggling with the realities of academic probation or dismissal or just plain old wrong “fit” with their major.

I’m grateful to my boss for letting me bring a little bit of pop color fun into my office (well, I don’t know if she let me so much as never told me I couldn’t…).  In my youth, oh so long ago, I loved collecting figurines of all sorts: action figures, “doll babies,” stuffed animals, etc.  I’m a collector at heart and love to accumulate tons of, well, nonsense.

I’ve curbed that tendency a lot over time; Lance doesn’t want the stuff piling up around the house and I honestly can’t blame him.  Thankfully, I can bring what pieces I have left to my office, where they line the top of my cabinets and sides and back of my desk: my original, 1995 Buzz Lightyear; my Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers stuffed animals from the ’80s; the custom Muppets we created at the Muppet Whatnot Workshop at the F.A.O. Schwarz in New York; my commissioned sketches of superheroes from famous comics artists.

They’re a great conversation starter. While I’d venture to guess they don’t buy me a lot of respect amongst my superiors, these little figures often cut the tension/lighten the mood when a student visits my office.

I need them to serve as backup during this roller coaster of a week!

A quick Sunday post to satiate all you folks who gave up deliciousness for Lent:

Though this might be a trend nationwide/in Philly that already reached its saturation point (thanks a lot for the overexposure, Tyler Florence), I do love me a good food truck.

I stayed away from them for a long time; in my parents’ time, food trucks were dubbed “roach coaches” and only people who needed to lose a lot of weight via food poisoning to fit into their wedding dress ever dared to eat from one.

Some socio-foodologist could probably trace the history of gourmet food trucks better than I can, but it’s my understanding that the trend started in Los Angeles with the Kogi BBQ truck, which tweeted out its location every day; the thrill of the hunt, probably as much as the food itself, created a massive following.

The first time I became aware of gourmet food trucks in Philly was with the Buttercream Philadelphia truck, owned and operated by “the Cupcake Lady,” Kate Carrara. Kate was right on the crest of the cupcake wave, and was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the craze to Philly.

Probably about two years ago now, more and more gourmet trucks began popping up: Vernalicious, Chewy’s, Pitruco (with a brick oven in the back of the truck!), Guapos Tacos (by Iron Chef Jorge Garces, now more or less defunct), Foo Truck, Say Cheese, among dozens of others (some great, some not).

Thankfully, there’s a great line-up of trucks just down the street from where I work at the intersection of 33rd and Arch Streets here in Philadelphia.  Spot Burger makes what might be the best bang-for-your-buck burger I’ve ever had.  Mac Mart is one of the newest of the bunch, but serves some deliciously satisfying spins on classic mac n’ cheese.

And, of course, my favorite has to be Rival Bros. Besides the super-dreaminess of its owners/operators [Get ahold of yourself, Jeff!], they make what is by far the best latte I’ve ever had…and their hand-drip ain’t too bad either.

This crop of food trucks is great because you’re getting some really high-quality goods at solid–though not dirt-cheap–prices.  However, if you consider the food to be of the same quality (or better) than that of a sit-down restaurant, you’re saving money and time.

If the rumors of a food truck area in the new Disney Springs section of the Walt Disney World Resort turn out to be true, they could do a lot worse than emulating these guys.

As a blog that every-once-in-a-while discusses a marriage between two dudes, I suppose it would be slightly irresponsible to our three readers (hi, Mom and Dad! And person from Singapore!) if I didn’t address the Proposition 8 and Defense of Marriage Act cases in front of the Supreme Court this week, and what they mean to me and us.

Regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court affirms, overturns or invalidates California’s Proposition 8, the tide is turning.  Marriage equality has already won.  As the basically infalliable Nate Silver points out, support for marriage equality has increased about 2% every year over the last decade and a half.  Neither DOMA nor Proposition 8 nor many of the state constitutional bans on same-sex marriage which passed over the past ten years would’ve even been seriously considered today.  To paraphrase analyst (and kinda creep-o) Jeffrey Toobin, the war for marriage equality in the United States is basically over, though the battles (and there are many still) remain.

Like I said, though: we living in amazing, remarkable times, especially from the viewpoint of a young gay man who saw my home state deny my right to marry in 2002 2004; ten years less than ten years later, I legally wed my partner in our nation’s capital.

We have a president who fully supports marriage equality, as does nearly half the Senate.  Nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriages, and just this past election, Maryland and Washington state were the first states to enact same-sex marriages by popular vote.  Though leaving civil rights up to the population goes against the 14th Amendment and all that, I’ll let these two states slide, since it demonstrates that, yep, we’re on the cusp of change.

This may all be a bit naive.  If the Supreme Court tosses the Proposition 8 case as many are suspecting after oral arguments on Tuesday, no massive change will have occurred; things remain with the status quo, still too slow to curb bullying, too slow to convince LGBTQ youth that there’s something better out there than the quick release of suicide.

But to those youth, I say, yeah, it does get better.  Look at the numbers, man–it’s actually getting better before our eyes.  It might be slow, but a 30-plus point reversal in public opinion in the last 15 years is massive.    You see all those red and pink equality signs on Facebook? Those people have your back.  Did I ever think, as I was figuring out who I was in the early 2000s, that I’d be able to be married and generally un-harassed and surrounded by a strong network of people who either fervently support my rights or at least say, “eh, who cares?”

Marriage equality is coming at the federal and state level.  Non-discrimination policies based on sexual orientation will become more prevalent.  State bans will be overturn.  Eventually, the Supreme Court will consider same-sex marriage protected by the Equal Rights Amendment–they’ll have to from a practical perspective, since how long can the country go with half of its states recognizing some marriages but not others?

I will be able to actually check off “married” on my tax returns, and I’ll be able to do it soon.

“Yes, my darling?”

“Do we need a two-day rental car for any reason?” I ask. “I can get it for $5 total, but I’m not sure if we’d actually need it any time soon…”

“Oh, brother,” Lance sighs with an air of defeat.

This is my life lately.  While I’ve been otherwise lazy as shit (no, really…that’s about as apt a simile as I can come up with), I’ll keep myself up at night, my brain doing (probably really poor) arithmetic, calculating percentages off, points transferred, miles gained.

2013 was supposed to be our “good” year.  Be frugal, save some money, pay down some debt, line the coffers and such.  Of course, a huge expense of ours last year was traveling, so when Lance and I sat down to trim our expenses, that was the first to go.  No more spontaneous overnights to Disney World ::sadface::

This also meant no “major” traveling.  We like to do at least a weeklong vacation somewhere–Vegas (ugh), Hawaii, Tokyo.  As I’ve discussed before, we alternate who picks these annual vacations because there’s no way we could ever agree to one place.  2013 was Lance’s year to pick, but by agreeing to punt his vacation into 2014, Lance became frustrated and mighty sad.

Only a few weeks into this new status quo, and it was already driving me nuts.  Though this is the first-worldiest of problems, I couldn’t imagine going a whole year without a vacation.  In fact, I may love piecing together the elements of a vacay more than actually going on vacation.  I love getting the best hotel deal, getting the cheapest flight, arranging an itinerary.

So…I looked at our frequent flyer accounts through American Airlines.  Though neither of us are super-fans of AA (we’ll get to the Cookie Incident another time), we accumulated a nice chunk of miles through our first two trips to Hawaii by flying American, so we are kinda stuck with them.

We were both somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 miles; too little to redeem for a roundtrip to Europe (what I’d been saving the miles for), but just enough for a roundtrip to Hawaii.  Instead of spending $800+ each on plane tickets, we’d pay $5 a piece for taxes and fees.

I heroically offered up the miles I alone had amassed so that Lance could take his vacation.  Please, no applause.

The only problem was the dates available to book flights either allowed too short of a vacation, or one that was 10+ days.  I wasn’t going to spend 11 hours on a plane to only go to Hawaii for four days, but the 10-day vacation scared me.  Hotels in Hawaii ain’t cheap, and eating in Hawaii is like going out to eat all the time in a big city: we’re used to those kind of prices, but doing it for 10 solid days adds up quickly.

But, the thought of going for double-digit days appealed to Lance. “Let’s do it!” he proclaimed, forgetting our whole “financially responsible” charge.

So, we booked the flight; now we needed a hotel.  A nice one.  And a cheap one.

We’d previously stayed at the Hilton Waikiki Beach, and loved it, but it was going for over $200 a night; the goal of this trip was to save money, not spend $2000 on a hotel room.

So I began looking elsewhere.  Thankfully, around the corner from the Hilton is a brand-new Hyatt Place, which was going for $169-$212 a night.

In this case, Hyatt is preferable to me for two reasons:

1. They offer a better best rate guarantee than Hilton does, where, if you find a cheaper rate elsewhere, Hyatt’ll not only match it but take 20% off.
2. I have a Hyatt credit card, which I got primarily for the “no international fees” feature, but it also allows me to rack up Hyatt hotel points to redeem for free nights.  Plus, I get a free night dumped into my account on my cardholder anniversary, which will be in July (and we go to Hawaii in August.)

So now I’m in the process of coming up with every possible scenario for using our free nights and paying for nights.  I already have one night booked with points, and I estimate I can earn enough points via my credit card before we go to redeem for a second free night (this only requires, like, $12,000 spent on my card. You know, whatever).  So there’s the scenario for one free night and nine paid nights, two free nights and eight paid nights, etc.

I’m hoping to get it down to where we’re only paying for seven nights out of the ten; I’ve already used Hyatt’s Best Rate Guarantee to bring the hotel cost down to $120 a night (from $169-212  a night).  This required me scouring the internet for a cheaper advertised rate, and then calling up Hyatt and trying to convince them that all the terms and conditions are exactly the same (really, they try to find the tiniest discrepancy so that your “claim” isn’t valid).

I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent calling Hyatt trying to get them to match rates; oftentimes, if they find a minuscule difference, I hang up and shout, “It is TOO valid, you sonofabitch!!” and shake my fist in the air all dramatic-like. And then I cry.

But it’s worth it.  I love doing this stuff, and it makes going on vacation financially feasible where it wasn’t otherwise.  Instead of spending $1700+ a person on a flight-hotel package deal through American, we’re aiming to spend about $450 a person on paid nights.

So that’s basically what I’ve been doing instead of writing blog posts.

Thankfully, though, I’m blessed with riches this morning, as I’m catching up on some of my favorite blogs and news from the week.  I hope you’ll take the time to check out what’s been “making us happy this week” (trademark NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour):

As many people who follow this blog probably heard, the six-years cancelled TV show Veronica Mars is making its to a movie theatre need you with the help of a wildly-successful Kickstarter crowdfunding venture (it raised its goal of two million dollars in a little over 10 hours).  There’s been a lot of rejoicing on the Interwebs for this project and impending return of these wonderful characters, not to mention the mob-mentality enthusiasm of being a part of A Little Engine That Could.

However, there’s been the inevitable backlash, too, criticism about not only how people should donate their money to some other worthy cause (this argument could then be applied to any superfluous purchase anybody makes ever, which is dumb), but how it sets a “dangerous precedent” for how movies and passion projects are made.  This position is a little easier to understand, since, yes, the $35 I donated does go into Warner Bros.’ bank account, which they’ve pledged to use on a Veronica Mars movie, though I have no real guarantee.  Plus, will I see a return on investment if the movie is profitable? No. (And, let’s be serious, even if Warner Bros. kicks in a few million to get the budget up to $5-10 million, there’s no way this is going to turn a profit for the studio.  It’s obviously a passion project for Rob Thomas, the creator, and Kristen Bell.)

I get that this could lead to a slippery slope: if this is moderately successful by some measure (positive buzz, possibly turning a profit), are you going to have Disney/Marvel launch a Kickstarter for Avengers 2, trying to squeeze some money out of the fans in the name of “better special effects” or a “crazier action sequence” or what have you?  It’ll be interesting to see.  The reason why I’m hopeful the Veronica Mars Kickstarter model will stay somewhat self-contained (perhaps to some of these buzzy, cult-following shows) is that Avengers 2 is going to happen regardless, and anybody would have to be an idiot to propose a Kickstarter for it, much less contribute to it.  A Veronica Mars movie, which they’ve tried for years to make, wasn’t going to happen via traditional pathways.

Plus, as a contributor and consumer, I am fully on-board with VM‘s creator’s perspective on this: I’m essentially pre-paying for my consumption of this movie.  At the $35 contribution level, I get a t-shirt (which I’m neither here nor there about, but there’s some monetary value there) and a digital download of the movie, which I would argue is worth at least $15 itself.  So I forked over a little bit more to get the film made; at least I’m getting some extra value out of it on the back-end too.

There’s also this very interesting piece by S.T. VanAirsdale which goes into how the rewards process works for Kickstarter projects, especially at this scale.

Anyway….yeah. A lot of my week has been following this story since I find it so interesting.  Here’re some other reads that I’ve enjoyed:

Melissa from Mouse on the Mind and Estelle from This Happy Place Blog do another round of Kill-Refurb-Marry at Walt Disney World, this time with the monorail resorts.

Estelle also discusses the very real problem of being…shall we say “attached”…to social media, and when it runs up against the very reason you’re going on vacation in the first place: to relax and enjoy the place you’re traveling to.  I definitely struggle with this myself, like, all the time!

Disney Hipster Adam covers “When You Wish Upon A Star” as they rope drop the Magic Kingdom!

Ooh, one of my fave TV shows, Gravity Falls, got a second season order yesterday. AW YEAH!

As some of you know, I’m a sucker for a good travel deal, and follow several different travel blogs.  Gary over at View From The Wing  tends to do a lot of reflection on the role and responsibilities of travel bloggers themselves (and how many of the big ones get significant referral kickbacks from travel-associated credit cards), and this piece on travel blogs as “thought leaders” in the travel industry is no different.  At some point (and some would argue, this has happened already), these blogs are going to expose too many good deals, reveal too many secret strategies, get too many people involved in the game to the point where loyalty program incentives will continue to decrease and “secret loopholes,” once exposed to the masses, will be shut down.  I’ve earned a lot of frequent flyer miles and hotel points via the advice of travel bloggers, enough to get two roundtrip tickets to Japan and Hawaii in the last two years (without signing up for one credit card!), so I’m curious to see how this sub-industry changes affects the travel companies over the next few years.

Lastly, thoughts from Corey Blake at Robot 6 about comics app Comixology and the concerns of participating in their cloud-based model.  Worth a read as the comics industry slowly and painfully transitions into the digital sphere.

Happy Saturday, everyone!