Also, I make a wild guess at what my gift could be.

I got matched up to a lucky redditor who I’ll probably talk about in a later video, and some mysterious redditor got my name and mailing address. Last Friday a message from a user called “yourredditsanta” told me that my gift was in the mail, coming from upstate New York.

So far this whole thing has been a blast and I’m mega-excited about my gift, so I’m going to document the whole ordeal on video and share the fun!

Back in the summer I started renting from Zip.ca, a mail-order movie rental service. I know that the people I hang out with regularly are tired of hearing me preach about how good this online rental thing is, but for those that haven’t had the privilege, let me give you some pros and cons:

Pros

• Selection. Zip.ca boasts a selection of 72,000 titles. They offer movies, documentaries, and TV series. Jasmin and I like watching anime, and Rob and I like watching old war movies. It’s not easy to find a good selection of either locally so the choice to try out Zip, for me, was about selection. I never really thought it would be a replacement for our usual weekly Blockbuster/Jumbo rentals. I was so wrong.
• Price. On one of the basic plans, I paid $12 a month to have one DVD out at a time. The turnaround to receive, watch, and return the DVD was about a week. In a good month I’d get about four rentals total. That’s about half what I’d be paying in a brick-and-mortar rental place. Now I’m on a $25 per month plan and expect to be blasting through 10-12 rentals a month. If I rented just two DVDs a week from Blockbuster or Jumbo and racked up $10 in late fees a month I’d be paying about sixty bucks total!
• Ease of Use. The movie rental process is dead easy. You log on and start searching or browsing movies. When you find one that’s interesting there’s a big button to click that adds it to your “Ziplist”. A movie arrives within about three or four days with a postage-paid return envelope. As soon as you drop your DVD return in a mailbox you can log on to the site and tell them you’ve returned it, and they’ll ship your next DVD before they receive your return. I love that a company is willing to trust it’s customers like that. One thing I’d like to mention is how much easier it is to drop something in a mailbox than return it to a store. I know the location of three mailboxes that are only a block away from my house. It’s easy to swing by a mailbox while I’m walking the dog and drop in the DVD.
• Customer Service. My experience with customer service was brief, but good. I misplaced a return envelope and didn’t know what I should do to get the disc back to them. I used the “online chat” assistance option and had a customer service agent helping me after a short one-minute wait. She had the answer right away, and then followed up the next day with an email.

Cons

• There’s no instant gratification. The only time that the Zip service falls short of our normal movie-viewing habits is on those rare weeknights when we say “hey, you wanna watch a movie tonight?” I have ventured to a Blockbuster on these nights, but it’s rare now.
• Game rental. Zip has a game rental service, separate from the movie rentals. We’re much happier owning games than renting anyway.

I wish I could write more “cons”, but I am really and truly hooked on this service. If I’ve got you even mildly curious to try it out, you can click on the link below and get a two-week FREE trial.

DVD Rentals from Zip.ca – 2 Week Free Trial!

After the mad dash to get settled into our rooms, we all headed to a conference room in the hotel. The next hour was marked with cascades of giggles, snorts, and belly laughs as we took in a motivation session from Tyler Hayden. Tyler packed a lot of good information wound into some hilarious stories about growing up in the Maritimes and a few spontaneous attempts at extreme sports.

One more big event tied up day one of our trip; dinner and a show at the Grafton Street Dinner Theatre. I really have to give kudos to the bosses for this; so few workplaces would think to offer a cultural opportunity to the employees over something more obviously “team building”. I believe several people in the group said this was their first dinner theatre experience. The show was a comical look at the world of online dating and was full of double entendre. The food was also excellent. Protip: get the steak.

Like I said, it was a very busy first day. Most of our group split up to explore the various watering holes that downtown Halifax has to offer. I opted for a warm bed and four fluffy pillows. After all, we had another full day ahead of us…

Itty-bitty-cutie-froggie!

I thought it would be interesting to approach the meme as a challenge, instead of just an exercise in navel-gazing. I’m going to start checking foods off the list, assuming I’ve never had any of the dishes before in my life, and see how far I can get.

I’ve created a static page here on the site where I will track my challenge progress. Click here to see the food meme!

Here’s my progress this week:

Tuesday: Chicken Tikka Masala from Kathmandu Restaurant. This was awesome and I can’t wait to try to make this at home! So rich and spicy!
Wednesday: Goat Curry from Kathmandu Restaurant. It’s funny, this was in a sauce that was almost identical to the Chicken Tikka Masala, but it was goat (complete with lovely sheep/goat taste that does have a smell that makes me think of wool).
Thursday: Hot dog from a street cart. For the record I got two hot dogs; one with onions, the other sauerkraut.
Friday: Sea Urchin and Eel from Kokyo Sushi Restaurant. I took photographic evidence of this one, see below. The bright yellow one that looks like a goober is the sea urchin. The texture is exactly what you would expect from looking at it, and it tastes VERY ocean-y. The Eel (unagi = eel) was really good, and I’d totally get it again. The unagi at Kokyo sushi is cooked, so would be something worth trying even if the “raw fish” sushi makes you squeamish.

Umi/Urchin - top ~ Unagi/Eel bottom

It’s not that you can’t get sushi in Fredericton, but your only choices are the food court at the mall or some from the supermarket. You can make your own too, if you’re so inclined, I’ve done that before. The thing is, I don’t just enjoy sushi as much as I enjoy Japanese food in general. To me, a truly good Japanese meal is a miniature smorgasbord of light, fresh foods.

I’ve hit a culinary goldmine here in T-O, and it’s right across the street from my hotel. I don’t usually rave about a restaurant like this; I worry that I just lucked into a place on a good day. I’m happy to say that this is a place I tried over a year ago, and this is my second awesome experience with them.

The place is Kokyo(rhymes with Tokyo). Check out the super-delicious “Bento Box Special”:

…and the best part is,

I only paid $15 for the whole meal!

.

Seriously, eat there.