The husband reduced our property value by $30,000 on the city’s books yesterday!  This is a HUGE accomplishment considering the fact that the houses that have been selling around our house have been inching higher and higher.  We were only able to reduce our property value from their original appraisal last year by four or five thousand dollars.

It’s such a strange game to play.  They introduced iSettle this year, proclaiming that you could protest your appraised property value online.  After the husband went through the online process, he received an email stating that he needed to show up and talk it over with an appraiser in person.  Nervous that he would be rejected for his lowballing, he studied our 50 page analysis and went armed with a lot of evidence of other houses that were similar to ours and were valued for less than ours.  Surprisingly, the guy he talked to took a low number that the husband offered, punched some numbers in his calculator and appraised our house for $30,000 less than what it was last year!  It’s kind of a weird position to be in.  The goal is to get your property value as low as possible so that your property taxes are as low as possible.  So that makes us happy.  But what does that mean about our market value when we want to sell the house in a year or so?  Are things really getting so bad?

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I’m not sure if CNN is taking their cue from Threadless in realizing that people are Tshirt crazy but the husband pointed out that they’ve recently added a Tshirt icon next to some of their headlines.  If you click on the icon, it takes you to a page where you can order a tshirt with that very headline.  You can even choose from six colors.  Check out their tshirt headline archive.

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I’m not ready to talk about The Dark Knight yet but I want to talk about formats.  I really enjoyed the IMAX version of The Dark Knight.  We got to the theater about an hour before the movie started and ended up somewhere in the middle of the long line.  They started seating us after only waiting for about twenty minutes or so and we snagged great seats that were pretty much centered and not too far down.  I felt really bad for the guys who looked like they were on first dates or first-ish dates and they were trying to find a good seat but there weren’t any good seats available.  The husband went out (in the most chivalrous way) to get us some salty snacks.  He returned with a large popcorn, a huge tray of nachos and a large soda.  I think I actually clapped when he arrived.

It was also horrible to see large groups of friends reserving rows of empty seats for their friends who were late.  I’ve been guilty of this on both sides but I’ve made a personal commitment to make sure that I’m never late for a show and that I won’t try to save seats for really late friends.

Anyway, back to formats.

The IMAX was such a treat to see.  I haven’t seen an IMAX film since elementary school when we went on a field trip and watched some sort of nature IMAX film.  I’m glad my reentry into the IMAX world was with the Dark Knight and not with the Polar Express.  A lot of the cityscapes were really just breathtaking.  You could almost imagine you were flying.  But here’s the thing.  I was strangely bothered by the clarity.  Or the lack of clarity I should say.  Maybe it’s because we watched Rambo on Blu-Ray the night before and the jungles of Thailand came through so piercingly clear (as did all the blood, guts and gore.)  I don’t know.  I honestly don’t know if I can say that IMAX is better than HD/Blu-Ray.  I mean, yeah, the size and the digital surround sound in the theaters is pretty incredible.  But if we turn out the lights and turn up our sound system at home with a Blu-Ray movie, I might prefer to see the bright clarity of things more than the hugeness of things.  Well, okay, that’s not true, I’d still prefer a theater experience.  But maybe if they come out with a 100″ HD TV, then I’d forgo the movie theater completely.