DVD extras: all the gin joints in all the towns

I've got "Casablanca" on the TV ("You played it for her, you can play it for me"). I figured we should watch it one last time since we're going to be selling it. Deb is at her computer looking up passport information for me and visa information for her so we can take full advantage of these tickets and hit at least one international destination that isn't across the falls from Buffalo. Looks like I'll have to spend some dough to renew my passport in time for our impromptu trip, but if that means an island with clear blue water, it'll be worth every penny.

The easiest thing to sell is media; at least that's the easier thing to sell to me. I misspent my youth working in record stores and accumulated quite the collection. And as an avowed movie fan I've cobbled together a respectable collection of DVDs as well. Now it's time to let them go—to trade them in for travel and adventure. But what do you sell and what do you keep? How do you decide which items have become necessities? Are any of them really necessary? Which movies and albums can you simply not live without?

The DVD collection is a fraction of the CD collection so it gets tackled first. And I don't have digital backups of my movies, so when they're gone they're gone. I made a list of all of my DVDs and then started removing the ones I felt compelled to keep. A lot of heavy hitter, 2-disc sets that I was excited to purchase didn't make the cut (how many times can I watch "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane"?), neither did most of my coveted Criterion Collection discs. What did make the cut? Comedies mostly and stuff like the two-disc "Fight Club" and the "Star Wars" DVD with the 1977 theatrical cut. The movies I watch over and over again, the ones I play like albums when I clean the apartment, and the ones I'm not sure I'll be able to buy back.

My loss is your gain. I've opened an Amazon account (also called 30 Days of Flight) and will be posting offerings soon. While they're priced to sell, I'm not giving them away either. This is a telethon of sorts, except instead of spending $100 for a tote bag so you can support public television, you buy a DVD at a reasonable price to support a young couple's wanderlust. This whole process would be simpler if we stilled bartered and I could show up at the passport office with a stack of DVDs.

I'm new to blogging, in case you couldn't tell, but I'm keen on the idea of writing every day. And intrigued by the thought of having folks read about our adventures.