friday, part 1

so today . . .  we went to our first angels game of the season.  it was so much fun!  we were so excited!!

and then our tax return popped into our bank account...

"let's go get a tv!" rollie said.

the first time rollie walked into our new house, before we knew it was going to be our new house, he said it knew it was the right one.  he said he just knew it when he walked in the door.  i sort of think he knew it when he saw the gigantic tv on the wall in the family room!  of course that tv did not come with the house, but i know rollie has had visions of a huge tv in that spot ever since that day.

but big tvs are expensive, and not in our operating budget.  income tax returns however, can sometimes cover non-budgeted and non-essential items like big tvs.  so the minute that return hit our bank account, rollie was ready to go.

i, of course, was a little slower to get with the program.  i kept thinking about all the other things we could do with that money.  rollie kept saying, no we couldn't, the money was for a tv--we had agreed.  and he couldn't understand why i wasn't more excited about it, since it was going in the family room which is where i watch most of my tv.  really, this tv was for me!

uh huh...

so off we went.  but our time was limited, because we had a baseball game to go to!!

he wanted to go to costco.  i wanted to go to walmart.  we decided to check out walmart first, then go to costco, then make a decision.  this is the way i shop.  it is not the way rollie shops, but for some reason, today he agreed to my methodology.  which turned out to be a blessing and a curse...

when we got to walmart, it looked like they were clearing out all their tvs!  the tv wall was half empty!  we had decided to get the biggest led tv we could afford.  it probably wouldn't be as big as we wanted, but we didn't have thousands of dollars to spend, so we would have to be content with what we could get!  we found a couple of possibilities to keep in mind as we went to costco.  and then, as we were walking out of the electronics department, we found a 59 inch plasma tv on sale for a ridiculously low price!  i whipped out my phone and started researching online.  rollie whipped out his phone and scanned the upc code.  his way was faster, and in a couple of minutes he discovered that this tv was selling for less than half of its suggested retail price!  bargain!  bargain!!  bargain!!!  but we showed great restraint, walked away, and went to costco to compare.

costco had a lot of tvs, but the one we would have wanted was about $400 more than the one at walmart.  we debated between plasma and led.  we debated the difference in price.  i did some more online comparisons, and we finally decided to get the one at walmart... if it was still there.

and it was.  now we were excited!  we paid for the tv, declined the three year extended warranty, and waited for a store employee to bring the big rolling cart so we could get that thing home!  rollie kept saying, "we are going to have to call diandra and have her come pick us up in the rodeo.  this will never fit in the prius!"  but i knew it would.  i had measured it!  they rolled it out to the car, and the walmart employee took one look at the prius and just shook his head.  "trust me," i said, "it will fit!  i measured it!!"  they both looked at me like i was a crazy person, but when dealing with a crazy person, i guess it is best if you give them what they want... so they picked it up and tried to put it in the car... and it wouldn't fit.

"no, wait!" i said, "you have to put it in straight, not at an angle!"  they still weren't convinced.  i could see it in the way they rolled their eyes.  but i knew it would fit.  did i mention that i had measured it???  so i went over to one side and helped them lay it down flat, and guess what?  it fit.  perfectly.

well, nearly perfectly.  we thought the back might stick out a little bit, but rollie moved a few things around inside the car and found us a couple of extra inches which is all we needed to get the back of the car closed.

while he was doing that, i was dancing around on the sidewalk, giving myself a thumbs up, and saying to anyone who would listen (and even some who didn't quite know what to think of me, including the walmart employee) "oh yeah! listen to the girl!! oh yeah!  listen to the girl!!"

we had bagged and tagged our tv!  and successfully put it in the freezer!  (not really!  it's a hunting expression!  it was actually sitting in the entryway...)  but since we had used my method of shopping (check out every possibility before making a decision,) rather than rollie's method of shopping (buy the first one you see and go home,) now there was no time to install the beautiful new tv...

..because we had a game to go to!