Honey, I Blew Up The Television
Last Tuesday night, Matt was sitting on the couch watching "Designed To Sell" on HGTV when suddenly the bulb in Toshiba 46" LCD Projection set that he got me for xmas last year went "zzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZ-POP!!!" Dead. DAMN!! Faced with a week without television and a rapidly-filling TiVo (and a rapidly-depleting bank account), Matt got ahold of CostCo. "Sure, no problem, bring the TV, the stand, any manuals, cords and the remote and bring it back." Really? "Really!" Of course, it's a long time between Tuesday and Friday, so he managed to drag my 25" Sony XBR Monitor (bleeding edge technology when it was first purchased back in...get this...1985!!!) out of the bedroom closet and tried to wire it up. Of course, i'd had the projector hooked up to composite video cables and the Sony used either RCA's or S-Video. Fuck it...he had better things to do anyway. So last night after i got finished with work, we borrowed Art & Roger's little "Community Truck" and loaded up the old tv and stuff and took it back to CostCo in South County. Less than 10 minutes after we rolled it in the door, we had a CostCo Cash card for nearly $2100!! That was the price of the old one PLUS THE TAX!!! They would have even given us cash, but we were going to turn right around and buy another, so no biggie.
CostCo ROCKS!!
But what to buy?? LCD Projector? Plasma? LCD?
We decided that the LCD was the safest bet (no $400 projector bulbs to blow up...no gas to leak out) with the best picture. We liked the picture on this VISIO the best. Who the fuck has heard of VISIO? Not us. But this picture was the best of all of them except for the Sony that has true 1080 resolution and cost $1000 more (though you couldn't see that much difference and they were right next to each other). We'll take it. Unfortunately, they were out of them. DAMN! However, they still had 2 at the St. Peter's store. OH NO!!!!!!! Out in the heart of deepest, darkest, reddest St. Charles county...Karl Rove's wet dream republic.
We got out there and, after making snide comments about people with more money than sense, found our TV waiting for us on a wagon and all we had to do was roll it over to the checkout (with my 3-pack of Prilosec and a bag of Lindt chocolates) and after surrendering that newly minted cash card and slapping another fifty bucks on the Gold Card we gobbled up our celebratory polish sausage, headed home, dumped the TV and went for cocktails.