It’s been about two weeks now when the tv in our living room, our only correctly functioning television, started blinking black here and there. It got worse and worse over the next few days until it finally just would not stay on or come on at all. It was time to replace our tv.

So last Saturday we went shopping for a new set. We had a price range in mind (Christmas money Steve still hadn’t spent) and Steve wanted a 27″ screen… at least.

At his suggestion, we went first to K-Mart. They had three sets that fit our criterea, a very low selection overall. We wrote down the ones we were interested in and headed closer to St. Louis.

Next was Sam’s – they had a wide selection but they were all these huge widescreen plasma things in the $1000-5000 range or so. Much out of our price range.

Off to Best Buy. We spent a long time looking through their televisions and we finally found one that, though it was a bit more than we wanted to spend, fit what we wanted. All through this, the sales guy kept harrassing us about needing help. At one point, Steve asked him some questions and not to my surprise, the guy knew nothing. Steve asked him how much power the Energy Saver televisions would save and he had to go ask his manager. He came back and literally said, “he said a lot.” Um, okay, Buddy, how much is “a lot”? That wasn’t the only incident like that, either.

Anyway, when Steve finally decided what he wanted, of course, the guy was nowhere to be found. When we finally got him over there, he went to see if they even had one of those tvs… of course, they didn’t. Nor did they have one at the other store that is “near” us. So, how about this one, we ask. No, none of those in stock, either.

Now, c’mon, people, why do you put it on display with all assumption that you can actually sell them if you don’t have any in stock?

So, I said, how about this one? Steve said, “no, I don’t like that one. C’mon, let’s leave.” And so we did. Off to Circuit City.

Circuit City had a moderate selection and after a few minutes, Steve decided he wanted to ask some people some questions. But there’s no sales people in sight, of course. And, Circuit City does not have carts. So guess who was stuck holding the two-year-old who’s getting crabby and is struggling to get down? Yeah.

I found a guy who finally asked us if we needed help. I said that we did and gestured towards Steve who started on his question. “Oh, the guy says, let me get someone else, I don’t work in that department.” So we waited and someone walked by. He’s stocking nearby shelves and tells us someone will be with us in a minute. They weren’t and I couldn’t handle it anymore so I said, “let’s go.”

We drove over to Sears and went right up to the electronics… Elijah was in his stroller and for some reason, he’s suddenly decided he’s afraid of elevators and he screamed up the two floors. Anyway, we walked in and headed to the area that had the size tvs we wanted, there were two. Two.

Steve got the attention of a sales guy as soon as possible and said, “if you have one of those, we’ll take it,” pointing to the cheaper of the two. Both were horridly over priced, though the other one was worse. The guy almost seemed angry, like he was mad he didn’t have the chance to try and sell something bigger to us.

He rung us up, I paid, and then he looked at Steve and told him what to do to pick it up. How rude. Who paid for the dang thing? He didn’t even hardly look at me.

So we got in the car and drove around to the merchandise pickup. We got in there right before another couple who we’d seen checking out in the tool department. I scanned the receipt in the scanner to pull up our order like we’d been instructed and it wouldn’t take. We had to wait for a customer service person. Same thing with the couple behind us. There was no one else in the room whatsoever. Their average wait time for that day claimed thirty seconds.

We waited for nearly ten minutes. And then they tried to do exactly what we couldn’t for several minutes before finally getting our stuff. The one guy couldn’t even remember his pin number.

We head out to the car and guess what? Yeah, it doesn’t fit in the trunk, or through the door to the backseat. So Steve takes out his pocket knife and rips open the box and throws me the manual and remote. He and the loading guy take the tv out of the box and put it on the carseat. They smash the box and put it in the trunk, just in case we need to return it.

We leave. Yay. The other couple wasn’t so lucky. Their treadmill refused to fit in the back of their Jeep Liberty.

Elijah was immediately happy about our new purchase. He started beating on the side of it right away saying, “Diego! Diego!”

We got the thing home and Steve hooked it up, It’s so much bigger than our old 19″ that it takes up the whole area meant for the tv, VCR, DVD player, and ancient stereo that works only for sending out audio from the DVD player. Those three items are now placed oh so lovely-like on a tv tray. Ha. Yay. So now I gotta figure out what to do with that.

Boy, the new 32″ sure is nice (and no longer do I have to listen to E scream because he can’t watch Dora or Diego), but ech… the price I pay. :-D