Good intentions...

With everything that has been going on I thought it would be nice to replace Denise's TV with a new one. Our old has served us well - nearly 10 years - but it is old and is starting to have problem (plus the service tech said the bulbs were pretty darn expensive to replace). When we were at Gene and Cindy's place they had a pretty nice 50" plasma television and since it seemed like it worked pretty good for them, and it was on sale at circuit city we went ahead yesterday and bought one.

But keep in mind that you can't buy JUST a television especially when it is a new High Definition one. You have to have high definition devices. Okay, no problem, our DirecTV Tivo box was starting to die (would just shut off for some reason and take a lot of coaxing to get it to come back). So into the shopping cart a new DirecTV HD DVR goes!

But wait, you need a “special” cable for your new television to work. Now special just means instead of paying $5 for a piece of wire you get to pay $190 for it. Give me a freaking break, over $100 for a freaking cable??? Okay, whatever no problem, nothings too good for my honey! So in the cart the cable goes.

Alright, should be done…. Oh wait a minute where are we going to put this monstrosity? We don’t have a cabinet and the kids are little monkeys so that isn’t going to work anyway… Hmmm, you what, you want it where??? Ok on the wall, sure how hard can that be??? So in the cart goes the wall mount kit (they just like give those things away)…

So we make the purchase and load everything into the van. The dude who helped me said, “ah, you can’t stand it up… You’re close right?” Close, hmmm, close it a relative term. I guess we are close compared to the moon. So after getting the idea that laying it down isn’t a good idea but if we travel quickly and smoothly there should be any problems. Hmmm, this isn’t really turning out to be as easy as I thought…

Okay so we make the s-m-o-o-o-o-o-t-h trip home and unload everyone. Then we upload the new stuff. First problem, the freaking thing is REALLY heavy. How in the world can something like that be so heavy. I think they must put concert in it to balance it out. You know, make you feel like you bought something with some heft to it! Well the bottom line, Denise can’t lift the thing, and I can barely lift the thing. We finally manage to get it on the coffee table and test it out to make sure everything works.

I get to mounting that new fangled bracket. It seems much easier now – but during it – whoa those are so LARGE bolts. But I got it mounted! Then I tried to remember who I knew in town so off I called Randy who agreed to come by in the morning and give a hand hanging the thing.

So – all is well – everything is planned – what more could we need??? Hmm, first, even though I thought we asked if we need a NEW HD dish to replace our old non-HD dish we can’t get HD programming (yet) because we need a NEW dish. Okay, great, so make an appointment for that. No problem we have our non-HD programming rolling and we got our 6 DVD Onkyo changer! So nice large pretty movies here we come!!!!

Hmmm, pretty movies, here we come??? Hello, DVD player, you can stop loading now and start playing…. So, we are now the proud owners of a Denon (read, non Onkyo, never again to be an Onkyo, soon to replace the Onkyo A/V receive we have to never again own a freaking Onkyo!!!!!!!!).

Okay, but the end of the day we have everything mounted, the picture looks awesome. I guess the real point of this is that for some reason this is ALWAYS how things got for us. Happened with the house, the cars, you name it there is always something to detract from the experience just a bit. But you know what, remembering that and putting it into context makes it oh-so-much-better! So in the end everything works out!