Not Me Monday: TV Saga

I have never participated in a Not Me Monday, but I just couldn't resist this story, so here you go.

On Thursday I was not talking to my mom on the phone about the Super Bowl and how we usually have people over. I was not complaining that for at least the last 3 years our TV's (it's a dinosaur that takes up my living room and is so big it actually sits on the ground) color goes black or yellow every 20 minutes while watching anything HD. Nope, not me. I wouldn't complain about such things. Nor would I be embarrassed about such things happening when company is over. Nope.

After the call with my mom, I did not promptly invite some friends over to watch the Super Bowl. When Jonathan walked in from work I told him that I invited friends over. He walked into the living room and he did not say that he didn't think we'd be having friends over. WHAT?? Then he did not say the beautiful words... "We don't have a TV". When I heard those words, I did not get all excited inside but kept a straight face and said, "What honey?" (I didn't want to spend the money on a new TV, but how nice would it be to get rid of that enormous thing in my living room??)

You see, my husband worked at Best Buy full time during his college years and when he graduated in 2002 he gave himself this "top of the line, latest, greatest, 47" plasma" for a graduation gift. This TV has been through it all. And technology has advanced quite a bit since 2002, if you weren't aware. This TV was 36" deep! Seriously...took up my whole living room. And it has ROLLERS on it, if that doesn't tell you how antique it is.

{side note} When Jonathan and I were "just friends" my roommate and I wanted to watch the Super Bowl on someone's big screen TV, (and I'm sure I was loving a reason to call for an invite) so I called Jonathan to ask about watching his TV (then I get to see him...see how that works?) Well, the day of super bowl he told me that something had happened to some pixels and it was broken and luckily it was within the 3 year warranty by like one month so he was going to have it fixed. Well, being the girl that I was, I totally thought he was just trying to put me off so he could have other girls over... but of course i didn't care since we weren't dating..."just friends". RIIGHT. I did care. I just couldn't let him know that! How embarrassing! But come to find out, his TV really had gone out on Super Bowl! Ironic that this many years later it finally died 3 days before Super Bowl? humm..

Back to the topic. Jonathan did not get right on his phone to call up the manager at Best Buy who he used to work with. And we did not find out that there was only one more delivery time available in the days before Super Bowl! So, no we did not get in the car that instant (well actually after I changed out of my PJs) to go to Best Buy.

After many hours...ok so maybe not that long, but it felt like that to someone who thinks that all the TVs on the wall look the same so just pick one already! "We" choose which TV we want, which surround sound we want, and all the cords and accessories we need to get out of the dark ages of technology and into the HD age. (You know...one thing leads to updating another.) After all of this, the Best Buy guy did NOT tell us that the TV we wanted had already been sold and they were all out until Wednesday! Are you serious? So Jonathan did not walk back out on the floor, and find an open box of the same brand we wanted...just a little nicer one that we had picked out. (Well, by nicer I mean that the original price was $1000 more than the one we had picked out!) But since it was open box and the guy helping us was really nice, he discounted the open box TV a bit more and we did not end up only paying $100 more for a $1000 nicer TV. Hey, some things just work!

Then it was time to find a console since we will not be hanging the TV due to the fact we want to move within the year. After walking into just about every furniture store in town and nothing coming close to the Pottery Barn console that I'm trying to find for a Walmart price, we were frustrated! So on our way home when all the stores are closed, we did not see that Pier1 was still open and drop in. We didn't even know if they sold TV consoles, but guess what? We did not find almost EXACTLY what we were looking for at all the other stores... for WAY less than the cost of the Pottery Barn one that I really wanted!

Here are some pictures so you can really visualize!

Jonathan shedding a tear over his "baby".

Here is the before pic (make note of the key on the wall). Notice that the two shelves were necessary to hold all of our components and movies.

Here is the "after". He's pretty much in love with his new baby. Can you tell? Do you think I need to move the key to a different wall?

Look at all that stuff that we needed to store and hide!

This was the only console that had space to hide all of our crap!

Here is a picture of the depth of the old one! That's how much of my living room was taken up with that stupid thing!

This is the "after". Oh the beauty of technology.

So that's the story of how I reclaimed my living room! Hopefully we won't need to upgrade for another 10 years:)