How not to buy a TV.

Our poor 14 year old TV finally bit the big one. First the color has been getting increasingly darker & redder for the last couple years. Then for the last couple months the picture would flip for the first ½ hour until it warmed up. It has just been getting worse & worse. So as an earlier Christmas gift to each other we went on Sat night to buy a new one. Thus begins the saga of how not to buy a TV……..

First off do not have your husband measure & not check what he is measuring. Because if you think that he is measuring the current TV when in actuality he is measuring the opening in the entertainment center, no good will come of using those measurements.

So we spent over an hour trying to decide which one to get. Seeing as the one that we really really wanted was nearly $4000 we had to a hard time deciding between the realistic ones that they had to offer in our price range. We finally decide & John measures it. 30 ¼” inches across.

John: what did I tell the width was?

Me: 30”, that was the TV, so we have at least 1 ½” room on each side of that.

John: Ok

Get said TV home & into the house (it weighed a ton!). I had convinced him on the drive home that I could have it hooked up in no time & even though it was nearly 9 pm it wouldn’t be that big a deal .

He opens the top of the box & uh ho. Look from TV to entertainment center, Is that going to fit?

Measures the width of the TV 30 ¼”. Measure the width of the entertainment center opening 30” exactly. Well of course it is!!!

So needless to say, we were back at the store the next day, picking a new TV because apparently when it comes to purchasing electronics we ride the short bus. We were able to get the same screen size, but a different brand. Let me just tell you that even this one just fits, but we did measure twice!

So when we go to pay for the new TV we find out that the only one that they have is an open box model. Meaning that someone else returned it (like we did the non fitting one) & we got money off of it! Yippy! The big difference between our open box returned TV & this one, ours never made it our of the box & this one didn’t even have a box! The remote & owners manual were taped to the top of it! They assured us that it was fine & had all the same guarantees that a regular one. Ok fine. Then of course on the drive home pulling away from a stop light the tv fall against the hatch back! Excellent!

We got her home, hooked up & all is well, so far. In fact for us it’s like having that $4000, HDTV, plasma, flat screen TV that we were drooling over compared to what we had! We are in love with our new TV!

Merry Christmas Pumpkin!




In addition to TV shopping we each got a new movie.

John’s pick: The War Wagon (love The Duke)

My pick: Emma

To go with my other Jane Austin Fav, Pride & Prejudice. Which I cannot wait to watch now that we have a TV that has real color.

Then I also picked up Some Kind of Wonderful & Pretty in Pink for John to give me for Christmas(am I the only one who ends up doing this?). I have been looking for these to add to my cheesy movie library.

Am I the only one that just loves those classic chees-a-riffic movies? Like The Breakfast Club(have), The Princess Bride(have), Sixteen Candles(need), A Christmas Story (will be buying as soon as Wally World restocks ‘em), etc…..