cables and wires and boxes, oh my!

Today was one of those days that was spent trying to hook up various and sundry electrical items around the house. Dave is the mastermind with this and I am, basically, the tool holder and voice of encouragement. Every once in a while I come up with something that actually helps...but, this is a rarity.

After my very old television in my bedroom died, I bit the bullet and purchased a small flat screen TV and joined the rest of the world by embracing the newest technology. Immediately following the demise of the TV, my videorecorder started to eat my tapes. So, this, too had to be replaced. Seems simple enough, right? Wrong! Four visits back and forth to Best Buy (I think that they know me by name now) and I finally have the correct working pieces set up. Of course, we then find out that there are some other cables that we need in order to get a high quality picture as well as picture in picture (which Dave loves so that he can watch two shows simultaneously--it's a guy thing!)...so, back to Best Buy to purchase some more "things".

Back home we run into another problem. It used to be that we could put the cable box and the VCR box on top of the old, cumbersome (but wide) TV's. But, that's not happening with this new ultra slim flat screen...so back to Best Buy to see if there was something that would hold the new TV and allow us to put the two boxes safely under it. We walked out of the store with two items to try. Needless to say...neither of them worked! So, tomorrow I will be heading back to return these items and see all of my 'buddies' at Best Buy....

Finally, it dawned on me to try using a board from my closet (my sweaters are now sitting on the closet floor!)...and Dave came up with the idea of putting my kiln stilts on the corners to hold it up...and, voila! it worked. We should probably patent our idea and try to recoup some of the money spent on these new items.

Hours later we find out that one of the cables has now locked up the TV and we can't get a picture...so, now we are spending time on hold listening to loud, obnoxious music, awaiting a TV technician to help us out. As I am typing this, Dave is still waiting for a human voice to connect to his call....Me? I'm heading downstairs to watch one of my little old TV's that isn't so complicated.