Have you ever had one of those “Oh Shit!” moments? The moment when you realize you completely overlooked a small…yet vitally important…detail? 
Stacy and I had one of those this past weekend. It was Friday night and we had decided to meet my parents for dinner at Ringside and then head to Gundersen to visit our friend Kevin who was in the hospital with a shattered pelvis from a motorcycle accident.
Now I have to take a bit of a tangent here. The previous weekend we had purchased a PS2 and some games. We also finally decided to get cable. These two actions combined with our disdain for my massive Sony stereo has been fueling our desire for a new home theater system. I’d been doing some research and found what I felt was the perfect LCD TV and “Theater-In-A-Box” for us.
Anyway, we met mom and dad at Ringside and ordered our food. As we were waiting, I got to talking with dad about TV’s and what-not and mentioned that Best Buy had some good deals and decent financing (No Payments/Interest for 3 years) on home theater systems. I mentioned Stacy and I had been looking, but were going to wait and look around some more. My dad (Mr. I-don’t-need-any-high-tech-gadgets) proceeded to ask why I would wait when there was such a good deal right now. Why not get what we want since who knows what kind of deals there will be in another year or so. Ok, now I had myself all convinced that I was going to wait. But here’s my dad telling me now is the time to buy. Dad is usually pretty on when it come to finance stuff and major purchases. He’s never led me astray yet and so I wasn’t about to ignore him on this.
We headed over to Gundersen and Stacy and I crunched the numbers on the way over. $100/month…yeah we could do that. It would be paid off in two years at most. Probably sooner the way we are (I hate carrying a balance on a credit card…even IF the interest is 0%). We hung out with Kevin for awhile and chatted it up. About 8:45 pm we decided to head out and let him get some rest. As we were walking to the car, I asked Stacy if she wanted to head to Best Buy…just to look. She said sure, but Dad chimed in with “Yeah right…you’re going to get your TV.” I countered with “No, we’re just going to look.” “Sure you are”, said dad.
We arrived at Best Buy around 9 pm and figured we had an hour to look around. We headed for the home theater department and were immediately met by “Luke”. He was quite helpful and gave us the pluses and minuses of LCD vs. Plasma and various manufacturers. It turned out that the TV I had been looking at (LG 42LB5D) was one of his favorites and Stacy thought it had the best picture of all the ones on the wall. We also mentioned that we were planning to replace our stereo and so we looked at a few of those as well. After showing us all the models, he left us to deliberate. Stacy and I talked about it for a few minutes and decided we couldn’t pass up the deal. Both the TV and home theater were on sale and with the great financing…now was the time to buy.
We found another helpful Best Buy employee and he and Luke set us up with everything we needed to hook our new toys up. We opened our Best Buy account and checked out at 5 minutes to 10 pm. Talk about cutting it close.
As we walked out the door and started heading toward the MINI it hit me…
“Shit! I don’t think this thing is going to fit in the MINI.” I told Stacy. I remembered that MINI touts that it will fit a 36″ TV (in it’s box), but a 42″ flat-screen is a lot bigger. We unlocked the car and tried to put it in. No go. Crap. Now what? We sat and thought for a second and decided the only option was to call my parents. We called dad (who was in his pajamas already) and asked if he could come get the TV and then bring it up on Saturday morning. He agreed…laughing the whole time. He showed up about 10:30 pm and we were home by 11 pm…sadly…without our TV.
Dad brought the whole system up on Saturday morning and we got everything hooked up with ease. I did a little tweaking on Sunday morning and everything was ready to go. So far we couldn’t be happier! The TV is crystal clear and does a great job with HD programming. Even non-HD stuff looks better than our old TV. Movies and PS2 are nothing short of amazing. The sound quality of the stereo is awesome and it takes up WAY less room than my old Sony. Our TV room looks much “neater” and more organized now.
So the moral of this story is that a 42″ LCD flat-screen and a “Home-Theater-In-A-Box” will not fit in a MINI Cooper S. It’s just way too small. Don’t try it. 
Also, I’ve been a little lax in posting updates lately, but things around here have been busy. Betwe