the anatomy of getting a new TV

Long ago in a lumberyard far away, the wife wanted an entertainment center...so we bought one. At the time we had a 30" television, or something like that, and this new 3 piece set of solid and fairly heavy wood took up an entire wall...with the TV in the middle. It was so big it affected the decision on which model of house we would build when we bought our current house. It had to have a wall that could fit the entertainment center.

Then, about the time we moved into our current abode, the TV died. John went to the then non-bankrupt Circuit City with a tape measure, and found the latest/greatest TV that would fit in the entertainment center. That was a 32" model by Panasonic. It had a flat screen and was HD capable, but wasn't one of the nice thin things they sell today. It also weighed a ton. We had to enlarge the hold in the back of the entertainment center to fit the thing in there...and we did.

Then, a few years later, we had the house painted. The room with the entertainment center turned yellow, or something between yellow and brown. I'm sure women could give that color a more descriptive name that might also be the name of a food or something, but I'm a guy, so it's somewhere between yellow and brown. Some of the area behind the entertainment center didn't get painted because between the weight of the entertainment center and the TV, it was just too heavy. yes, we could have moved the TV out and moved the entertainment center, but nobody could see back there, so what the hell.

All was well with the world...until....

The TV died.

So we need a new TV. Since we're getting a new TV, we decided to leap into the 21st century and get something new and cool. The problem is...of course it won't fit in the entertainment center...so it has to go. Once it goes, there's this huge white spot behind where it used to reside. It also has to go.

So now, to replace the TV, we have to replace the entertainment center, find a new spot for all the other stuff that used to live in it, paint the wall...and then replace the TV. The economy is loving me and my shrinking savings account.

an addendum....
The new TV has an internet cabability. Ooooohhhh cooool, you say. Well, it ain't all that. My neighbor, who's big into electronics and challenges, took it upon himself to take advantage of this capability. He came over and wired the TV into our router, so we had the internet. When I saw what that means, I was a little underwhelmed. I can look at you-tube videos, and if we set up a netflix account, I can strem movies into our house. OK, that's something, but I don't know that I'll do much of that. I can put a widget on my TV with the current weather through Yahoo....why? Long story short...we discovered when he connected the TV to the router, for some reason we lost our wireless capability. No internet/texting for the youngster's i-touch. No internet capability for the wife's laptop....or mine for that matter, which I use to VPN into work when I'm on call. No internet capability for the Wii. We;ll, through a series of troubleshooting steps, I figured out that it was the TV connection, and if I disconnected that, unplugged the router from the wall socket and plugged it back in, we got our wireless ability back....so we're up a laptop and i-touch, but for now, no streaming movies, which I don't really miss because I never could before.