Shopping Frenzy Post-Mortem

Hard to believe that the week is already half over. It feels like I just drove into San Antonio from El Paso last night. LOL Could be due to the fact that I haven't been in the office at all the past two days. On Monday, I was up at my favorite New Braunfels client helping their help desk cover calls, then on Tuesday I was in Boerne working on a laptop most of the day - no phone work involved! Been a nice couple of days.

D and I are slowly coming down off the spending high we've been on the past few days, and it's kinda hard. Everything, everywhere is asking for money this time of year, and it's been hard putting the checkbook/card down and just take a moment to assess our standing. We're good so far, but the temptation to continue to dump our cash is strikingly sharp.

For example: While we got a good deal on TV/Home Theater set-up, we didn't get anything to put them on. We picked a nice one up from WalMart last night, but I can't help but feel some buyer's remorse for buying one of the more expensive ones. This one is mostly metal, with 3 tempered glass shelves, flat panel mounting stand and wood finish that matches the woodwork in the kitchen. I guess you get what you pay for, and I don't want a really nice TV/stereo to be sitting on a piece of junk TV stand, but still...

Another example: My laptop has always been a bit of a headache. It runs waay too hot, usually shutting down abruptly due to overheating. The sound device driver is cobbled together because the one that came with it made the speakers distort. It has a tendancy to lock up for a minute or two when under load. So its no surprise that I've been browsing computers online. D and I almost bought one last night from TigerDirect. Almost. It's not like the laptop is getting worse: it's always been like that. If I've been dealing with it for this long, I can hold out another year. In the end, it was just too hard, given all that we've bought, to justify buying me a new computer at this time.

Speaking of TigerDirect. Noni told me that her stereo reciever went out on her. >.<; That's when I mentioned that Tiger was having some great deals for Cyber Monday. Tiger's been rather good to me over the years, so I don't have too much of a problem giving them my recommendation. That's saying something because I typically don't give recommendations because businesses today give a pretty sketchy level of quality of service. But all my computer builds have been mostly through them, and when components have been DOA or gone bad, they've been really good about providing prompt replacements or refunds.

So aside from the odd gift here and there, we are pretty much done with our Christmas shopping, and were able to get away without having to sell body parts or children. ^_^/ Now if I could only pry my wife away from shopping sites...