Spit Flings & Other Things...

Back in 2003, we made the move from the Bay Area to our new (at the time) house in Ladera Ranch in Southern California. We were very excited when we moved. It was nice to be moving out of our leaky condo in Alameda into a nice new house. So much possibility awaited us!

Once the movers left the Bay Area with all of our stuff, the Wayneman and I made the drive south. We arrived at our house a couple of days before the movers. We had my car full of stuff to get us by a few days until the movers arrived.

I remember the first couple of nights in our empty new house, we slept on the floor of our bedroom. We used bath mats for cushion. I am sure the Wayneman remembers those couple of nights fondly.

When we lived in our condo, we had a 32-inch TV in our family room. This suited our condo just fine. But our So CA house had a big niche for a TV and we thought our 32 incher would look really small and out of place in that big niche. So, our first day in our new house, we went to Costco and got a new TV. Except, the TV was too big for my SUV, so we had to rent a U-haul to get it home.

We got it home and excitedly placed it in the TV niche. Our house was empty, but our hearts were full at the thought of watching TV on a big screen. (Mind you this picture was taken later when we had furniture, but I wanted to show the TV niche. Just pretend like there is no furniture or decoration in the room. Also, paint the walls white then you will get the full vision of what it was like).

Now to present day after our move to Washington. We moved our same big TV. Except now, this thing is a bit of a beast to us. The excitement of it is gone, and now we are wishing it was a flat panel LCD.

But, we aren’t ones to just throw away an old friend for no reason. This old gal has served us well and we kept her around. We even showcased her in a big TV unit since our Washington house was lacking a TV niche.

Earlier this year though, when we turned our TV on, the picture at the very top of the screen started shaking. After a couple of minutes, it would stop and the picture would be fine.

However, as time went on, the shaking eventually took over the whole screen until it looked like this for about 20 minutes every time we turned the TV on.

It was OK for a while. We had gotten used to planning ahead to watch TV to give our old girl time to warm up and get the picture back. But, it was taking longer and longer to get to where we could watch. The waiting started getting old. That’s when we knew it was time to move on to a new TV.

So, it was off to sales tax-free Portland Costco to find a replacement. Here’s what we came home with.

We also got a Blu Ray player and Surround Sound for High Definition good measure. May as well do it all at once, especially since our old DVD player also crapped out on us.

The technology junkie in me started salivating at the thought of all this High Definition juiciness. I couldn’t get our old TV out of the way fast enough so I could hook all this up! So I rolled our old TV over to the front door to get rid of it.

Little did I know what a challenge it would be to get rid of such a beast of a thing! This isn’t just something to casually take down to Goodwill.

Most garbage places won’t take these TVs. They want them to be recycled, so you have to take it to special electronic recycling places. I don’t know, something about not wanting junk like this in the landfills.

Anyway, this TV is too tall to fit in any of our cars, so I thought I would see if I could find a recycle place to pick it up. This proved to be a challenge. There aren’t many places that pick up. All the ones I found wanted to charge me a couple hundred bucks to pick it up. I didn’t want to pay that. I was beginning to think we were going to have to rent another U-haul to get rid of this thing.

Two days ago, I found a recycle place that said they would charge me $25 to recycle it and only $25 to pick it up. I was sold! Made arrangements for them to get it today. Yesterday, the place called me and told me they misquoted the price and it was going to be $50 to recycle and $150 to pick up. I told them no thanks and was disappointed to be back to square one.

After much searching, I found a junk remover service that would come pick up the TV and take it to the recycle place. For only $50. I could handle that.

So, today was pick-up day!

The junker pulled his truck right up to the porch.

Then my dad, the junker and I (well, mostly my dad and the junker) hoisted this huge thing into the back of his truck.

Because I am a complete freak, I started getting nostalgic thinking about when we first got this TV in Ladera Ranch and how we slept in our empty house on the floor. Now, she was leaving us forever! Oh, how the memories came flooding back!!

Then, I came back into the house and flipped on the new LCD and I knew I was going to be OK.

Goodbye old friend! I will never forget the wonderful times we have shared. Thanks for all the ways you have enriched our lives. Maybe we will meet again some day...

High Definition TV really has a way of helping one see things clearly!