we've gone over to the dark side

Behold the new altar at which the family gathers to worship - the 42 inch wide screen flat panel TV.
I know - I swore I would never have one of these in my house - why have more reason to sit in front of the idiot box, as dad used to call it? Cause now it's an idiot WAFER, that's why! It's squashed as flat as a pancake!

After almost two years of Tim and the kids asking "can we get a widescreen TV?" and me saying "No", repeated ad nauseum in a Simpsons-like fashion, I showed a momentary flash of weakness Sunday morning. "well, it might not be so bad. It would be nice to watch movies on it". And before I knew it we were whipped out of the house and hustled down to Costco, where Tim has been eyeing them covetously for months.

Once there, we were treated to the wide screen, high definition glory of some nature program which prompted Stasha to exclaim, in her usual not-subtle fashion "Those alligators look like they're MATING!" While fellow shoppers unsuccessfully stifled their chortles of glee, an argument ensued between her and Theo. "Well, you don't have to say they're MATING. Everyone know's they're MATING". "I'm just saying, it looks like they're MATING". And so on.

The only solution was to quickly grab a TV and shove it on the dolly and get the hell out of there.

It did not, of course, fit in the minivan. You can put big stuff in the van, and you can put passengers in the van, but  you can't put big stuff AND passengers in the van. After several absurd arguments, the only solution seemed to be for Tim to take it home, while Theo, Stasha, and I trudged through the biting cold to East Side Marios to squat eat lunch while waiting for Tim to drop it off at our house and then pick us up.

And here it is in all its flat panel glory. What was the first thing we tried out on it? Fellowship of the Ring, of course. The Black Riders were extra scary.