Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Technologically Challenged

The other night I managed to sneak away from the Crazy House and go shopping by myself while Colby stayed with the kids. For once I didn't do anything productive like grocery shop with my free time, instead I spent most of my 3 hours looking at books at Borders! I picked up and carried around half a dozen books before eventually putting them back. Ever look at a price tag on the back of a book at an actual book store?! Makes me wonder how they stay in business when there are things like Libraries, and Amazon! I'd much rather have an OLD book than a NEW book, anyway! Really! Old books are cool, and have character. And smell good. Well, most books smell good, actually, old and new, but I do prefer the old books. Like the 1878 Bible History I picked up at the Goodwill last week for 79 cents. That's cool!

After that I went to Wal-Mart. There really isn't much else open late on a Sunday night. I wanted to look for a new TAPE player for Joshua. He likes to listen to Your Story Hour tapes in his room at night. Right now he has Colby's old (and I do mean OLD) boom box in his room, but I'm ready to have that one back downstairs since it has both a cd player and tape deck and those are apparently hard to find these days.

So I wandered over to the electronics section after grabbing a cart at the door. Must be habit to grab a cart. Usually I'm not filling up my basket, I'm just using it as a child-hauling device with kids piled in it or on it and busily trying to keep all the other things OUT of it. Like random bags of candy and boxes of Twinkies pitched in while I'm not looking. Anyway, I pushed my empty cart around those 8 aisles several times like a lost puppy before I realized how dire my situation is. I found a hand-held tape recorder for $25. Hmm... not exactly what I was looking for.

I was also looking for a remote control for our digital converter box. It's been missing for about a month. Not that we mind getting up and changing the channel when necessary, but that's not the issue. The issue is that when you move furniture all over the place and unplug the tv, vcr, and digital converter box, if you don't have the remote, you can't get the thing to rescan for channels. If they had just, I don't know, put a MENU button on the actual device, maybe we wouldn't have this problem! Just a thought. In case RCA execs are reading my blog. You know.

So we have no channels at all right now. But that's a different story for another day.

Back to my shopping trip, though. I didn't find a tiny little black remote for the coverter box. In fact, I didn't find any converter boxes at all! Do they think everyone must already have one by now? Or are they all sold out? I wondered.

They had a lot of these things for ipods. Docks or something, I think they call them. And they had a lot of strange things in sections called, "Help for your WiFi". What exactly IS WiFi anyway?? They had a wall of flat-screen TVs and a section of gaming systems, Blue-Ray disc players and fancy gadgets for your computer I'd never even heard of.

I discovered as I got back in my car that it actually IS possible to walk out of Wal-Mart without making a purchase!

I decided to head over to Target. Maybe they'd have some tape players there. I always have good luck at Target.

Soon I found myself in the Target electronics section, wandering up and down the aisles with my purse straps over my arms and my hands clasped tightly in front of my stomach, the same way I've seen my Grandma walk around so many times before.

"I'm getting older", I whispered to myself as I stood in front of the great wall of digital flat screen tvs. How is it possible that every form of electronics in our house is in such dire need of upgrading?! The camera needs upgraded, the TV needs upgraded, the music/sound system is in desperate need of upgrading! How can we be so far behind the times just because we don't have an ipod?! I mean, it's not like we don't have cell-phones or something! Is it just me - or do these things seem to be impossible to keep up with when you're no longer single, childless, or with a very well-paying job?!

There were no tape players to be had at Target either. Even their clock/radios had little docking stations on top for the ever-present ipods. Well, then.

Does anyone know if you can download Your Story Hour sessions? Maybe we'll get around to doing some upgrading around, oh, Christmas time or so!

2 comments:

Rachel said...

WIFI means wireless internet. Yeah, electronics go out of date way too fast. I was able to but Lucas a tape player at Wal-mart about a year ago. Ummm, maybe check craigslist.com?
A great place to get books is paperbackswap.com
Its essentially a book trading sight. Just pay for shipping and handling.

Lisa said...

Thank you, I'll check out that paperbackswap.com thing! Craigslist around here is sadly slow and pitiful. Sometimes I look at the portland one and wish I could grab up some of those good deals! And then I'll send listing to my mom out there so she can check them out! She does all of her furniture shopping on CL and gets some great deals! I think I'm going to have to stalk the goodwill for a tape player.

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