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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Monday, April 14, 2008

Slim Mints

Almost exactly a year ago I bought a new dvd player. I scrimped and saved and checked consumer reports and then went to Best Buy and paid 200 dollars for a fancy dvd player which holds five discs and has five speakers and five is really the magic number here because it died exactly that many days after the warranty ended. Ironical. It's not completely fair to say it's "dead". It's quite rude of me I'm sure because the radio still works and who doesn't need the radio feature on their dvd player to work, radio is a very special feature after all and clearly it's not dead dead if the radio works. AARGH! This is a pirate growl moment if ever there was one.

I'm pissed about the dvd player. I've lived here for 4 years and I've gone through 4 dvd players and that's just not right. The money, the waste, it's very annoying. I purposely sprung for the fancy reliable one (consumer reports approved people!) so as not to have to replace it in exactly a year. I'm not sure what to do now. Matt thinks I stress them with my use and I think I'm cursed or maybe I kicked a puppy in my last life but I think the fact that karma is targeting only the dvd player is a little bit specific for a force of cosmic balance. Probably I overuse it.

I like noise in my house and I don't have cable so I play movies or tv shows on dvd pretty much all the time. I hang with Hyacinth while I'm cleaning and I watch Firefly while I'm baking. Sometimes I listen to music but at heart I'm a tv addicted dork and I admit it freely. The player broke this weekend and it's been really quiet. I played some vhs tapes and it was like watching cave paintings being made. It was kind of nostalgic actually, like any minute your best friend is going to throw Rolos at you or put your underwear in the freezer. Anyway, dvd players in my house get a lot of use and I just don't know what to do. Complex electronics should not be disposable but I'm certain it will cost as much as a new one to fix the old one and god knows when it'll go down the drain again. Philosophic questions such as these require much thought and also snacks.

Which leads me to wondering if anyone else has been shocked by their girl scout cookies this year? To complain about one's girl scout cookies is to admit that one is eating them and I do. It's a regular confessional in here today except that I never did learn the rosary properly. Catholic insanity aside, the quality of our samoas and thin mints really sucks. Those are of course the only kind we buy and so I have no idea if Tagalong admirers are suffering or not. I hope not. It's very upsetting when 20 years of snacking memories are wiped away by a single box. Girl scout cookies are so much more about the longing than the actual product but this year the longing is dead like my dvd player. I grilled my sister about her cookies and she said she didn't notice so I'm wondering if it's a Maine cookie conspiracy. Our cookies are pallid and sad looking and to prove their unworthyness we opened the box last week and they're still on the counter. They might as well be brussels sprouts. Next year I think I'll just write them a check. I never thought eating cookies would make me so depressed.

13 comments:

Rebecca said...

it's definately not a conspiracy...it's been years since ive even bought a box. this year i bought 4! and 2 are still left over...

granted, there should be 3 left but i was hoping the second box would be better

belly said...

thank god the cookies are bad!! i've been trying to dodge those things like crazy, but i encounter the sales pitch everyfreakinwhere. some wicked woman posted a huge flier on the fridge door in the office kitchen, so i'm forced to engage in mental battle every single day at lunch. and if it's not bad enough that the godforsaken poster has been up for two weeks, today she hand wrote "STILL AVAILABLE!!" on the flier.

or better, if i try to avoid the office kitchen at lunch, i find that those evil little green imps are strategically hunkered in front of the grocery stores, hawking their wares... they kind of remind me of sleazy crack pushers...except worse... because they're cute and not full of judgement as you purchase 5 boxes of thin mints... for the 'freezer'...

so you see, i'm really REALLY glad to hear the cookies are disappointing this year. thanks for saving me about 3000 calories:).

Amy said...

It is like crack but with a morality hall pass. Matt is the one who bought 4 boxes, he got hit up by family. We still had two boxes of samoas in the freezer and those rock, so I'm hoarding them. Maybe I'll donate them to the smithsonian as the last yummy girlscout cookies or something.

MayQueen said...

My samoas were delicious, a religious experience with every bite. Except they're called "Caramel Delights" now, which is heinous. Does your box say "Samoas"? Because if it does the quality problem could just be that they're three years old.

Amy said...

They do say caramel delites, I'm just in denial about that. They're not just old, the chocolate is too light (like milk) and and the toasted coconut and caramel are all pale and sickly. It's a disgrace!

Lisa said...

I have the same problem with electronics you do - only in my house it's phones. We kill at least one phone a year and the funny thing is that we don't use it very much. Our house is just the dead zone for phones!

Glad to know the cookies suck. I've managed to resist so far and now it's that much easier. (that's what I'm telling myself anyway!)

Sugarcrook said...

It always seems like personal electronics crap out after far too short of a life span. The same thing happened to me with a Sony home theater.

Ya know, your Mac has a DVD player. :)

Amy said...

Indeed it does, which I am making use of but i matt doesn't get a very good view with it always on my lap. I just bought a 30 dollar one I'm not sure about. Atleast I won't be so mad when it does after a year.

MayQueen said...

p.s. I chopped off all my hairs again!

Abby is Abundant. said...

Oooh .. no help for you on the electronics front, but I can tell you that at least here in western NY, we've been bouncing back and forth between two different GS cookie suppliers .. the answer to the name is that samoas is trademarked by one of the companies, so they other can't use it. As for the taste .. ugh .. they reformulated the cookies to get rid of things like trans fats. Which, is a healthy thing i suppose .. but ... not so much a tasty thing. Great sadness abounds.

Amy said...

Abby, are you a kids in the hall fan because that sounds suspiciously like fine ham abounds. Thanks for the info on the name, I thought maybe it was a spark of political correctness. They removed the transfats, that hardly seems necessary for cookies you can only get once a year.

pinky pinkerson said...

sounds like you are a prime candidate for the extended warranty. Usually a ripoff, but in your case you could just keep exchanging broken dvd players for new ones. Or the warranty karma would ensure yours never broke!

Once I bought the extended warranty on my unreliable monitor, and exchanged it three times! Usually I stay away from what I consider the scam of EW, but DVD players do break a lot (ours broke and we bought a new one at Costco that can burn dvds too) so it might be worth it to you.

Amy said...

I hate those things but you're quite right, it would be worth it if the expense kept it from breaking. And I kept the paperwork...