Ok, so some of you have already heard or read about how a TV played into our whole Santa Barbara weekend. Here is the full scoop:

When I booked the room for the weekend, I realized that there wasn’t a TV in our room. I mentioned it to Rebecca and she seemed all worried about what we would do. Being the problem-solver, I thought, well, I’ve been considering getting another TV for the house (girls hogging our one TV, no guy time), so why not get one that we could take with us to Santa Barbara and afterwards we would just keep to use at home.

The night before our trip, Rebecca is helping Juliette with her piano practice, so I take Elise and head over to Costco. Of course, I did a little research ahead of time and found some 23″ LCD HDTVs for around $500-550. Just the right size to bring. Well, they didn’t have those models and the one they had was like $650. And then I saw this Vizio 32″ for $799. I was like, what the heck, just $150 more and you get an additional 9″. So I got that one, Elise was very pleased with my selection, she probably thought erroneously that it was for her room. We checkout and get back to the car and the box doesn’t fit in the trunk. Hmmm, ok, fortunately, I was able to slide it into the back seat. But that meant Elise would have to sit in the front seat, she sure enjoyed that.

We get back home and that’s when the real fun begins. Rebecca and her mom are all busting up about how we are going to bring this big TV with us. Actually, when I get it out of the box, it’s much more manageable and not all that heavy. Rebecca suggests that I test it out to make sure everything works. Works great, turns out this TV is pretty well designed with all the ports and plugs laid out for easy access.

So, we bring it with us on our trip and it easily fits in the trunk. As Rebecca mentioned, she felt embarrassed about bringing our own TV, so she had me load and unload at night when there wasn’t anyone around. It was probably better that way, so we wouldn’t have to answer any difficult questions (“are you taking home the hotel’s tv?”). We ended up watching a Miyazaki’s latest, Howl’s Moving Castle.

On the way back, we were discussing what to do with the TV to see where we could use it. Originally, when I was looking at the smaller TV, I was thinking that we could just use it as Rebecca’s computer monitor on her desk, but obviously that’s not going to work with the 32″! I considered putting it upstairs in our room so that we could watch movies and play my Xbox 360. But we figured that for now, we spend most of our time downstairs with the girls, and then after they go to bed, we can just use the TV downstairs. So with the final verdict in, and I returned it after we got bacck.

What a shame, it really was a great deal and a nice TV, regardless of the price. But until we actually have a use for it (beyond just a short trip out of town) … which by that time, I’m sure the price will have come down further and the quality improved even more (such is the life of technology). At least I got to scratch that ‘itch’, if only for a few days .