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 .

Oh my, the wisdom of children. And this, coming from a kid who has her own iPAQ. Geeks all around the world are shaking their head in disbelief.

• CLIF Mojo Bar – Mountain Mix Flavor: I use these as my universal snack, food of last resort, emergency food (when there’s nothing else good to eat), and even sweet fix. I used to like the Roasted Peanut, but for some reason it started to smell like the peanuts had gone bad, so I had to switch.
• Vitamin Water: These are great chilled or not (except for the dragonfruit flavor which is good chilled, otherwise tastes like diluted cough syrup). Unfortunately, I can’t drink this for my exercise hydration because it uses fructose for sweetening and after some personal testing I determined that I am one of those that have a “negative reaction” to too much fructose.
• Virgil’s Root Beer: my brother-in-law Gordon gave us some great root beer when we were visiting in Taiwan one year and since then I’ve been totally jealous to find something as good here in the US. Well, thanks to Trader Joe’s, we can now enjoy our own great root beer.
• Mike’s Hard Lemonade: this was the first alcoholic beverage that I actually enjoyed and has since led me down the path of imbibing.
• Ricola Original Herb Cough Drops: I hate coughing, it drives me crazy. So finding cough drops that work is a huge deal when I’m sick (you can ask Rebecca). Before, the only cough drops that would work were these ones from Taiwan made from a Chinese cough syrup called Pi Pa Gao. Fortunately, for our sanity, we tried Ricola (I actually got two different flavors to see which worked better) which are much easier to find around town.
• Cepacol Lozenges: these were recommended by Sophia a few years back, and they are my “big guns” when I have a sore throat or can’t stop coughing. Topical anesthetic for my throat, ooh, so nice.
• Maximum Strength Contac Cold+Flu: confession, when I have the flu, I am not a nice person to be a round. These will knock me out so that I can sleep and won’t make everyone around me as miserable as I feel.
• Clarks Shoes: ever since I bought my first pair of Clarks at Off Broadway Shoes, I’ve been hooked. It’s like their model 7 1/2M is using my foot as its mold. And their designs look good too.
• KCRW Radio: I love this radio station. It’s got NPR as well as great music. Not like my commute is all that long, but I sure miss it when we are driving outside of SoCal.

This is more like my daily living list. I have a more techie list, but that’s for another day. I’m sure there are some others, but these are what I could think up. If you guys think of any others or have your own lists, make sure to let me know in the comments.