New toys

Our credit card company has this awesome program where for every time you charge something on it, you earn points, which can eventually be redeemed for all kinds of stuff. After years of saving the points, we finally earned enough to redeem a gift card from Best Buy, part of which was used for my new 3rd generation iPod Nano! I've been busy playing with it and putting it through its paces - the colored screen for watching videos is awesome. It is also INCREDIBLY tiny - a mere 2.5" x 2", and the thickness is an almost insubstantial 6 MILLIMETERS! I can't get over it - I can probably fit this baby in my pocket. I hesitate in taking it anywhere with me for fear of breaking it.

I got the Nano to replace my now defunct Mini, which would betray me by running out of power after the first five minutes of my commute. I hope this one performs better!



The other thing we used the gift card was for a new 37" flat screen TV. We had a bit of an adventure with it at Best Buy. Mr. Hazel Designs and I didn't think the TV would be *that* big, so we stupidly brought his tiny, two-seater sports car, thinking we could probably fit the TV in the trunk. Turned out the box it came in was way bigger than we expected, so Mr. HD had to drive home in his car so he could pick mine up instead (a much bigger 4-door Toyota), and then drive back to the store. Alas...the box still would not fit. So our Best Buy salesman, rather than have us pay for delivery, instead offered to drive home our TV in his pickup truck. I drove my car while Mr. HD rode with the salesman...talk about going beyond the call of duty. We made sure to get the name of the salesman's manager so he can be amply rewarded for his good deed towards obviously amateur flat screen TV purchasers.

If the whole adventure wasn't enough to make me a loyal Best Buy customer, this weekend was also tax-free weekend at the store, and they matched the price of the TV to Circuit City's lower price. I'm not used to such competent and generous customer service (I'm talking to both of you, Sprint PCS and Zara!), so it was a wonderful surprise to find it in my neighborhood electronics store.