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Harry Potter Harry Potter Harry Potter!!!!
Mar. 7th, 2006 11:02 amAt last, it is mine. You know what I'm talking about.
A couple of days ago Tery, no doubt trying to be helpful, mentioned a promo at Best Buy: the new Harry Potter for $13.99 and a free lithograph with purchase. Sounded pretty sweet so I waited until yesterday to investigate at the website, but not a mention of it anywhere, which I thought odd. I called her to ask for more clues. "Maybe it was Circuit City," she said carelessly, completely oblivious to the importance of the issue. I surfed on over to CC's website but there was nothing there either (though both sites were shamelessly using images from the film to sell $300 plasma TVs, just to tease me). "I don't know, maybe it's a secret sale," she offered. I said, "I would think the point of the promo would be to motivate shoppers to buy the DVD from them. It would sort of defeat the purpose if no one knew about it." Realizing she was hopelessly outmaneuvered, her only response was, "I've got to get back to work now." That's it. Run and hide when faced with flawless logic. (Boring conclusion: I did eventually find the promo on page 19 of CC's online weekly specials flyer (pretty damn close to secret) except it was for the plain old, no-frills widescreen version, not the super sexy, super extras-packed deluxe version. People should know me well enough by now to deduce what my preference is).
I went to bed at 9:30, exhausted after a particularly grueling day at Sears, plus I reasoned that the sooner I went to sleep, the sooner it would be today. This however backfired on me when I awoke at 12:20 a.m. out of a dead sleep with butterflies in my stomach. I tried to go back to sleep, only to wake again at 12:40 with the same problem. I was, like the kid on the Disneyworld commercial, too excited to sleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling, imagining gleaming towering displays of Harry Potter DVDs, barely touched by human hands, just sitting there waiting for me. Damnit. I asked myself what I had to lose other than a little gasoline. At that time of the morning I could be there and back in 15 minutes and no one would even know. I figured if the DVDs weren't on the salesfloor yet I could just buy cat litter instead. We always need cat litter, and it's not at all unusual to buy it at 1 a.m. Right? After several more abortive attempts to resume unconsciousness, I gave in.
I went out to the living room and to my surprise Tery was still up. I told her where I was going. She sighed, not remotely surprised, and told me to be careful. Okay....?
I'm sure there's some snickering going on at the lengths my obsessions drive me to, but it's no easy thing to stroll into Walmart at that hour and affect any degree of nonchalance, just as if I HADN'T gotten up in the middle of the night for one purpose and one purpose only. To walk by the display of new releases and try to pull off a "Oh hey....the new Harry Potter. I had no idea it was out already. Well, as long as I'm here, I might as well pick up a copy...", then pretend to browse in the Men's Department while surreptitiously reading the back of the case to make sure it's the right edition. It only took me a few minutes to admit to myself that I didn't much care if I was fooling the other 5 people in the store (and that the other 5 people probably didn't much care themselves what I was up to) and went to check out. If the girl at the register thought me strange, she gave no sign (although she was clearly none too pleased about working the third shift and had her own problems).
I got home and walked in the front door with the DVD clutched possessively under one arm. Tery was in the kitchen and, seeing no shopping bag, asked gleefully, "Nothing?" Oh, she would like that, wouldn't she? Thanks for the support. As I drooled a little over the pictures on the cover and debated whether or not I wanted to sleep with it, she said, "If you were a NORMAL person you'd be getting out of a bar at this hour and THEN go shopping." It's really quite remarkable that we have anything to talk about at all together. Fortunately for me March Madness is starting so I will be a brackets widow, while Tery will be a Harry Potter widow (well actually, not much is changing from her perspective there). So it all works out okay in the end.
3 guesses what I'M doing tonight?
P.S.: I'd also personally like to thank Warner Bros. for not using a single exclamation point in the DVD plot synopsis. If there's anything I hate, it's DVD makers who pepper the summary with tons of exclamation points to try to drum up artificial excitement in their product.
A couple of days ago Tery, no doubt trying to be helpful, mentioned a promo at Best Buy: the new Harry Potter for $13.99 and a free lithograph with purchase. Sounded pretty sweet so I waited until yesterday to investigate at the website, but not a mention of it anywhere, which I thought odd. I called her to ask for more clues. "Maybe it was Circuit City," she said carelessly, completely oblivious to the importance of the issue. I surfed on over to CC's website but there was nothing there either (though both sites were shamelessly using images from the film to sell $300 plasma TVs, just to tease me). "I don't know, maybe it's a secret sale," she offered. I said, "I would think the point of the promo would be to motivate shoppers to buy the DVD from them. It would sort of defeat the purpose if no one knew about it." Realizing she was hopelessly outmaneuvered, her only response was, "I've got to get back to work now." That's it. Run and hide when faced with flawless logic. (Boring conclusion: I did eventually find the promo on page 19 of CC's online weekly specials flyer (pretty damn close to secret) except it was for the plain old, no-frills widescreen version, not the super sexy, super extras-packed deluxe version. People should know me well enough by now to deduce what my preference is).
I went to bed at 9:30, exhausted after a particularly grueling day at Sears, plus I reasoned that the sooner I went to sleep, the sooner it would be today. This however backfired on me when I awoke at 12:20 a.m. out of a dead sleep with butterflies in my stomach. I tried to go back to sleep, only to wake again at 12:40 with the same problem. I was, like the kid on the Disneyworld commercial, too excited to sleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling, imagining gleaming towering displays of Harry Potter DVDs, barely touched by human hands, just sitting there waiting for me. Damnit. I asked myself what I had to lose other than a little gasoline. At that time of the morning I could be there and back in 15 minutes and no one would even know. I figured if the DVDs weren't on the salesfloor yet I could just buy cat litter instead. We always need cat litter, and it's not at all unusual to buy it at 1 a.m. Right? After several more abortive attempts to resume unconsciousness, I gave in.
I went out to the living room and to my surprise Tery was still up. I told her where I was going. She sighed, not remotely surprised, and told me to be careful. Okay....?
I'm sure there's some snickering going on at the lengths my obsessions drive me to, but it's no easy thing to stroll into Walmart at that hour and affect any degree of nonchalance, just as if I HADN'T gotten up in the middle of the night for one purpose and one purpose only. To walk by the display of new releases and try to pull off a "Oh hey....the new Harry Potter. I had no idea it was out already. Well, as long as I'm here, I might as well pick up a copy...", then pretend to browse in the Men's Department while surreptitiously reading the back of the case to make sure it's the right edition. It only took me a few minutes to admit to myself that I didn't much care if I was fooling the other 5 people in the store (and that the other 5 people probably didn't much care themselves what I was up to) and went to check out. If the girl at the register thought me strange, she gave no sign (although she was clearly none too pleased about working the third shift and had her own problems).
I got home and walked in the front door with the DVD clutched possessively under one arm. Tery was in the kitchen and, seeing no shopping bag, asked gleefully, "Nothing?" Oh, she would like that, wouldn't she? Thanks for the support. As I drooled a little over the pictures on the cover and debated whether or not I wanted to sleep with it, she said, "If you were a NORMAL person you'd be getting out of a bar at this hour and THEN go shopping." It's really quite remarkable that we have anything to talk about at all together. Fortunately for me March Madness is starting so I will be a brackets widow, while Tery will be a Harry Potter widow (well actually, not much is changing from her perspective there). So it all works out okay in the end.
3 guesses what I'M doing tonight?
P.S.: I'd also personally like to thank Warner Bros. for not using a single exclamation point in the DVD plot synopsis. If there's anything I hate, it's DVD makers who pepper the summary with tons of exclamation points to try to drum up artificial excitement in their product.
