Birthday Sur-prize

This past Saturday, January 19th, was my birthday. I turned one year older than I was before :). To celebrate, my parents and siblings came to our house and enjoyed a nice night, complete with dinner and some games. They gave me some very nice gifts - a few Tim McGraw CD's, new Garnier hair goo, some work clothes. All in all it was a lovely time.

On a happy coincidence, the Friday before was my company's Christmas party. We somehow bypassed the month of December and instead it was scheduled in January. As part of the party we had a raffle with only one prize. One extremely ginormous prize.

With much fanfare, we all laid out our tickets in front of us on our tables. The manager dramatically reached into the hat full of tickets, selected one, and read its number. All around me people were frantically checking their tickets and saying "not me", "not me", "not me". I looked at my tickets sprawled out on the table, and sure enough, I won! I won! I was in complete and total shock. My jaw dropped onto the floor. What did I win, what glorious, humungo prize was my office giving away?

A forty two inch plasma flat screen HDTV.

That's right. A brand spanking new beautiful, huge TV. We borrowed my parent's van and picked it up on Saturday morning. Later that night we set it up in our living room and it looks fantastic. The picture is amazing. Even without high def, the detail you see is just phenomenal.

We talked about selling it. At first, for a fleeting moment. I know how much it cost ($1100!!), and that amount of money could go pretty far. We didn't need a TV - not by any stretch of the imagination. We had a perfectly good 36" CRT that we weren't planning on replacing anytime soon. But this came along and... we couldn't bear to sell it. We're going to try and sell the old TV, but it was a hand-me-down and we want to offer it back first. If we can sell it on Craigslist, that would be nice for the income.

The other thing we need to consider is our cable. We currently have the most basic plan with only regular network channels. I have heard that the network stations are bound to broadcast their HD channels with the basic cable plan. We (read: my husband) are looking into whether or not we need an HD tuner or receiver. I don't want to subscribe a bigger cable package, so we may forgo the high def for a while. I am just so excited and so overwhelmed to have won this magnificent prize!