It's coming...

So, in addition to not ultimately preventing me from forgeting my mother's birthday, last Thursday's family get together is also going to wind up having been a very costly venture. Why is that you ask? Well, we were at my sister's house, and they have a Wii. After dinner, we got involved in a friendly game of Mario Kart on the Wii. Even though I was terrible at it as a first time, it was a ton of fun, and it served to remind me just how much I liked the Wii.

I had long ago (like a year or more) decided that if I was to get one of the new generation gaming consoles, it would be a Wii. The other systems have just gotten too complicated and involved, and the few times I'd encountered the Wii, I'd really enjoyed the simplicity of it, and the fact that it actually involved some real activity. However, I held off on a purchase because a) I didn't really have the money at the time anyhow, and b) at that time, they were ridiculously scarce. You either had to stake out stores for them, pay through the teeth for them on eBay or some other similar site, or buy these ridiculously expensive bundles online that gave you stuff you really didn't want. None of those options particularly appealed to me, so I waited. And after Thursday night's experience, I evaluated my finances and figured I could probably have a nice little splurge here.

These days, they are still relatively scarce, and best I can tell you're still not very likely to find one in a store around here unless you go on a Sunday morning, when the new shipments come in. They are also still difficult, but not impossible to find in stores online, especially if you aren't interested in the massive bundles. And actually, by Friday night, I had a located an HDTV that I thought I could swing that was all set to buy instead anyhow. However, when I went in to Circuit City to buy it on Saturday, I had massive second thoughts. (As an aside: Circuit City folks, here's a hint. I don't care if this is Penn State country and you have employees and customers who'd like to see the game in the store - if the Big Ten Network has a pretty questionable picture from the source you use, it's probably best not to have it showing on a bunch of TVs you'd like to sell). So, I returned home empty handed and set my sights back on the Wii. And lo and behold, I found a site (Radio Shack) that had the base console package in-stock. I ordered it, and waited. I got the order confirmation, it said the items had been located in stock, and I waited some more. Now, it was a Saturday afternoon when I ordered, with Labor Day on Monday, so I wasn't expecting the thing to ship before Tuesday. And it didn't, but when I hadn't gotten a shipping notification by the time I went to bed last night, I was becoming concerned that perhaps this thing wasn't actually in stock, and I had wasted several days of my search.

However, lo and behold, when I woke up this morning, I had the shipping notification. A moment of panic followed however, when I saw a second e-mail that started off with something like "We are sorry to inform you that..." NOOOOOOOOO! Fortunately, upon further inspection, the e-mail indicated that they were out of stock on an accessory that I had purchased, but the Wii itself was on the way. If FedEx's tracking system isn't lying to me, I should have it on Saturday. I'll try to keep up with the blogging after its arrival, but no promises :-)