It's a breakthrough! The DVD is hooked up! And this post is REALLY long!

Long overdue post, I know. I've been busy, plus I guess I just haven't been feeling very inspired. However, today is a joyous day for me, and I must rave...I finally hooked up my god damned DVD player. And I feel like a total idiot because it has taken me nearly TWO YEARS to get around to it.

Yes, two years. Now, you all know my penchant for making a short story very long, so settle in - here's the whole sordid story of my DVD player's journey from twinkle in Deedee's eye to actual, functioning member of Deedee's Audio-Visual setup:

*cues cheesy background music*

Back in September of 2004, I had just started working for a company in an area where the most convenient place to get lunch, unfortunately, was McDonald's. McD's had just come out with the Chicken Selects, you know those really outrageously delicious and overpriced "real" chicken strips, and at the very same time had just fired up the year's "Monopoly" game. So I became hooked on the Chicken Selects (and the occasional Quarter Pounder) and started collecting the Monopoly stamps. The promo that year was a tie-in with Best Buy, wherein no matter what, you earned at least one "Best Buy Buck" or something (I can't remember what they were really called, I think because all that processed food has shorted out parts of my brain). I never won anything on the other stamps, of course, because that's how they rope you in. Everyone gets all nuts because everyone - everyone is just "one stamp away" from a million dollars. But I digress.

I continued to collect the Best Buy stamps and filled up a whole card with them, totalling 20-some-odd dollars. I think I also racked up about 20 pounds during my little stamp-and-chicken frenzy, but that's a separate story altogether. I kept the card in my car with the intention of using it the next time I had occasion to be in Best Buy, which I figured would be soon, since Christmas was right around the corner. My boyfriend at the time had asked for CD-R's for his recording projects and I had my eye on a couple of CD's to which I thought I might like to treat myself, and so I figured I would just hang on to the thing until I got a chance to get over there - or was forced to redeem it before it expired.

I did redeem it on the expiration date - December 11, 2004. It's pretty sad why I actually remember that date, but I had found out the day before that the above-mentioned boyfriend had another girlfriend and had pretty much broken up with me - he just hadn't gotten around to telling me yet - so it was a pretty memorable date. Anyway, after a night of tossing and turning and being really upset, I woke up the next day and said, "Fuck him. I'm buying a DVD player!" and off I trotted to Best Buy to redeem my little stamp booklet, a small paper testament to 6 weeks of eating pounds and pounds of deep-fried, breaded chicken strips and french fries, drinking buckets of Hi-C orange drink, and soothing my new-job stress with M&M McFlurries (God, Judith Moore and Wendy McClure would be so proud of me right now, I think).

So with my red eyes, sore nose, and pounding head (I cried a fair bit over this asshole), I walked in and began to wander around, looking for a good deal on a DVD player. I found one, too - it was on sale AND came with a rebate, and so I bought it. Now, if you know me, you know how proud I get when I score a great deal. So when all was said and done, I think I ended up paying twelve dollars for the thing. Serious bargain. My elation, however, would be short-lived.

Shortly after the killer aqcuisition, I plunged into a pretty deep depression. First the DVD player sat in the back seat of my car for a good couple of weeks. I only took it out when I did because I had to clean out my car for the trip to my sister's house for Christmas. After Christmas, I got worse. The DVD player sat, unopened, on the floor of my living room for quite some time after that. My mood darkened, and I got increasingly sadder and sadder until my house grew an incredible mess around me, and I just didn't care. The poor DVD player was buried under newspapers, junk mail, clothes, and whatever else I'd thrown on it, until only a tiny corner of the box could be seen through the mess. I finally, sometime that spring (we're into 2005 now, dear readers), picked the box up off the floor and set it on a shelf, where it stayed for about a year.

In April of this year (yeah, that's right, I'm talking about 2006), I finally got the house cleaned up and took the DVD player out of the box and put it in the entertainment center. But it wasn't until today, October 8, that I would actually hook the fucking thing up and use it. What was holding me back? Laziness, mostly. Laziness and fear. I was too lazy to pull the TV and everything out, afraid that I wouldn't be able to figure it out, afraid that I wouldn't do it right and would screw it up, scared that I'd be too lazy to put everything back together and set the impetus in motion for another catastrophic mess (because this is usually how they start). I'm saying this, by the way, based on the fiasco that has been my VCR every time I move. It's all based in truth, folks, not just my neurosis.

So in a brazen move, I decided today that the DVD that came with my new Beck CD simply HAD to be watched. I pulled out the package of cables and owner's manual, and I set to work. In a matter of 10 minutes, I was hooked up and ready to go, and the DVD was spinning smoothly in its tray, projecting images of Mr. Hansen all over my TV screen, and I was one happy girl.

The reception on my TV is now worse than ever, though, which kind of sucks...but then again, there are only two shows I like to watch, and now I can always get the entire season when it comes out... on DVD!