My perfect powers of persuasion (or how I get free stuff)

I can be a bulldog when I want to. I get ahold of an idea, and I hold on to it forever. And, I'm surely feelin' good about myself right about now. Yesterday we took good advantage of the tax-free weekend, and got two big ticket things we were needing (V.'s bed) and wanting (C.'s 42 inch LCD hi-def TV). Well when it came time to check out on the TV, the guy at Best Buy told us we could save $100 by buying a new hi-def DVR at $300. Uh, what? Why in the world should we have to buy a new DVR, when every new customer gets one free just for signing up with Directv? So we declined, saying that when we got home we would just cancel our Directv and get 2 free Hi Definition DVR's from Dish Network, and free installation and no $100 upgrade charge. Yeah, even people not under contract have to pay to upgrade. So I decided to call up ol' Directv and see what they could do to keep my business. The first 2 people I talked to offered some basic things, $5 off per month for the next year, 4 months free Showtime, things along those lines. I was asking for a) a free dvr, b) no $100 upgrade charge, c) free install. By the time I had the 3rd guy on the line, thats exactly what I got. Before the cost of installation I saved us $400! I told them I wanted to stay with them as a customer, but I had no incentive to . I told them what I could get by jumping ship, then they matched it! So if you get "no" from one person, just keep moving up the ladder. It took me roughly 1 hour, but it was totally worth it.

I needed a good thing yesterday. It had been 10 years since I lost my brother Andrew. He died Aug. 3, 1997. I cant believe its been a decade already. I'm normally able to think about his passing away with nothing but hope and peace, but for some reason yesterday really hit me hard. Its honestly been YEARS since I was overly sad about losing him, because of the resurrection hope I have from reading and studying the bible. But for some reason I woke up in a funk and stayed in a funk all day. I allow myself to get sad 2 times a year. Once on the anniversary of losing him, and once on the day he would have turned older. We never celebrated birthday's but its just a day that reminds me of him. You know how it is.

I'm reading this and it seems super-crass that I'm saying that buying an expensive TV took away from losing my brother. But thats where I would hope he would be if he were the surviving sibling. I would hope that 10 years later it would just take something like that to lessen the pain. I would never want my brother (or my husband or daughter) to constantly be sad over losing me. I would want them to remember me, remember the fun times we've had, remember my smile, my laugh, my smell and be happy that I was in their lives. Especially this many years later. I would hope that every once in a while they would unburden themselves however made them feel better, be it doing something nice for someone else, buying themselves something, or just crying over the loss, and then they'd be okay. So I'm totally owning my crassiness, buying stuff did make me feel better yesterday, and I'm alright with that.

Loves!