lesliepear | Nov. 15th, 2008

It wasn't a good day

Went to Walmart to get DH's car's oil changed. There was a 2 hour wait, so we went home. I then ran some errands - got fuses for both our cars (both Cavaliers managed to have blown the fuse for the cigarette lighter outlet - imagine the odds on that happening?). Stopped at a local bargain store, found snow boots for Alan really cheap - alas they had only size 2 and I could only find 1 of the size 1's he wears (what good is 1/2 a pair of snowboots?)

I got home, we stopped at the library (High School Music 3 sound track came in, yeah!) Then we went to lunch at Lodi Buffet. Came home, I ran over to Time Warner Cable to get a new HD box. They were out of HD boxes with HDMI connectors, but had ones with DVR's which were free for the first month. So I took that, figuring I'd change it back NEXT Saturday when I returned the remote I forgot to take with me.

Then we went to the local Sears. Sears is having a friends and family sale tommorrow but in our store it was tonight as Bergen County closes stores on Sunday. We had to wait about an hour until the sale started at 6, but at least we got the Samsung we wanted (SIL and MIL have the same one) and we came home. And we waited inside the store on a couch and not in the cold dark of Black Friday :)

A friend helped us set up the TV and move the old one so we can toss it out (it cost around 525 in 1992 and was a state of the art 26" one back then!) We tried connecting the cable box to the TV - but it refused to have any sound on the TV. The TV had sound when the DVD player was connected though. So we ended up sticking the cable just into TV - which only gets us the most basic channels (because Time Warner insists everyone has digital TV with a box!) I am very p*ssed of and called a customer service high up at Time Warner (left over from the last incident) and e-mailed people also. I am this close to telling Time Warner to jump in a lake and get FIOS. (Time Warner says they can only come Tuesday and due to this stupid call to India I can not work from home any other day this week). Even if I wanted to pick up a box from them, I can't go till Saturday - Time Warner's idea of a late night is being open till 6 instead of 5.

Sears in Hacksack is kind of amusing though. It looks like it was originally built in the 1930's when Hacksack was a thriving town and there were no malls.

The main store has had a lot of the windows closed off as you can see above. But it is very small and only has clothing/tools. All the electronics are in a "Brand Central" across the parking lot

(These aren't my photos).

What's funny is the sign on the main Sears telling people to look across to the other building lists among items found there - "Word Processors" - sadly the Brand Central doesn't even sell computers! (I wish I had a photo of it)

And after you buy a TV, they send you back to a corner of the main store for merchandise pickup. This must one of the very few Sears that isn't in a mall (not counting the ones that used to be Kmarts or that are hardware only stores). I guess even though the nearest mall Sears is about 15 minutes away this store must do well enough to be open all these years.