Subject:
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Re: LEGO sale starting tomorrow...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au
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Date:
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Thu, 27 May 2004 11:10:24 GMT
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As it happened (quite by chance), I was passing by a KMart this morning
15 mins early for an appointment.
Being close to the end of the financial year, my head lately has been full
of sober and responsible thoughts, involving the taxation merits of
crystalising capital losses and so on. As a consequence of this financial
introspection, I was in of those "not wasting any more money on Lego for a
while" kind of moods. But, having 15 mins to kill, I thought I'd pop into
KMart "just to look at what's new in the Lego aisle but not spend any
money".
Of course, as I reach the Lego aisle, I see the 20% off signs and see the
new 4757 Hogwarts Castle simultaneously. Oooooohhhhhh! I pick up the Castle
box, I shake it, I hear the happy sounds of Lego pieces in marvellous
earth-toned colours bouncing around inside (I fail to remember that these
are probably including the evil new grey colours, such is the strong emotion
generated by those little bits of plastic). But eventually I remember the
financially sobering capital losses etc and decide to put the box back on
the shelf, those little happy bouncing plastic bits now doomed to go to some
child's home where they will probably be abused by putting them in the sand
pit or chewing on them! Children should be banned from buying Lego if they
aren't responsible with it!
Then a small part of my brain reminded me that somewhere I had some Flybuy
gift vouchers (the grown-up's equivalent of birthday money) and a scramble
about in my backpack revealed that $100 worth of vouchers were indeed in my
immediate possession, miraculously appearing just when I needed them (it
being a well-known fact that gift vouchers can only be spent on
discretionary items like Lego and cannot be spent on mundane consumables
like dishwashing liquid). But then my sober and financially responsible
thinking reminded me that even at 20% off the castle would cost more than
the $100 of vouchers. But I decided to confirm this at the barcode scanner
just on the off-chance I can't calculate 20% off correctly or they had the
price entered wrongly, but sadly the scanner confirmed that I can still do
mental arithmetic and that KMart hadn't cocked up their database and that
the 20% off Castle was still more than $100.
Then another small part of my brain recalled that the previous day there had
been an email from the nice Virgin credit card people pointing out that they
had provided me with a curiously shaped piece of silver plastic (I chose
silver in the faint hope that naive shop assistants would think it was a
platinum card and fawn over me a lot) some months ago and that I had failed
so far to express my excitement over its magnificence by going bezerk and
using it in a credit-style transaction. Indeed they intimated that I had
probably simply stuffed it into my backpack and forgotten about it. Another
scramble about in my backpack revealed that I did indeed have a virgin
Virgin credit card in my immediate possession, miraculously appearing just
when I needed it (it being another well-known fact that credit cards aren't
really money -- hmm, not even I can delude myself on that point).
Readers who have survived this epic tale up until this point may perhaps
wonder at my astounding ignorance regarding the contents of my backpack, so
I must explain that having had, through the 1900s, large handbags filled on
the principle of archeological layering, the new millenium has forced me
into an even larger repository of perpetually-lost items now carried in a
backpack, an evolution which I personally attribute to the era of the
paperless office. Actually I moved to the backpack so I could carry my
laptop around with me, but I have found that the laptop compartment is a
good place to store other things like bricklink orders, so the laptop stays
on my desk as there is no longer space in the backpack. Actually there is
some unused space, a still-empty little pouch into which I am supposed to
put my discman or MP3 player and then pass the earphones out this little
hole and into my ears, but I am saving the space for a hip flask of spirits,
as I can always sing if I need music and the hip flask might come in handy
if I find an injured person in the snow.
But I digress. In order to encourage me to enter into a long-term debt
relationship with the nice people at Virgin, their email promised me
fabulous prizes, including a ski trip to Whistler in Canada. Not of course,
that I personally go in for skiing -- white death I say -- but my husband
does like a nice nip of spirits after hitting a tree at high-speed on an icy
mountainside (hence the importance of having space for a hip flask in my
backpack). Anyhow apparently each time I use my Virgin credit card I get an
entry in the competition, and for using my virgin Virgin card for the very
first time, I would get a motza of entires (something like 100 as I recall)
and probably a poster of Madonna to celebrate the moment.
So, by the amazing process in which otherwise sensible and fiscally
responsible human beings rationalise ridiculous purchases, I realised that
by using my curiously-shaped new pseudo-platinium card, the cost of the
castle minus the 20% off minus the $100 vouchers would not be a wasteful
extravagence spent selfishly on myself, but rather a low-cost way to give my
dearest husband a wonderful holiday (apart from the time spent in the
emergency medical centre), and therefore a thoroughly selfless act of giving
on my part (the acquisition of the Castle being of no import in the
analysis, it's the thought that counts, it's the end not the means, and
other Machiavellian philosophies).
Thus, less than 15 minutes after entering the store, probably less time than
I've spent writing this account, I exited KMart having saved a castle from a
bad home, given my husband a skiing holiday, and lost my Virginity to make
Richard Branson happy. How much more public-spirited can one woman be?
Indeed, if only I'd kicked a field goal for Qld in the State of Origin last
night as well, I'd have been declared a National Living Treasure! And the
silver pseudo-platinum card trick may have paid off, as the KMart shop
assistant didn't ask to check my backpack like she did the fellow before me,
which was clearly a fawning gesture on her part.
Kerry
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: LEGO sale starting tomorrow...
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| (...) LOL! If your castle gives you as much amusement as reading your post did to me, you deserve every brick of it! Thanks for brightening 2am in the morning! James (who isn't up late, honest!) (20 years ago, 27-May-04, to lugnet.loc.au)
| | | Re: LEGO sale starting tomorrow...
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| (...) -snip- (...) Wow. After reading the excellent narration of the purchase, I can't wait for a similarly detailed review of the set!. Cheers Cheers Richie Dulin (3 URLs) (20 years ago, 28-May-04, to lugnet.loc.au, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: LEGO sale starting tomorrow...
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| Fellow Aussies, Was in local Kmart yesterday (Mount Ommaney in Brisbane) and they had all the new Harry Potter sets in. $500 to layby one of each (excluding the new train). Got home to find the phamphlet in letter box with 20% off toys. Will have to (...) (20 years ago, 26-May-04, to lugnet.loc.au, FTX)
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