i'm the luckiest girl ever!!!

i'm officially the proud owner of a brand new nintendo wii!!!

now, i'm not sure if you guys have been paying attention, but although the wii was released in november, nintendo has been way stingy with making them widely available. what this has meant is that if you want a wii, either you suck it up and pay almost double on sites like ebay or through amazon resellers, or you try your luck at stores all over town in the hopes that you'll be there on the day that they happened to receive an order of like 4 of them.

but have you PLAYED a wii? so much fun! and not all techno-gamer-y, either. it's a gaming system for us regular folk. and i decided that for my law school graduation, i was going to reward myself for 3 years of hard work and stress with a wii.

...which created the problem of how exactly i was gonna get my hands on one. i refused to order one online -- the wiis retail for $249. that's expensive enough, without having to also deal with higher prices due to the demand and shipping costs. so i've been asking all over the place for weeks. and always i get the, "no, but we had some in the other day." why even bother to tell me that there WERE some in stock? obviously that helps me none. ugh...

but today i had a wild idea that i should drive to target at the waterfront to see. i have this theory (which may be totally wrong) that shipments come in on tuesdays (because CDs and DVDs and games are released on tuesdays), and i thought maybe in the middle of the day on an odd tuesday, i just might get lucky. so i parked the car (erm, carson's car), headed into target, and made a beeline for the electronics section.

and there they were!!! in the locked gaming case were several wii boxes!!! but the boxes themselves can be tricky, because on my quest to find a wii i've learned that lots of stores use empty boxes as displays. so i scanned the department for someone in a red target employee shirt. i found her in the back, helping a guy with a broken arm get a television into his shopping cart. so i waited until she was done, and then the following dialogue ensued:

me: um, hi. um, are those wii boxes just boxes? or are they real wiis?
adorably nerdy target employee: they're real wiis!
me: (gasp!!!) can i have one?!
a.n.t.e.: you certainly can!
me: omigoodnessi'msoexcited!!!
a.n.t.e.: we got 12 of them in like an hour ago. your timing is perfect!
me: i've been looking for one forever!
a.n.t.e.: [gets wii out of case] here you go! you've found one!
me: can i get a paper mario, too?*
a.n.t.e.: of course!
me: omigoodnessi'msoexcitedaboutthis!!!
a.n.t.e.: you have a wii!!!

and the conversation carried on like that for a while, and i found out that she's graduating art school and she designs video game art and while i opted not to purchase the three year warranty right now, i can do so within 90 days with my receipt.

I HAVE A WII!!!

but here's the catch -- see, this wii is my gift to myself for having finished law school, and with that 20 page externship writing requirement and my seminar paper still to complete, i technically haven't finished law school. so i am not going to allow myself to take the wii out of its box until those things are finished and turned in. think i can do it? i haven't had a cigarette in months. if i can survive that, i can totally go a few more days until the wii!

huzzah!!!

*super paper mario is a wii game. duh.