Better Late...

Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate UPS calling me in advance to tell me that there would be a package delivery from Amazon.com requiring a signature the next day. However, it is not overly helpful to say that the delivery will occur sometime between 8 a.m. and Tuesday. Not to mention that, although I do a substantial amount of shopping on Amazon.com, I do not currently have any outstanding orders. Rather boggled the mind what they might be sending me.

Given that I had some pressing errands to get done in two hours of the nine hour delivery window, it was inevitable that I would miss the truck. Fortunately, according to the friendly automated computer lady at UPS, I had called to make delivery arrangements early enough that I could pick up the box at the UPS center between 7:30 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. The friendly automated computer lady is blissfully unaware that the customer service office of our UPS center closed at 6:30 p.m. A small sign directs customers like me, led astray by friendly automated computer ladies, to poke our heads into the employee entrance and pick up our boxes.

The package from Amazon turned out to be the home theater system I had won. Apparently, Panasonic was OK with a three week response time, and must have had my package all but waiting to be shipped out--from Amazon.

I was, of course, far too excited about the new toy to wait until Emp. Peng. to come home and apply his generous knowledge of what the heck some of those components might be and how they fit together. Two hours of RTFM-ing, and I managed to get the new system together and more or less set up, with no parts left over. That is also, incidentally, almost as long as it took to figure out how to get the 5-disc changer to spit out the test DVD. The system came in 29 pieces, none of which has an "eject" button.