Today's unexpected blessing

Today’s unexpected blessing is brought to me by Best Buy. 

I was waiting for a prescription to be filled at Costco today and rather than just driving the 2 blocks home to wait the 45 minutes for it, I decided to walk across the parking lot to Best Buy to see what they had to offer in the way of Wacom Tablets. 

Of course, I totally already knew what they had because I’ve been googling and researching for 2 months. But let’s back up the bus a bit here….

Three and half years ago I won a $500 Wacom Intuos Pro tablet in a contest from Dave Cross at the Creative Live website. 

I’ve used a tablet rather than a mouse for many years but, prior to this, it had always been the basic hundred dollar versions. 

Now, without incriminating any of my grandchildren, a couple of months ago the pen for my tablet went missing for a few days before it was found in the grass in the backyard. And one disadvantage to the very advantageous option of having automatic sprinklers in your lawn is that when one’s Wacom pen is in the grass for 4 days it gets ‘watered’ a couple of times. 

As a result, I have been relearning to use a mouse. 

And woe is me, I’ve limped along, mouse in hand, and managed to advance multiple levels of Candy Crush and whoop some Scrabble butt over the weeks. Then a couple of weeks ago I had some graphics designing to do. That, in a typical “first world problems” way, sent me on a product investigation in a I-cannot-afford-this-but-am-not-accustomed-to-not-getting-what-I-want sort of way.

Five hundred bucks for a new one. Yikes.

For about $130 I could get a more basic version. While not exactly what I am accustomed to, I had to be honest and admit that it would probably be suffice, given that graphic design is no longer a huge part of my life. 

Fast forward to today…

I wandered over to Best Buy with about $150 cash in my pocket to “look at what they had.” Knowing full well that I would be carrying home the hundred and thirty dollar “Bamboo” version of a Wacom tablet. 

The friendly sales rep showed me the aisle where the Bamboos were after I told him I was looking to replace my Intuos tablet but wasn’t really in a position to get another “pro” version. 

They keep the Intuos Pro tablets in the next aisle over. He led me there despite me feigned resistance to affording more at this point in time.  

And here he pointed out an “Open Box” specimen of the 2018 version of the $500 tablet I was looking to replace. 

“We do have an open box version of the pro on the shelf. Someone bought it and decided it just wasn’t gonna work for them. Nothing’s wrong with it except the box has been opened and they probably installed it and used it for a week before deciding it wasn’t for them. It’s two hundred and fifty bucks.”

And instantly my brain goes into overdrive. I only have a hundred and fifty bucks cash. MasterCard has almost limitless buying power. The prescription I am waiting for is going to be completely covered by Pharmacare. I deserve this right now. I haven’t bought new shoes since, since, since … shit I don’t even remember when I last bought new shoes. My monthly wine budget has dived from … well… lots. To practically non-existent this past couple of months…

“I’ll take that lovely little puppy!” I say to the nice young boy who eagerly led me to the check-out while I whipped out my Mastercard. And turns out it rang in at $220. Practically free. 

Facebook scrabble anyone? Me and my new pen will kick your butt, or happily concede, while we bask in the clearance-clearance afterglow of an unexpected blessing.