Hindsight. I blame it all on hindsight. Hindsight and intuition. Oh, and throw in a wife who, on occaission, doesn’t listen to me.

First, let’s lay the background to this story. Angela has a conference that she’s planning an exhibit for. Part of this exhibit is the use of the Nintendo Wii for some sports demo. You got it, the Nintendo Wii. That popular gaming system that is hard to get your hands on. One day, while we were in North Carolina, we happened upon a good number of them at a Target. Probably about 7 or so. What luck! So she picked one up.

“Umm…don’t you think that maybe you should pick up another one? Or maybe even a second controller?” I asked.

“No. I’m good. This is good. I have the one that I wanted.” she replied.

“Are you sure? These things are hard to find. We sort of lucked out running across these today. And it only ships with one controller. You may want to pick up another. Or how about a Playstation 3? You know, for your poor husband who has to suffer down here.”

“No. This is enough. I don’t need anything else.”

And that was that. I felt a little twinge in my stomach and I thought to myself “we’re really passing up a good opportunity here”. Time passes. We decide to bail on North Carolina and life moves on. Lo and behold, it comes up that for her exhibit she now needs TWO NINTENDO WIIs.  When Angela tells me this I looked at her with my look of “You didn’t just say what I think you said, did you?”. Upon seeing this, she look right back at me and says matter of factly “Shut up. Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it. I just need another one.”

Which leads me to where I am today, sitting in front of my computer typing this. Today was my first full day back in Northern Virginia in about two weeks. I spent my morning running errands and then I set out on my journey. My Holy Grail if you will. I set out to find a Nintendo Wii within a 30 mile radius of my house.

I failed.

Yeesh. I’ve been in almost every Target, Sears, Walmart, Kmart, GameStop, Babbages, Best Buy, Circuit City, Electronics Boutique, and Costco in Loudoun County. I went from Vienna/Fairfax to Centreville, to Reston, Sterling, Leesburg and even as far out as Purcellville. Nada. Nothing. Zip, zero, zilch. I made it home for a bit to fall asleep on the couch and Tobey, the large dog, took that as a sign to fall asleep on my. And then I was out again. All told, I think I spent the last 6 hours searching.

I don’t want to hear ‘why didn’t you just call the stores?’, either. This was more adventurous. And if I found one I wanted to make sure that nobody could buy it from underneath me. I feel like one of those parents who had fallen victim to standing in line in order to buy Cabbage Patch Dolls, Teddy Ruxpins, Tickle Me Elmos and any other trendy toy that had a problem meeting demand with supply.  I even checked when I was in Virginia Beach yesterday. Nada.

I should have repackaged my Commodore 64 back home and told her it was the same thing.