That last fifty dollar gift card

After getting off work, I ventured out to cash in the last gift card I had from Christmas. It's a fifty dollar Visa debit card from my boss, so I could pretty much use it anywhere. Sure, it says Simon Malls all over the damned thing, but the fine print on the back says it could be used anywhere Visa is accepted.

For once, in a gift card situation, I went out with a plan. I spent most of the day thinking about what I was gonna go out and buy. Something I either really need, or something I have kinda wanted and needed for a while, but didn't want to shill out the cash for at the time. Then it hit me: I need a new watch. The last one I got was about two years ago...not counting the Star Wars watch I got a Burger King (hey, it was a limited time offer, and they just happened to have one Obi-Wan/Darth Maul watch left).

Sure, I could've gone for sheer practicality; gotten some cheap off-brand one like Rulex or Amega that, while is does display the correct time, the digital display might not have enough power to display all the numbers properly. The screen might go a bit dim whenever an 8 appears. The alarm isn't so much of a programmable reminder as it is just a random faint beeping that sounds like a pager going off a block and a half away. Perhaps a watch that for some reason has the year irreparably set to the Chinese calendar. Or maybe one that actually has the words "water soluble" in tiny print on its face.

Instead, I decided to go for the big kahuna. The one behind a protective glass counter. The one with the price tag neatly tucked away between the back of the watch and the little plastic stand it's on. The one that gets placed back in a nice little tin can with cool printing on it. The kind of watch I've never had in my entire life.

My first stop was Dillards, and I didn't find anything there I really liked but didn't feel guilty for looking at it without an invitation. I did rather fancy some of the Fossil watches they had, but the amount they were asking for was a little out of my price range, even with a fifty dollar gift card cushioning the blow.

I made my way to Penney's, Macy's, even the Sunglass Hut and nothing really caught my eye. Since I was in the neighborhood, I cruised over to Best Buy, momentarily considering just blowing the fifty bucks on DVDs. After some arguing with myself, I headed home thinking I'll try this again some other time.

Then, I came by Sears on my way home, and gave their watch selection a try. Hell, I still had six bucks or so left on another gift card that I could use there to spread out the savings. They didn't have any of the cool Fossils that I saw at the other places, but one did catch my eye there.

I remember about a year ago when I was at my brokest, I was at Moody's Jewelry with a friend of mine and I found myself drooling over this one Fossil watch they had there. If I could've afforded it at the time, I would've bought it on the spot. It was a traditional watch, just a standard analog timepiece, but the face of it was a trippy LCD display of a dragon with animated flames all around it. A couple months later, when I actually had som money to burn, I found that the watch had been sold, and a quick check online told me that they had discontinued that model. I was a bit heartbroken.

However, in the Sears display case, there was a watch almost identical to that watch I had seen back then. It wasn't a Fossil, but it was damned close, both in style and in brand name: Relic. Without even thinking about how much it might cost, I had the lady behind the counter bag it up for me.

The good news, it was only sixty bucks. The bad news was I didn't have the six dollar Sears card on me. Even more bad news, the fifty dollar Visa card didn't work on their system. So, I just bought the damned thing with my own money. I've got money now, so what the hell.

Now I've got a kick-ass new watch, and hopefully still have fifty bucks in plastic that I can spend elsewhere. I may have to go to Woodland Hills Mall to use it, but who knows? I might find something worth the time and energy to go all the way out to South Tulsa for.