Why can I never go into Best Buy without coming out with something I don't need? I'm just lucky they were out of the DVD player I have my eye on, or I might have committed a much bigger transgression. I shudder to think how close I came to spending an extra three hundred dollars at exactly the wrong time. Vacation is coming up in a week and a half, and a bit of electronic extravagance will do me a lot less good in the Rocky Mountains than the scratch I would've spent on it.

Not that you can't enjoy a week in Colorado without a lot of money. I've already paid my share of the rent on the vacation home where we'll be staying, so that part of the outlay is handled. But I don't think the other sixteen people should be responsible for feeding me, especially since I did none of the work that went into putting our holiday package together. And I expect that a souvenir here and there will catch my eye. I can't be in an exotic locale for that long without coveting a T-shirt or a coffee mug.

I had a legitimate reason to go to Best Buy this morning. I'd run out of spare cartridges for the fax/printer. (At least, I think I'd run out. It could be just one more thing Lost in the Move.) And I wanted to look at headphones. I didn't buy any, but that wouldn't have been a superfluous item, because I have a valid excuse. I need headphones (sort of) so that I can stay up watching TV after my neighbors retire for the night.

For some reason, I just can't put it out of my mind that other people live in the same building. That was no problem at the place I just moved out of, because there were two one-car garages between my unit and the next. I could (and did) stay up late every night, playing loud music and watching old movies with the volume at theater-speaker level. What's the use of having five speakers — even five aging, second-rate speakers — if you can't hear the details coming out of each one of them?

Here at Green Acres, I have a problem. I have a neighbor who's one thin wall away. They play loud music and turn up the TV, but usually just during the day. If they're making wall-thumping noise at night, it's only when I'm doing the same. They stop at midnight, so I stop at midnight. But my brain doesn't stop at midnight. That's prime time for me, and I'd love to be able to stay up and watch embarrassingly bad programming, if only I could be sure no one could hear me. For the sake of the children, you understand. I wouldn't want to keep them from their much needed rest.

Thus, headphones. But I have a set of headphones that came with the portable CD player Eric gave me last year, so I decided to make do with an adapter that would allow me to fit the tiny plug into the much larger jack on my stereo. Seems simple. Turn off the speakers, don the headphones and blast myself blissfully through the night. And the adapter was only $2.99. Brilliant!

You're probably way ahead of me. You've probably already figured out that the cord on a portable CD player doesn't have to be very long. It's certainly not long enough to bridge the gap between my stereo system and the lounge chair where I rest my back and indulge my viewing habit. It's barely long enough to allow me to sit on the floor far enough away from the TV set to see the picture. Ah, well. The best laid plans. Next time I'm in the store I'll have to search for a better solution.

So I needed the headphone adapter, even if it turned out not to work the way I hoped. But I didn't need the new Boney James-Rick Braun CD, even if it does have that terrific version of "Grazin' in the Grass" that I keep hearing on the smooth jazz station. And I really didn't need The Shawshank Redemption on DVD, even if it was on sale. I mean, I don't even own a DVD player! At least I can listen to the CD (and did, twice so far). What could I have been thinking?