The Modern Love Machine and I received a number of generous Target gift cards as wedding gifts, for which we are grateful. I was content to use them as needed for our routine Target trips, but the MLM decided they would best be spent on an iPad. I’ve resisted the purchase of an iPad for several months, both because they ain’t cheap and we had no need for one, despite being them being awesome and shiny. He wore me down and I gave in the day before we left for Ireland, reasoning that if we were going to get one, getting one before a trans-Atlantic trip was a good time to get it.

We went to Target the day before we departed for Ireland and requested the sales associate at the electronics counter unlock us a 16GB, wifi-only, silver iPad from the case. She handed us a box, which in our excitement we didn’t much glance at (you can easily see where this is going, right?) and we ponied up all the Target gift cards we had in our possession.

We finally looked at the box when we got home and to our dismay saw that it was a 16GB 3G-enabled silver iPad. No dice. We returned almost immediately to Target, only to find they had no 16GB, wifi-only iPads. So we drove across town to another Target. They didn’t have any either. So we sat at the snack counter and called three other Targets. They didn’t have any either. So we devised a plan, but first we tried to return the iPad only to be told that if we were going to return a big-ticket item on the same day we purchased it we had to do it at the same store we actually purchased the item from. This, for the record, was the second time in about as many weeks that the Target return policy bit me in the ass, and I did not appreciate it one bit.

So we drove back across town and returned the iPad to the original Target, receiving the original balance of all our gift cards on one Target gift card, which we promptly turned around and used to buy a few Visa gift cards (because you can only buy them in values as high as $100).

Then we drove across town to the Apple store and purchased a 16 GB, wifi-only, silver iPad with our Visa gift cards. The transaction cost us the price of the service charges to activate the Visa cards, which I think was about $20 or $25 total. And about a half tank of gas.