Of Department Stores, Cooking, a TV and the Mail

Last year ended with a wave of self induced stress, but was followed by a delightful vacation home to Seattle. The vacation is followed by an unsolved mystery, but I won't go into details just yet...My mom loves everything Christmas, so the house was well decorated with trees and other decorations. The highlight of Christmas, of course, is opening presents. It is good to give AND to receive, so the day after Christmas my mom, sister and I got dressed up and headed downtown. As my sister's boyfriend noted, he knows of no other family who can spend an entire day opening gifts and then go out and shop more the next day. He may not know another family, but retail sales will show that there are, in fact, many families who do this. There was a Golden Era of Department Stores in the past-- ladies would dress up or families would go and get lunch at the cafeteria. We like to pretend that a day in the city is still worth more than the cost of one's purchases, so we fixed our hair, dressed in our nice clothes and reported to the Nordstrom's makeup counter to have our makeup and colors done. We followed this by lunch with cocktails and appetizers.
The theme of gifts received this year was Kitchen. A crock pot, panini press and kitchen island/butcher block were all received, in addition to many, many cookbooks. G decided that a perfect compliment to staying home and cooking would be a tv. I've been proudly stoic in my lack of this modern amenity the past several months. I've always felt that one can accomplish more (reading, excercising, seeing the city) without a tv, although I will admit to watching a plethora of movies. New Year's Day we headed to Best Buy, hungover, and purchased a tv. And this is where the mystery heads into full swing. Some background:
December 23:
Andrea to G: "Why aren't we getting our mail on time? Shouldn't we have received many, many more holiday cards? Why isn't my New Yorker here? And where are those blasted Netflix movies??"
Possible explanations: We aren't as well loved as we thought OR the postal carrier reads and delivers my New Yorker late, after reading it and disheveling it and devilishly keeps our movies from us. G goes with option 2 and calls the post office to complain.
Fast forward to 2006, January 3:
G to Andrea: "I'm sorry, I accidentally ripped the cover to your New Yorker. I'll tape it together and I'm sorry."
Andrea to G: "No problem, accidents happen." (then sees the REAL damage done, and NOT by G). "There are entire pages ripped out?!?! How can I read the short fiction? Or the review of the James Agee box set?" The destruction was unprecedented. I sent off a complaint to the postal service today, but my night was ruined. Did the postal carrier receive our initial complaint and sabotage our mail? OR, is the tv to blame...(because we have a tv, reading is rendered unnecessary, and the Powers That Be are punishing us).