A Shiny Thing!

Over the weekend, I filed my taxes and am now expecting a chunk of dollars from the government that was larger than I expected. All of those dollars will be thrown into the sucking black hole of my student loan debt except for the ones I decided to use to purchase something that I've been thinking about for a few months.

It came in the mail today.




Ta-da!

A shiny, shiny Kindle Fire.

My laptop is basically a flat desktop computer these days because it's rather cumbersome to carry from room to room and I'm using my tiny little iPod Touch to check blogs/read fic/browse Tumblr/whatever, but it's been slowly messing up my eyeballs because the screen is so small and glowing. If I'm putting around on the iPod for longer than an hour, it takes a while for my eyeballs to readjust and focus on things further than a foot away from my face. I don't have any vision problems otherwise; reading books or my regular ol' Kindle (with the e-ink and the keyboard) or doing the paper embroidery for a long time for the Etsy store don't have the same effect. So, bigger screen away from my face with the same functionality works for me.

Also, I've heard tell of digital books with interesting web-based features and I want to be able to experience those if I buy any books with that option. My original Kindle can barely log into the Amazon book store, so there'd be no luck there.

Also also, portability! Mostly, for crafting. I print out patterns all the time so that I can scribble all over them, but I'm finding that more experience means fewer necessary scribbles (at least, for scarfes, shawls, and socks so far... knock on wood) and I'm starting to run out of room in this pattern binder I'm using to store them. I don't have space for any more binders. And most patterns are available as PDFs these days. So a PDF for the main pattern and a pocket notebook for the scribbles is something I want to work towards. I've heard good things about this system and I would like to have the option to search for a technique when I run into something unfamiliar without having to get up in the middle of a show or go to the other side of the house to look it up.

Also also also, but really the last straw that pushed me to clicking Add to Cart, travel. I don't travel often, but my friend Shannon loves to travel and has folded me in to her plans for one really cool trip per year. A couple of years ago, it was Universal in Florida for nerdery after the release of the last movie. Last year, it was down to the Maryland Renaissance Faire. This year, the plan is to spend four days at Disney World later this year. I don't foresee doing much computing, but I'd like to have a small, portable, but not iPod option for it when that happens.

So... yeah. I'm excited about this. :D


And I've been working on a cool sock.