In the gran American tradition of buying on credit, I ordered myself a laptop yesterday.

D got himself one last week, and he knew I'd been wanting one too.....so last night he asked me if I'd like to go order myself one as an early Christmas present.

I thought about it for a bit before I said yes.  Did I need one?  Not at the moment, but I'm starting a class in a month and a laptop would be really useful then...in fact, given the type of class I'm going to be taking, a laptop will be almost invaluable.  Did I want one?  Does a bear crap in the woods?  Of course I wanted one.  Can we afford it?  Yeah. We can. 

So, I ordered myself an Inspiron with a wireless card in it.  It's going to serve every purpose for me...I can't think of anything that I'm NOT going to be able to do on it. I also got a bag to carry it in - I was looking at them in local stores over the weekend and couldn't find anything I really liked, but found one online that has, of all things, a little 'junk' drawer in the bottom of it to keep all your bits and pieces in.  I can keep my laptop AND my Notary seals in it...it's going to be multi purpose.  Besides, if I'm going to spend a fair old chunk on a laptop, I should buy a bag that's going to help protect my investment, right?

The wireless router came this morning.  We're going to hook that up in a little while.  Dave's been on the web all weekend on someon elses wifi connection, but as of today he'll have his own.  We're also thinking that getting wireless cards for the 2 kid's computers might be a good idea.  The're all getting to the age where they need to use the internet to research homework projects, and our eldest has been wanting to use Word to write and print her essays more and more...so perhaps letting her have a computer with internet access in her room would be a good idea.  I think that we're going to give her the benefit of the doubt to start with and NOT install net nanny or a chat blocker, but if I find that she's been chatting or visiting places she shouldn't visit....well, she can kiss goodbye to the computer in her room and she'll have to use the main PC in the living room.  She's a good kid, and I don't think that she'd get into chattting....but you never know. 

As I've been sitting here writing this, I've been thinking about all the things that we have.  We've done really very well for ourselves, you know.  We've got ourselves out of a horrible financial mess, and we're finally able to afford some things that we consider 'nice'.  Yes, our vehicles are older, but they run, and more importantly we'll OWN one outright by the start of '06. Our furniture may be second hand, but...we OWN that too.   We're not rich, not by a long shot, but...all the hard work, all the years of going without and making do so that we could be in a better financial boat....they're starting to pay off.  More specifically, we're starting to see the pay-off.  We have what we need, and we're starting to be able to afford things what we WANT.

I'm getting a Dell! Schweet!