Upgrades

I'm taking the plunge. I'm leaving my current university and abandoning my physio degree to pursue life with Cowboy. I'm moving out of London. I'm clearing out my possessions.

Let's gloss over the part where I clear out my freezer and promptly buy 30 packs of fish from the door-to-door fish guy. Way to downsize, Bee.

Part of my strategy for this next phase of life is to consider how to best equip myself for the future. I recently purchased a laser printer - an extravagance by usual standards, and I'd never considered how much of an improvement it might be over my juddering inkjet. My inkjet guzzles ink cartridges, and clunks laboriously through the pages. Its saving graces are that it is red, and it has a flatbed scanner built in.

Then my black box of a colour laser printer arrived, and quietly glides through a 20 page print job in next to no time. All it asks is that I reinsert the paper so it can print both sides.

"Do I really need this?" I asked myself when it arrived, still packaged and returnable. I thought about it for a moment. I was still a student, and had pages of notes to print out most days. There were long articles to read and annotate. Then I thought about my business, and how much paperwork gets generated by the day to day admin of keeping the company going.

Then I thought ahead to when Cowboy's business is up and running, and we'll have liability release forms to print, records for the horses, invoices, advertising materials, letters... If I have a second business alongside that, there's more paperwork than you can shake a stick at. I've conveniently skipped over the paperwork involved for our visa application that faces us in the future, because I don't want to think about how stressful that's going to be.

I look at Black Box with a vague sense of respect. If it can keep going and keep up with what we'll be throwing at it in the future, it will be worth every penny.

I now look at my battered iPhone 4, which has tolerated all of the abuse I've put it through over the last three years and only protests by occasionally not letting me press the home screen button. Is it time to upgrade myself? My dad is starting to eye up my iPhone as his next phone (he is still using my cast-off Nokia from 2004). Perhaps it's time to invest in the next phase, for both of us.

When I move over to the US, it's probably time to splash out on a really good kettle. A few really good saucepans. Things that will last. The days of buying the Argos Value range are probably numbered.

It's about time.