Downtime

Our broadband at the house was cut off for a while, due to some disorganisation and miscommunication, and as such I was limited to my 3G allowance on my phone (which rapidly ran out), and to trying to remember what I did before we had the internet.

It provided some downtime, and gave a kickstart to a few projects. I started packing up my possessions ready to move out of London. I've filled ten archive boxes with junk, and don't appear to have made any headway whatsoever.

I started writing again: I made a small dent in both the trashy romance I started a while ago, and a dent in the rewrite of my trashy fantasy novel which took me ten years to put down a complete draft.

I even picked up a book and read for a while. I often feel guilty about reading, as if I should only do it when I have nothing better to do, and certainly not in the daytime, and really the only acceptable place to read is in bed, and only then if there's nothing else that needs doing.

Reading has become an expensive luxury, not a commodity. I remember when I was younger, I would pull out the futon in my room into its chaise longue shape, sit under my reading light and plough through an entire Robert Jordan novel in a day or two (Aside: I never did finish the Wheel of Time series, I think I gave up caring).

These days, I can barely get through ten pages. I'm not sure why. It might be a lack of a suitable space in which to read, or that I always feel there is something more important that I should be doing. Of course, I am no longer a teenager who doesn't have to feed herself or pay rent, so there are a few more important distractions about than there used to be, but it would be good to re-establish a reading habit. The last book that I chewed through at a voracious pace was Lonesome Dove, which was more addictive than my Xbox at the time. I'm yet to find a book that sucks me in so well.

I have also watched a lot of The West Wing, as I have the DVD box set (stolen from my parents), and as a result I have a slight girl crush on CJ Cregg, who is probably the most inspiring, wonderful, powerful female character I've seen on TV since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the only situation in which Buffy would beat CJ would be in a vampire slaying competition (and even then I'm not sure).

I have upgraded myself to an iPhone 5s - it's white and shiny and has a fancy red leather cover because I don't trust myself not to drop it or try to hold it in my teeth and other foolish things to do with expensive equipment, and I've already put Siri to good use texting people while I'm driving. Siri is not good at understanding me yet, but he's trying. Mostly, I am enjoying the lack of delay between touching the screen and things happening. Good night, sweet iPhone 4, you have served me well, but your day is done.

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.