I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello...

...hello, hello! Oh, Beatles...love that song.

Our family has had two exciting new editions in the last 24 hours, but it meant saying goodbye to two of our favorite little "members" of the family...

...let me tell you a story. (Ignore my un-makeup'd face and unflattering figure! :o))

My little laptop has had quite a rough existence. Mainly it's put ME through a rough existence. In the 3 years we've known each other, his hard drive has crashed once, his operating system has crashed once, and his hard drive has been reformatted twice. Oh, and i've been through two charging cables with this poor guy. The repair guys say one in four computers is a dud...I guess we found one! The poor little computer always worked so hard for me. Never gave up when I was writing a paper or in a time crunch for a deadline. Never told me to go back to homework when I was on Facebook (or Blogger!).

So, I was quite disappointed to find out yesterday (by three repair places), after my computer refused to charge for anything, that the charging port inside the computer was shattered to pieces. Apparently this is a very fragile part of a laptop, and my laptop has been quite mobile over the last three years.

Last night, Mitch and I made a very "adult-like" decision...since my computer was going to be $250 to repair, we decided to break down and buy a desktop. I was lucky enough not to lose any of my information, (i've already done that TWICE!) I was just told that at the end of its battery life, may or may not ever charge again. So, with me taking a full load of classes, including 4 online classes, something had to be done.

We decided on a desktop because 1) i'm a year and a half/two years away from being done with school and wouldn't need a laptop much longer, 2) my major doesn't require me to have a laptop in class much, 3) they're generally cheaper, and 4) they generally last longer, if you don't tote them all over the United States and subject them to horrible treatment on airplanes like mine was.

So, it was off to the store. And the internet. And our pocketbooks...thank goodness for financial aid, right!? This is the exact reason we are so grateful for grant money, and I feel like it was the exact use it was intended for this semester!

Mitch mentioned on the way to the store that he didn't want his computer anymore if we were getting a desktop, but he WILL still need a laptop. His laptop is beautiful; it was a $900 HP a few years ago when he bought it, and NOTHING has gone wrong. However, it also weighs as much as a baby elephant and is very bulky and wide (ya know, he got one of those cool ones that has the HUGE-O screen for movies and fun stuff...)

So, we made another adult decision. Turns out, after turning 21 on Sept. 20th, the adult decisions are now swarming me (and Mitch, who's been and "adult" for awhile now)...computers, babies, marriage, jeez! When did I become an adult? Oh, right. September 20th.

We decided to sell both mine and Mitch's computers to a computer repair place in town and buy a desktop and a simple laptop. We wanted a netbook, but lots of the anatomy programs Mitch has to have won't display on the small screen.

It was kind of sad to see them go this morning! The money we got from mine bought a new monitor for our desktop, and the money we got from his basically paid for the desktop itself and part of his laptop. Sweet deal, huh?

We are in love with our new computers, and having a little "office" space set up in our apartment makes us feel all the more grown up! Our baby room was an office for awhile, but we never sat down at the desk. Here we have a place for both of us to sit and do homework and feel very organized! Everything has a little place and has fit well so far.

We also are in LOVE with Windows 7! I had XP on my old computer, and Mitch had Vista (but never had a problem with it! Lucky guy!) However, I LOVE all the fun little tricks! There's Home Sharing, where we can access each other's files when both the computers are on, etc. It is something to get used to to have two family computers, not one of "mine" and one of "his."

We had to make a few minor adjustments; we took the leaf and four chairs away from our table. One of the chairs sits at the computer desk now, (which is now in the dining room instead of the baby room) and the three other chairs are spread out around our apartment--one in the baby room and two in our room.

We still have a few adjustments to go: hanging a bulletin board or picture or something over our awful gray electrical box, etc.

One day we'll have more room to spread out, but we love our little apartment, even if it does get a little tight! We're just college students...we don't need it all :o)

(PS--another reward is well-deserved by the people who make it to the end of my long, jabbery posts!! Sorry I don't have a picture of our new laptop...it's in Mitch's backpack at nightclass with him! :o)