taxes and birthday presents

i did my taxes this week. i had some concerns about how they would work out, but in the end it's not so bad. in fact, it's enough not so bad that i'm considering buying myself a late birthday present. i have this tendency to buy myself birthday presents. it's like once a year i get this itch to spend some money. so this time, i'm contemplating a new laptop. my current laptop is about at the end of its usefulness. it has two main jobs: surf the internet and provide storage for photos when i'm away from home. it's still doing a good job of storing photos, but it's not doing so hot with the surfing part. it needs a flash update, but i can't update it because the operating system won't support the current version. the battery is completely dead, so it has to be plugged in all the time. this is especially frustrating when i move and accidentally unplug it. like i did while typing this post. :) it doesn't load some of the pages i'd like to read on a regular basis - like brian's and katie's. it gets stuck on fancy scripts that i can't describe because it won't load them for me to describe them. and it can't comment on facebook posts. that's right - my facebooking options are limited to reading & looking at pictures. so ... yeah, my laptop's pretty much at the end of its usefulness.

so i was thinking of buying a laptop comparable to what my parents are using. i know they work well on facebook. and i tested a netflix movie on one of them, and it streamed quite smoothly. but then my dad mentioned looking at dell's inspirons. did you know they make them with interchangeable lids? i know there are adhesive skins - but this is so much cooler. it's a hard plastic lid that snaps into place like it was meant to be there. and they've got some of the cutest choices. of course, it costs almost four times as much. it is brand new, as opposed to used from ebay ... but four times as much?

this is why i limit my large purchases to once a year. it takes me about that long to decide to actually spend the money. and once i make the decision, i have to act quickly before i change my mind.