[Expletive]!

I've had a 12-inch PowerBook G4 for several years. I love this little thing. It goes well with my OCD issues -- it's so small and neat and elegant.

I've taken good care of it over the years. But then one night a couple months ago, I was sitting here on the couch with it in my lap, and I must have shifted because

down
it
went.

It hit the floor. Still, everything seemed to be working OK. But then one night last week I went to insert a disk into the drive and it didn't work. Turns out the optical drive is, as the Apple employee described this afternoon, kaput. The cost to fix? $329.

I went ahead and set up the appointment to drop it off (you have to schedule such appointments with the geniuses at Apple's Genius Bar). Afterward, though, the pain in my gut wouldn't go away. It was more than the holy-crap-it's-going-to-be-$329! Granted, that was part of it, but it was more that it was a bad investment for an older computer. In computer years, this laptop is ancient. I'd be better off buying a new one when I can afford it. It will be inconvenient not to have a disk drive until then, but I don't really use the drive that much these days. I'd used it to upload music, but now I mostly download from iTunes.

It was a tough decision to make -- I'm the type of person who likes for all her things to work perfectly. Sure, I could've charged the repair. I could've taken money out of savings for it. But my goal is to be debt free and have $10,000 in savings in October 2010. For all this to happen, tough decisions have to be made, and this is one of them.