Here is Eppie, yet another more-necessary-than-fun gadget purchase. But the time had come. About a month or so ago I noticed that my old Epson 3-in-one printer/scanner/photocopier had run out of ink. And then I saw that they had a special offer at Fnac on a new Epson model for about 60 euros. Doing the math I reckoned that buying new ink cartridges for about 40 euros for an old machine that printed like crap was not worth it if I could get a whole new machine including cartridges for 60. But then I decided that, as it was getting close to the end of the “school year”, I probably wouldn’t need the photocopier much until September anyhow, and the massive HP Deskjet that Susan left with me last year when she moved to Florida served fine as a printer, so I let that idea go thinking I could use that 60 euros elsewhere. And then today I bought this. I blame Loki…

You see, Yolanda the vet told me when I picked Loki up after his operation last Tuesday that it would be best to start him on special cat food for castrated males – and she gave me a small bag of this food “on the house” to mix in with his kitten food now. And so, once Loki’s finished that off he’ll go straight on the lower-cal stuff, as castrated cats have a tendency to put on weight. Because, as Yolanda pointed out, Loki was already showing quite a belly for an otherwise lean and lanky cat. So this morning Nog & I went to the Corte Inglés supermarket and I said I wanted to check out the prices of this special cat food upstairs in the pet department. Which is right next to the electronics department. I think you know where I’m going here.

Nog knows me so well that without thinking he headed for the computer section as soon as we stepped off the escalator. Ha. I DO like to browse … and dream … and I ended up asking the salesclerk if they had any of the new Toshiba Portegé series 700. I can’t help it. I just love looking at and touching this stuff. And while she was looking it up to see if they had it at another store I happened to see the Epson I almost bought in Fnac sitting next to a superior Epson model for the same price! When the salesclerk saw me eyeballing the Epsons she very helpfully said – “Oh, and today you get an extra 16% off if you buy any electronics, but it’s a one-day offer”. Well, I ask you …

The other thing that pushed me to pilfer 50 euros from the deposit money of the tenants next door in order to buy this new machine was that last week I’d managed to score a summer job for Nog. Well, only for July, but he’ll be teaching English to the two small sons of the events co-ordinator of The Seville Cathedral! Four days a week. And frankly, he’ll need a photocopier at home to get all his material together. Kids that age devour teaching material like crazy and you always need to have at least twice as much as you think you’ll need. Attention span issues and all. And so … I now have Eppie. With the original sale price and the extra 16% discount Eppie ended up costing 50 euros, including ink cartridges. So basically, she cost me about 10 euros.

I am seriously going to keep this in mind because these 3-in-one jobs always tend to go wonky after about a year or so (my old one is now at least three years old and has been printing like total crap for the last two years). When you can get a new model for basically 10 euros why even bother buying the ink cartridges once the original one starts failing? Have learned my lesson.