Chapter 3: How Magic and (Dare I Say) Karma Resulted in a Spur-of-the-Moment Indulgence (Or How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Purchasing My Nook)

Introduction and Prologue
Chapter 1: The Rise of the eReader
Chapter 2: In Which Dinah Veritably Salivates Over the Nook

Not everyone who reads this will know me, so for those who don't, I have a tendency to keep very busy. I almost always have something going on and some plans in the works. What this has meant recently is that I have some rather expensive plans in the works coming up and, in addition to buying a car and the upkeep on that, all of my spare money was going toward trips I would be making in the future. For every new thing I had to pay for, I realized it was going to be yet another month until I could afford to purchase a Nook. In mid-September, by my calendar and financial planning, I determined that I would finally be able to buy myself a Nook sometime in mid to late November. By then I would have finished paying for my trip to China, I would be back from Wrockstock, and I would be caught up on my bills. In the meantime, however, I was living on the extra $30-40 per paycheck, and that wasn't going particularly smoothly.

One night, a friend told me a story of his good fortune to find hundreds of dollars in his account when he anticipated very few. To this, my immediate response was, "If the $3 in my account magically turned into $300, that would probably be the most amazing thing ever." Little did I know, things were already beginning to turn around for me.


A few days later, I reached the point where I could ignore my account balance no longer. I needed to confirm that I hadn't accidentally overdrawn or I would be a ball of anxiety for days. When I looked, if you'll believe it, the approximately $3 that had been in my account were multiplied to over $330. As it turned out, the bank had charged me 10 overdraft fees in error and their way of correcting it was simply returning the money. A part of me wants to call this a cash-in on my Karma points, but just to be on the safe side, I simply refer to it as MAGIC.

This sudden surplus not only allowed me to pay more into a couple credit cards, but it allowed me to put aside $100 for personal fun use. I wasn't sure how I would use it quite yet, but I had a few ideas floating around in my mind.

Just a day or two later, I was driving right by the local Barnes and Noble and I instantly thought about the Nook. The logical part of my brain took charge and told me to keep on driving, that I was already prepared to wait until mid-November and that I should stick with that plan. That $100 could be better used for any number of purposes. So I drove past, like a sensible person should. Half a block further, that gremlin in the back of my mind (you remember him from my early Kindle days?) came sprinting to the front of my mind, flawlessly jumping all hurdles in the process shouting for me to turn around, that I deserved to give myself a treat after dedicating an entire day to helping someone else (I was returning home from a Habitat for Humanity build). Well, kids, I saw a small road off to the left and next thing I knew, I was flipping a U-turn and heading back to Barnes and Noble.

I walked in, straight to the Nook table and told the girl there exactly what my plan was. We briefly discussed what it came with and what I would want to purchase with it immediately to keep it from breaking due to clumsiness before I had the opportunity of getting the Kate Spade cover I wanted (it's soooooo pretty). Twenty minutes later, I had paid and was out the door, possessively clutching the box containing my new Nook in my hands (in such a way as to remind me of the midnight release party at that very same store where I was the first person in the line to receive my copy of the final Harry Potter book).

All I had left to do then was go home, plug it in, and begin the discovery process anew.

To read the rest of this series, see the following links:
Chapter 4: Discovering Felicity, the Fierce Amazon Nook Within ("Amazon" in the Xena: Warrior Princess sort of way, not the company)