Happy Birthday to me

Yesterday was my birthday. I've never minded getting older and for me, birthdays are just an excuse to have an extra good time that day. I usually don't buy myself anything for my birthday, but this year I made an exception. I decided to buy myself a Kindle because now that I'm reading books again, I've rediscovered just how fast I devour books. I bought a paperback on Sunday to read while I was at the laundromat and two hours later it was finished. That brought the total number of books that I read in a week to six. Five of those I will want to read again later, but I don't have room in my RV to keep a bunch of books so I ended up giving some of them to my neighbor. I got to thinking about the Kindle and the other variations of the same thing and decided something like that was a perfect fit for someone who lives in a small space, but loves books. It was a bit more money than I usually spend on myself and not a very practical expense at a time when I should be pinching pennies, but what the hell - who wants to be practical on their birthday?

I know it won't be the same as having a real book in my hand and I much prefer reading off paper instead of a computer screen, but I'm very excited at the thought of eventually having hundreds of my favorite books right at my fingertips. I guess it will be much the same as my migration from albums to MP3s. I still think the music sounds better off an LP, but it's very nice to have the convenience of all my music in easily accessed MP3 files and it's definitely the better music storage solution for RV living. I suspect the same will be true for books.

I wonder what's next? Digital clothing? I'd love to have shirts that could change color or design. That way you could have five physical shirts in the closet, but hundreds of choices. Hopefully someone is working on that right now and it will be in the stores soon so I can also solve my lack of closet space problem.