My birthday is this week.
I mentioned that a few days ago already. One thing I only hinted at there is that I rarely do anything special on my birthday anymore. I got out of the habit of birthday celebrations from my years in college and graduate school when my mid-December birthday fell not only in the run-up to Christmas but also during final exams week. On my birthday classmates were generally either studying for their last exam and didn't want to carve out time to celebrate with me, or had already finished their last exam and left town for winter break.
Well, just because I've gotten accustomed to not feeling love from others (other than my spouse of many years) doesn't mean I can't practice a little self-love. Monday night I bought myself an iPad!
I got the idea to treat myself to an iPad when we dropped by a Costco store on Sunday. Right next to the
sale-priced 15" MacBook Air I envied were a few also-sale-priced iPad models. In particular I thought about the $250 iPad 9th generation model.
As we went out to dinner Monday evening I decided I'd drop by local Costco afterward and pick one up. I've never owned an iPad nor felt like it was a good value for me, but for $250 I decided it was worth a small splurge. Except once we were in the store I up-sold myself to the slightly pricier 10th generation iPad, for $350.
What's the difference between the 9th and 10th generation iPads? For one, the 10th gen is available in this beautiful blue color. 😅 The 9th gen only comes in silver or dark gray. Other than that, it has a one year newer processor (A14 chip vs. A13) and has a slightly larger screen (10.9" vs. 10.2') without being bigger overall. Oh, and it uses a USB-C plug instead of a proprietary Apple Lightning plug.
Like I said, this is my first iPad. I'll figure out over the coming days how to fit it into my routines.