For the last fifteen or so years, I have always had an ink-jet printer–which has been wonderful, since, as I’ve mentioned, I like sparkly stuff, including colorful stuff. Well, in the spring of 2006, I was faced with the need to print two copies of my master’s thesis manuscript, Happy Endings Inc. With the price of a new black ink cartridge for my HP 6122 Deskjet around $45-50, knowing I’d need at least two cartridges to print two copies of 337 pages at “best” quality, I decided to see if I could find an inexpensive laser printer for this purpose.

I went to the online outlet for my dad’s favorite store, Fry’s, and found a refurbished Brother HL-2040 laser printer for only $90–with a $10 rebate! Needless to say, I snapped it up, because the rebate made up for the shipping cost.

I’ve used the laser printer more than the color printer over the last eighteen months. It’s been nice to have the option of printing in color or not—but never moreso than today.

For the last twenty minutes, I’ve had both printers going steadily, printing the full manuscript of Ransome’s Honor so that I can get down and dirty with working on revisions. I’m printing the first sixteen chapters with all of my crit partners’ comments and markings on the color printer, and the remainder of the first draft that I haven’t worked on revising yet on the laser printer (and the laser printer, printing 2/3 more pages, just finished, while the color printer is still going!).

Oh, and I had to go to Staples to pick up a ream of paper and I looked for a pen with sparkly purple ink. They didn’t have any sparkly ink pens, but I did pick up a couple that were labled as “vibrant” purple. So as soon as the inkjet finishes these last couple of pages, I’m digging in!