Re-acquainting myself

Ages ago, before I made space in this lovely little room of mine for business files etc,  my Cricut sat on the worktop behind me, thus:

You can just see it.  Buried under stuff - this photo is from the June 2010 file, so I've no memory as to the excuse for the clutter, but you can see, it's pretty well buried and ignored.  And so it has been; until today.  I wanted bunting for a LO and oh boy if you think you're bad at cutting straight lined squares - try a decent triangle...eventually you'll swear, throw your scissors on the table, and decide on a proper course of action.  The space above is now given over to business stuff, so the un-used Cricut went onto a bottom shelf, behind cartridges and other less used stuff.  This of course, has rendered it unattractive in ease of use terms.  Ah well.  It's now set up and running like a dream, on the dining table.  I'd forgotten what a good tool it is.  How useful it is.  How easy it is to use.  So why did I fall out of love with it?  Wellllllllll, it's a bit of a story I think, but ultimately has to do with keeping up with the latest trends again.  I got bogged down in the array of cartridges that were being released...several were exclusive to new model machines only and that really bothered me.  Still does.  As in all product lines, cartridges started to hold less images and indeed, 'spread' the better images across more than one...which made the cost of them an even bigger issue. I was a bit tired of the few cartridges I'd got too. And then there was the whole get-of-your-butt-plug-it-in-and-make-magic-with-it thing.  I got lazy I guess.   So, me and the machine have had an 18 month hiatus.  And today I cut a whole Alpha, some numbers, some triangles and some sign posts.  Nothing major.  But very useful, which is all a good tool should be, huh.  Techniques I've discovered in the last 18 months mean that the stock I used to cut the shapes has since been embossed, inked and added to in other ways, so now truly the Cricut is a good foundation tool.  Rather than say 2 years ago when the cut out images would have been the first thing you'd have noticed on my LO.  So the moral of this story - if you're tired with it..put it away a while, just like Dr Spock recommends about children's toys.  Re-acquaint yourself after a decent period of time and re-assess.  It might be worthwhile.  I wonder if this theory can be applied to housework?
Can't show you a pic of the LO...computer has crashed every time I tried to introduce new files...guess where it's going on Monday!  
Meanwhile, have a great weekend.  If you're looking for a crop - we're meeting at Ludgershall tomorrow.