I just had my last roll of film developed, and it made me kind of sad. I entered the digital photo age kicking and screaming. I loved my 35mm camera, loved the packets of shiny photos I had developed, loved the photo albums and scrapbooks I made with them. I feared my digital photos would never make it off my hard drive into prints. (I was mostly right about that, too. I don’t know which is worse: boxes of unsorted prints or computer files of unsorted images!)

I’m totally a digital convert now—I love the ability to take tons of photos and, even better, the simple software that allows me to crop and otherwise enhance them so I have images I think are beautiful. I’m looking into websites that allow you to make photo books to replace the scrapbooks and photo albums I used to make. The excitement of sending my film away and seeing if the photos I took are as good as I think they will be has been replaced by immediately checking the images, then popping a memory card into my laptop. Now that I’m converted to digital, I’m going to sell my 35mm SLR camera. It makes me a little sad, but I don’t need it or use it anymore.

So what was on that roll of film? Before-and-after photos of our kitchen when we changed the countertops from Formica to granite and added a new backsplash. (We made this home improvement right before Christmas—that’s when we do all our home improvements. It adds that perfect touch of panic to the festivities.) My husband and I were thinner. Nick was shorter. And Crusher was still with us. (Sniffle.)

Sometimes technology makes life better—it certainly has made photography more fun and easier for me, even though I still have a lot more to learn. My husband says I’ll soon exchange my paper books for an e-reader, but I’m not so sure about that. There’s more to reading a book than seeing words on a page.

How has technology made your life better? Is there anything you said you’d never do/try/use that you now find indispensable, like my digital camera?