basta!

So I was out all day-- got my haircut, bought myself some new clothes and shoes, shopped for a fraction of my necessities, and ended up eating dinner with my brother David. The clothing shopping, while done on a clearance sale day, still set me back a massive amount (two new shirts, two new pants, two ties, a new tie chain, a new pair of shoes, new tee shirts, and a casual shirt), so I decided not to buy half the things on my list. The last thing I need to do is plunge into the red. The other stuff on my list, while important, can wait a pay period.

The French have a cute expression for putting a stop to something that's gathering momentum: mettre le holà, which, if translated literally, means, "putting the whoa [on]," holà being French for the "whoa" used to stop a horse (no relation to the Spanish word for "hello"). Today, j'ai mis le holà to my spending, well before it could get out of hand.

The Korean ladies were delighted to see me at the barbershop. I got the sides and back of my scalp trimmed to more civilized-looking dimensions, but failed to stop the overeager ajumma from slathering gel in my hair. I despise chemicals in the 'do; even shampoo gets rinsed out, after all, and I prefer a pristine scalp. Men and women who pile on the chemicals and end up with helmet head look ridiculous to me, like retarded acolytes of Darth Vader. Normally, when I go to this barbershop, I tell the ladies not to put anything in my hair; today, for whatever reason, I forgot to do so. After gel-flattening my hair, the ajumma laughed when I said I preferred a more forehead-exposing style, with the hair swept back the way a crazy person's might be.

Instead of going straight back home after my haircut and shopping trips, I hung around the Alexandria area and ate dinner with my brother David. He cooked a rather impressive herbed chicken, but there was a moment when I feared that the smoke from his skillet was going to trigger his house's fire alarm. Luckily, that didn't happen. I also watched a few hours of Food Network, which I haven't seen in a long while. I witnessed Bobby Flay lose a lobster mac and cheese throwdown, saw Aarón Sanchez win an intense culinary battle on "Chopped All-Stars," and marveled as Robert Irvine salvaged a dying, mismanaged restaurant on "Restaurant: Impossible."

Why would I be so delighted to watch these shows? Well, you may not know this, because I don't remember whether I blogged about this back when it happened, but about two months ago I took my own lovely TV back to Costco for a full cash refund. Why? As I mentioned before, I wasn't getting much of an income from ETS: from January to March, I worked a total-- a total!-- of ten or fifteen days. How can anyone live on such an income? The only way to make rent, back then, was to get a lot of cash in a hurry, and the TV was my best bet. Because I was still well within the 90-day grace period for full refunds, I very sadly took the TV back to the Costco branch where I'd bought it, and received a wad of cash for my trouble. I made rent-- just barely-- as a result, and the living room has been TV-less since then.

There's a chance I may buy another TV later on, but it's certainly not a high priority. Other financial priorities come first, like staying on top of debt. Since my Fridays are currently free, I may end up doing some tutoring of my own to supplement my income; we'll see. Right now, though, it's good to have a bit of purchasing power; I feel more human again. At the same time, I'm glad I said "Basta!" to over-spending. Things could have gotten ugly.


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