Thursday, September 09, 2004

Decisions, Decisions....

Yesterday, I had a coversation with my travel demon. He said I really ought to fly off to Thailand and Cambodia for 17 days. Casually reeling off justifications like birthday, my long time goal of exploring Angkor Wat, exotic Christmas shopping opportunities, and so on.

Travel is not a hard sell in Bohica land -- so he didn't break a sweat.

Somehow I resisted my base nature, managing to not book the excursion willy nilly. So of course, over night the usual happened -- my Inner John woke up and started gibbering.

Think of the things you could do with that money.

All familiar with Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice -- "it's a fee, just a fee, just a fee nothing more..."

In truth -- the princely sum required would allow for a complete overhaul of the downstairs flooring situation. To include eradication of carpet, cool concrete staining, area rugs... for about 1200 square feet of space. Plus it would cover various incidentals like a new pool table and light, wrought iron for the upstairs deck, and possibly even stretch for two new leather love seats for the fireplace room.

Not to be undone, the travel demon speaks: The carpet is fine. You just cleaned it. It could last several more years and even endure a tenant before it really needed replacing. Your mom offered up her way cool and underutilized pool table -- which only requires moving and a light is a piffle of an expense. You spend zero time on the deck -- so why waste cash on furniture? Further, the leather in the fireplace room is just fine and dandy. Do you -- who is constantly angsty about the amount of crap you own as it is -- really need to acquire more?

All true. Damn his black heart.

But Inner John is not done with me either.

Why spend at all? Invest instead. Every dollar you spend now is four dollars you won't have when you retire.

Bleh.

Then again, I could die tomorrow without seeing Angkor Wat and I'm already retired.

posted by Bohica at 2:43 PM