Politics like School yard Maul Ball

When you get the ball, you run with it the direction you think it should go, only to discover that you can only take it so far.  Once you get there, you have no where to go but back where you came from.  I suppose this makes the system quite one dimentional and finite.   Not to mention that if you get all the way to one end and try to turn around, there's going to be quite the scrum while everyone fights for the ball before running off in the direction of their choice.  I guess Obama got the ball in the end, and now he has to figure out where to run with it. And who's most likely to tackle him.

Spending Freeze

This is getting ridiculous.  I desperately need to curb my spending habits and generally stop wasting money on useless junk.  As a child of the internet, I naturally turned to Google for help finding tips on saving money.  First up, of course, was drafting a budget.  There are many sites that help, and all together, this was fairly straight forward for me, as I do enjoy playing with numbers.  Budget: check.  Next, I started looking at ways to reduce spending to stay within this shiny new budget.   Here's where things got a little off track.  

There are a ton of coupon type sites that offer a list of all sorts of great deals.  Not the least of these was the online portals for the credit cards I already use.  They link directly to many retail chains offering sizable discounts if you use the card you already have (no signing up for new things to get an extra 15% off at the Gap or where ever).  Then the are the redemption codes that are made out to be just as exclusive as so many others. 

All this adds up to tremendous pressure to take "advantage" of the amazing savings!  The whole point of searching for tips in the first place was to reduce my purchases to necessities, and find discounts therein. Instead, I find a mini-fridge that holds 11 bottles of wine in a stainless steal wine rack all at 60% off. What a deal! I should buy that, right now.  I do like wine after all.  And with these other coupons, I can potentially buy 11 bottles at a great price.  Look at all the money I'm saving on stuff I never would have bought had I not been trying to save money!

Why is self-discipline so difficult? Oh well, so who wants to come to my house for a wine tasting party?