Two Places

There are two places that I should not be allowed to enter when I'm trying to budget.
Well, realistically, there are A LOT of places I should not be allowed to enter when I'm trying to budget, but heres two of them:



It all started out innocently enough, as it always does. My psych professor offered us an extra credit assignment (only 5 points, but still extra credit) of writing a reaction paper to this movie:

I'd seen the movie when it first came out, but that was a couple of years ago, but figured that it would be best to watch the movie again to refresh my memory. Why not just rent it? Theres a fair chance that I may owe Blockbuster some cash. So, I went in search of the DVD. It was not available at either of the two Walmarts I went to, so I decided to swing by Barnes and Noble, they didn't have it either but I decided to browse the clearance section. Thats where everything started to unravel. Thats where everything always starts to unravel for my budget and me - the clearance section.
It started innocently enough with this:

It was only $2.99 in the bargain bin! Jackpot! I LOVE home spa remedies! I LOVE L'Occitane! How cool could this possibly be?
I'll tell you how cool. It has such eye opening tips as "Avoid soaking in the bath for longer than about 20 minutes, or the skin will become overhydrated and look as wrinkly as a prune." and "Apply a face mask suitable for your skin's needs and leave it on for 10 minutes or as directed." Seriously? I don't know that I would have ever figured any of that out. On the plus side, it does have some good suggestions for different combinations of essential oils. And the back has a directory of every single L'Occitane store in the whole entire world.
Then I wandered beyond the clearance section where I picked up just a couple of items.
First

Atonement by Ian McEwan.
I thought the movie was fantastic, and I just finished reading another novel of his, Enduring Love, which was great as well.
Then I picked this up

I've been hearing about this series everywhere so thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. Although, I probably will save this for last since theres a series and if I like it I will probably want to go straight into the next book in the series.
Then I found this



The synopsis on the back grabbed me

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Downs syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt him all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafter story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.

How could I NOT pick up this book?

Then I wandered into the biography section and got this

The title alone is awesome:
Bitter is the New Black - Confessions of a condescending, egomaniacal, self-centered Smart-ass, or why you should never carry a Prada Bag to the unemployment office.
and then theres the synopsis on the back:

This is the story of how a haughty former sorority girl went from having a household income of almost a quarter-million dollars to being evicted from a ghetto apartment.... It's a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture: a story in which "the central character, called a tragic protagonist or hero, suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected" In other words? The bitch had it coming.

Plus, I've been reading the authors blog for a few weeks now and it sounds promising.
Just a couple of shelves up I found this

Why a novel was in the biographies section, I'll never know, but it is fitting.
I picked this up because I have been a member of the bridal party in five different weddings so far in my lifetime if you include the childhood flower girl trips down the aisle:
1 - 1979 flower girl in my moms first wedding
2 - 1982 flower girl in my youngest aunts first wedding
3 - 1998 maid of honor in my moms second wedding
4 - 1999 maid of honor in my cousins wedding
5 - 2007 bridesmaid in my oldest friends wedding
and now I've been asked to be a bridesmaid in TWO weddings next year.
The obligatory synopsis

What do you do after you walk down the aisle at four weddings over the course of just a few months - none of them your own? What's left after you've donned the must-have-not dresses of the season, forked over your case, and fake-smiled your way through countless photos? After you've dealt with the smashed guest, the mushed cake, the dashed hopes, and the missed bouquets? That's what Cate Padgett is starting to wonder, as she embarks on stint after stint on the sidelines, watching friends swap bar-hopping for baby-naming...while her own love life goes nowhere fast. But is Cate unwilling to settle down - or just unwilling to settle? And can anyone really judge her if they haven't walked in her dyed-to-match shoes?
Wild, witty, and full of weddings to cry over, Always the Bridesmaid is an endearingly romantic comedy about standing out in the crowd even when everyone's wearing the same celery-green dress...and daring to make every day The Happiest Day of Your Life.

If this novel ends predictably with the protagonist catching the bouquet, finding the man of her dreams, falling head-over-heels in love and him proposing, I will vomit.
My hand to God.
In the end, I never found the DVD I was looking for, but I think I remember enough about it to BS my way through a "reaction" paper to it.