Shopping Carnage

I finally finished buying my birthday present from my folks. They gift carded me to Best Buy with the thought I would get myself a new TV or a GPS. I went another route, buying myself 17 items over at least 20 store trips.

Here's the butcher's bill:

A: document shreader to replace my dead one
B: new DVD player for the bedroom
C: one desktop and one laptop netcams as gifts for my sister and her husband
D: DVDs for the collection: The Incredibles, Ice Age, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Any Given Sunday
E: CDs for the collection: Early Days & Latter Days: Led Zeppelin, Despite Our Differences: Indigo Girls, Love: The Beatles, the Happy Feet soundtrack, and Children Running Through: Patty Griffin
F: GorillaPod camera tripod
G: Replacement Ink set (Actually it was a 56/57 set, not the 45)
H: New earbuds
I: 1 gig data card for my digital camera (up from 256mb)

I think on the whole I did real well, although I did re-gift a fairly large chunk at Christmas. It was real hard to resist the impulse to use my parents birthday gift to purchase them a holiday gift. So that it was just the cameras for my sister was a bit of an achievement in and of itself.

I can't decide if I honored the spirit of the gift or not. As it is, there isn't any one shining new item to point to, but then how many birthday gifts really last three and a half months in the unwrapping phase? And most of the gift went to gift items, not like taking a cash gift and paying bills so it is all things I am able to enjoy. Plus, I can't think of a time where I would have comfortably walked out of a store with this much in discretionary spending behind me. So that is very cool.

Thanks much Mom & Dad!