On a silver platter

There seem to be weeks when all my frugal urges go out the window and I find myself with an insatiable urge to buy every single meal. This was only partially one of those weeks - I would have been quite happy to cook and eat at home as usual but the wheel of fortune had other ideas. By and large, eating out here is very reasonable but unfortunately 10 times very reasonable is still quite a large number. It does save on washing up though.

A lot of it was necessary, to be fair. I was missing a photo for a blog post so I early in the week had to buy a bento and unleash my inner food stylist for an unannounced photoshoot in the meeting room. I was interrupted at one stage while snapping shots of my flirtatiously-angled subject; the lady looked no less shocked by the fact it was just a lunchbox. A couple of days later I had to go out for an orientation and ended up at an Indian restaurant for lunch. My coworker insisted on ordering us both the deluxe meal so for most of the afternoon I was more butter chicken than man. The next day I was invited out to have curry again, so I spent lunchtime chatting away in Japanese and eating a piece of naan the size of a boogieboard.

This all led up to our only pre-planned meal out of the week - yakiniku with Mel and Adam on Saturday night. Before that, I tried to repent for some of my badness with a trip out to the gym. I tried a new routine which obviously worked, because I've been walking like a girl in a kimono since. We wandered in and out of the covered shopping strips to keep out of the lashing rain and eventually stopped in for our scheduled trip to Mr Donut. By this stage it was time to meet the gang so we headed to the restaurant and ordered up more meat and potato salad than 4 people should be able to process. It seemed like a shame to leave it at that, so we wandered over to "Round 1" after dinner, a huge amusement complex with floor after floor of UFO catchers, bowling alleys and karaoke rooms. After a spot of Mario Kart and Taiko Drum Master, our number came up and we bowled our little hearts out until midnight.

The next morning was our apartment's scheduled common area cleaning; this is typically a pointless, guilt-ridden experience so we decided to escape properly this time. We leapt up with about as much energy as you could expect from 9am on a Sunday and zoomed down to the station for the final nail in the culinary coffin - breakfast at Maccas. Lisa bought some clothes at an opening sale and then we returned to our apartment building which looked exactly as messy as we left it. I wish more things I didn't like could be fixed with a sausage McMuffin.

We've made all the usual grand promises to be good this week but I'm going to consider anything that gets us over the line a good option. I'm tired and term foury and if the odd BBQ gets me to December in one piece then pop the griddle on. It's 3 weeks until the last of my big tasks and then we're just a few last minute trips and a packed suitcase away from reality again. Is that a good thing? We still can't make up our minds.