Friday, November 26, 2004

Bye, Buy Nothing Day

I did try. I really did try to buy nothing today. I planned on hunkering down at home, working on stuff and not enter into any commercial transaction or enterprise. Instead I ended up going to South St. hospital in London to make a pastoral visit.

En route, I cashed a couple cheques and some coinage - a financial transaction, but still no purchase. I stopped at a particular store to price a particular item (a Christmas gift) to find a spectacular deal on a last-in-stock item. CBC talked about "Buy Nothing Christmas" whose intended spirit is "buy smarter" rather than "buy blindly". Getting this particular gift now was the smart thing to do. Although ... technically, I did not buy it. Mastercard did.

My noble journey unequivocally ended with $5.51 at Tim Horton's for my BLT, Boston Cream and black coffee. Being a person of artificially-moderated blood sugar levels, I could not put this purchase off.

I did otherwise manage to buy nothing today: using our domestic vacuum to clean the car instead of the commercial hose job at the car wash; postponing our purified water refill until tomorrow; not paying for the CD player that I grabbed out of some church ... (a joke, that last one. Really! Ask the bastard who was chasing me).

Maybe I'll be able to buy nothing on Monday. Or maybe I can block out today's lunch hour.

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