Rebelling Against my Inner Frugality

I may as well declare May the Month of Consumerism.  I've always believed you should be frugal where it counts in order to enjoy life.  It's all about having memorable (and when possible, meaningful) experiences.  That's enough justifying.  To the point:  I may have gone a little overboard on my spending this month.

• I put down a $500 deposit on a 7 day cruise for December.  We sail out of Tampa with stops in Belize, Honduras, the Cayman Islands and Mexico.  I even (gulp) reserved a private excursion in Belize.  I've skipped the excursions on the last two cruises.  When I graduated from college I went on a cruise with some friends and we went cave tubing in Belize.  We had such a good time that I had to do it again.
• I bought tickets for three concerts.  When I was a teenager I was attending concerts nearly every week; but it's been years since I've been to one.  I'll be seeing Daughtry in June, Journey/Pat Benetar in August (a surprise birthday present for Mom), and Elton John in Savannah in September.
• I bought my partner a plane ticket for a trip I was planning to do solo.  Might as well make a vacation out of the trip... of course I'll be subsidizing the trip with mystery shops.

With all this fun now planned for the remainder of the year, I'm motivated to work a little bit harder.  Doing a few extra mystery shops when I would otherwise be sitting at home nursing my Internet addiction:  that's a fair trade for the excitement that I can now look forward to.