New Me vs. Old Me

So yesterday at work, being bored, I reverted to my old method of killing time at work—planning imaginary trips. I think it’s great fun, but it has one painful side effect. It stokes the wanderlust. Periodically it stokes it high enough that I actually take one of the trips I’ve just planned. (Sometimes last-minute, sometimes not.)

Yesterday I was thinking about that week we’ll have in our apartment after we return from the wedding. Technically it’s our honeymoon, which will be spent running errands, going to the beach, and having a lot of sex. Of course, I’d much rather do those things in a more exotic locale, but the money just ain’t there right now. So I started thinking of day trips we could take--Tijuana, the Channel Islands, maybe Death Valley. That led into “well, if we’re going to drive to Death Valley, we might as well spend a couple of days and see some other stuff at the same time,” which led to “oooooh! We could go back to the Grand Tetons and spend a long weekend there!” which led to “why not take another mini-road trip through Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming?”

I planned the whole thing out, down to researching hotel rooms, before common sense reminded me that “all that money you’ll spend going to Wyoming would pay off a debt or two.” Damn. But, correct. So then my brain piped back up with “how about just a nice dinner out? That could be the ‘honeymoon.’”

I got a reservation at the Inn at Little Washington.

For those of you that don’t know, the Inn at Little Washington is consistently rated one of the top three or four restaurants in the United States. It’s in a tiny dinky town in Virginia, an hour’s drive outside DC and around two hours’ drive from where the wedding festivities will be. It’s very hard to get a reservation there, I’ve always wanted to go, and a honeymoon sounds like a pretty good reason to go to me. So, problem solved. Right?

Until I did the math.

Now, on an empirical level, I have no problem spending $700 on dinner for two. (Tasting menu + wine pairings = $288 per person, plus tax and tip.) I’ve spent $500 on dinner for myself, and it was worth every penny. This, I guess, is “Old Me.” The Me who would happily drop that kind of money on a fancy-pants dinner. ESPECIALLY with a good reason like a honeymoon. Who is now warring with “New Me,” who says “$700 would buy the two of us a week in New Orleans. Or a Big Green Egg. Or, you know, some dental work and groceries and new tires for the truck and maybe some new socks.”

SIGH. I know I shouldn’t go, but I really really want to! But, you know, fiscal responsibility and adulthood and all that.

So my compromise will be to cancel the reservation (!!!), happily spend the week at the beach/running errands, and download the menu from the restaurant. Then try to make all those yummy things for myself. Maybe when we get some stuff paid down, we can go visit my sister and the new baby, spend that money living it up in New Orleans for a few days, and I can make a fancy-pants multi-course dinner with wine pairings for everybody. And we can eat it in our pajamas.

Not the same at all. But it'll have to do.