Our first real test

(Emily's voice) - Pictures taken from Peter Singer's article "Peter Singer's Solution to World Poverty" published in the New York Times On the Web dated Sept. 5, 1999 (http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/singermag.html).

The past two nights in a row we have been invited out to hang out with friends and spend money on things that we don't need to! Friday night we were invited to go and see a movie and last night we were invited to a local pub for a friend's birthday party.

We already used up our one-movie-a-month money earlier in the month to see "9" (which I highly recommend to everyone; super animation and a really creative idea for a post-apocalyptic world). Fortunately, my sister gave us a gift card to the movie theatre for my birthday and we still had some money left on that so we used it up Friday night (no more freebees!)

But last night. Oh last night! There is nothing I love more than to meet a bunch of friends down at the Madhouse for a pint of cider and some delicious sweet potato fries. I love it so much that I have been known to go and sit there by myself at 4 pm to guarantee a table for when everyone else arrives at 6!

So we arrived and announced that we wouldn't be staying long and asked the waiter if it would be possible just to get 2 waters. In most restaurants the wait staff would look at you with disbelief (did they just order 2 waters?). But, lucky for us there are places like the Madhouse where the staff are decent folk and are happy to fulfill such a request. It probably helped that we were sitting at a table with 8 other people, all of whom just ordered a crap load of appetizers (pretty sure the waiter is going to get a large tip, whether we order anything or not). Now the table is laden with delicious treats like nachos, chicken wings and the aforementioned sweet potato fries and it took all of my will power (and trust me folks, I don't have much!) to not look at the steaming plates. It kind of felt like when you walk into a room and there is someone there you don't really want to talk to so you try not to make eye contact. I found myself doing that with the food; do not make eye contact, do not make eye contact.

Now, by this point, my salivary glands were squirting with anticipation, all my senses alight with yearning. And then I had a sobering thought. We are not eating food in this restaurant to help the starving children around the world. The amount of food sitting on this table right now, is more food than some children will see in a week, let alone one evening. We have a whole fridge filled with food back at home. Go home and eat the food you have already paid for.

Okay. So that really was our first test. Can we go out and still have some fun without feeling pressured to spend money? Yes. We can do it.