Happy payday to meeeee...

It's payday today, and despite the fact that a pay cut has kicked in and I've sorted all my bills and stuck some cash into my savings, I still have moolah to play with.

This is because I will have not one, not two, but THREE (count 'em!) paydays in July. We're paid fortnightly, and having been paid weekly and monthly and, shall we say, sporadically in the past, I definitely think it's easiest to manage the finances with fortnightly pay. There's none of the accidental "I feel so RICH!" overspend followed by three weeks of stoney brokeness that goes hand-in-hand with being paid monthly, and it's easier to budget for monthly expenditure than when you're on weekly pay.

I'll be saving some of those pennies for Oxegen, but in the meantime I'm indulging in some window (or maybe screen?) shopping.

Trilby & frocks: Oasis. Shoes: Office.

What's keeping me from spending my pennies on these lovelies is that big bad ol' Sterling/Euro conversion chestnut. The shoes, for example, are £55 on the Office website, but €80 in their Irish stores. XE.com reckons that £55 is in or around €64 at today's rate of exchange, which is about a week's lunch spend away from 80 quid for me, and I just can't stomach handing over that difference.

Why is it that whenever you've a bit of cash for shopping, the universe always seems to step in with a roadblock of some kind?