Saturday was a good day. I sat in a cafe and started on my new book, The Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland. Then I worked out for an hour, and did half an hour of weights.

Later I went to the mall to check out the sales, and ended up buying a new skirt to wear for easter service and a long rayon skirt that was a steal at $27. It's not a skirt I'd wear to work, but it's a skirt I'd wear to a nice dinner; a dinner skirt.

On Sunday I was bad. I went to Palm Sunday service, and then on whim decided to check out the outlet stores in Petaluma. There's a Coach outlet store there, and I have this horrible habit of buying a new bag every time I start a new job.

I told myself I wasn't going to buy a new purse, and instead pick up a new makeup case for my purse. My current makeup purse is dotted with pen stains and other stains of unknown origins. It's not like I needed another Coach bag because I already own six of them. But old habits die hard, and yes I bought another Coach bag. This new one wasn't as expensive as the last Coach bag I bought, but it wasn't cheap either. And of course, I also bought a new makeup bag.

But the evil god of shopping must have been sitting on my shoulder, because I ended up with several more purchases. Like I really need to buy new clothes when I need to replace my tv so I can buy a DVD player, not to mention I need to replace my cd player because it now won't play some of my cds.

At the Nine West outlet, I ended up trying on a pair of black heels that were so darned comfortable I had to buy them. They're not the best looking shoes I've seen in my life, but for heels they're divinely comfortable.

At the Jones New York outlet store, I bought three skirts for the unbelievable price of $65. The skirts were 1) a knee length plaid skirt in green 2) a linen knee length blend skirt in blue and 3) a knee length denim skirt. Can't beat the price for these pricey clothes.

At the Liz Clairborne outlet, I bought a long blue skirt that I have to lose about 5 pounds to fit into. The print was gorgeous so I had to have it. Then I bought a necklace with matching earrings, and couple more pairs of earrings. Not as good of a deal like at Jones New York, but not too shabby either.

At the Bass outlet, I almost bought a pair of penny loafers. I haven't worn those since college, and they would have looked so cute with the plaid skirt. But they didn't have my size. I ended up buying two t-shirts to wear under sweater for $10 each.

On the way home, I stopped at the Staples store in Novato and bought a new record book for note taking at work. My boss has the same kind of book and I was admiring it. The sucker was not cheap at $34, but it's got 300 pages and it looks so professional. I was taking notes in a steno book, and after 13 days I had filled 75% of it. I take a ton of notes at all those darn meetings that I have to attend.

Wandering around Staples I started to feel twinges of guilt for all the money I had that day, so I bought a box of envelopes to save money and address labels. I was going to buy those nice custom address labels, but decided it was cheaper to print my own. I could print them and put a sticker on them for a decoration.

Then lastly, I went grocery shopping and bought food so I could start bringing my lunch to work 4 days a week to make up for all the money I spent.

Thankfully I cashed in about four weeks of vacation time when I left my old job, so I have some extra money. I was going to use part of that money to buy a new TV, DVD player and stereo, which I'm probably still going to do and then pay some debts off with the remainder.

I love all my purchases because it's so fun to have new work clothes that actually fit. My old work clothes fit, but they're really loose around the hips. That's the reason I keep telling to myself to justify all my clothes shopping.

Like I really need new clothes right now when I'm still trying to lose weight. With my luck, in two months these new clothes will also be too loose on me. That will kind of irritate me a little bit, although the shopaholic part of me can't wait till that day.