*quirky eyebrow*

And at which point in your argument are we 
supposed to be overwhelmed with sympathy?

There are very few of us here who get everything 
they want. For instance, I'm a grad student, and 
I'm putting hubby through law school at the same 
time. We both work full-time, and go to school at 
night. We give up our weekends-- to study. We 
give up a honkin' big part of our income-- for 
tuition. We give up our evenings-- for class. And 
somewhere, during that time, we keep a nice house 
clean, keep the fridge full of food, and keep 
clean clothes in the closets. :o)

Things are tight. *You* go looking at law school 
tuition. O_o But we keep a good budget, and give 
ourselves a little fun money to go crazy with, 
and that's where my cels come from. If I've spent 
all my fun money for a month-- guess what? I'll 
have to actually show a little restraint, and not 
buy a new cel, or a DVD, or a few volumes of 
manga, even though I really want to. I keep a 
list on my computer, bookmarked, of the various 
vendors' pages. If a cel I've been eyeing gets 
bought up... I get over it, and find something 
else.

We're people, too. I'm sure some of us have jobs. 
Some of have allowances. But I sincerely doubt 
that many of us go around and are able to buy 
everything they feel like. As a consequence, we 
save our money and pass on many wonderful cels. 
We do without a few trips to the movies, or 
eating out, or buying new shoes, so we can afford 
something we like. But, if given the choice 
between stepping on someone else just to be 
selfish, I would certainly hope that most of us 
would put ourselves second, behind of what's the 
right thing to do.

We've all been in your position. We've all wanted 
*some* cel, *somewhere*, and missed out. We 
sympathize with that. But we think that your way 
around it, and the way you're rationalizing it, 
is a pretty dishonest way of building a 
collection. And the even sadder part is, you seem 
to be pretty clueless as to *why* you're drawing 
fire. It's not really seeming to dawn on you that 
maybe, just *maybe*, you made a bad choice that 
was self-centered, immature, and dishonest. 
You're falling over yourself, trying to justify 
yourself to us... but even if you said you had a 
change of heart and returned all the money, who 
would believe you?

:o(
-Cres