Furmeet without the 'fest part

[altivo]

Steed and Bear arrived Friday evening from MFF, and we went out for dinner and hung out. They stayed overnight and this morning we had breakfast (I made an apple-filled German pancake, with bacon and lots of coffee) and we played around with the horses and dogs and then took photos of Steed in his fursuit before they went back to the hotel to catch the parade and head home.

So I got a little bit of MFF without actually having to brave the madness.

Went grocery shopping, and observed that the price of gasoline is fluctuating wildly in town here. This week the observed prices have been:

Monday about 8 pm, $2.62
Tuesday afternoon, $2.63
Thursday about 8 pm, $2.75
Saturday 2:30 pm, $2.59
Saturday 4:00 pm, $2.57

This is all recorded at the exact same station. Meanwhile, up in Harvard, prices have been locked solid at $2.74 for a couple of weeks. Down in Dekalb on Thursday the price seemed to be $2.59 everywhere I looked, and it was similar to that in Indiana last Sunday. In Ohio I saw one station at $2.39, though, and several at $2.44.

Some NaNo progress, gaining ground but not fast enough.

Current word count: 19,878
Today's quota: 35,007

Comments

[dar-han.livejournal.com]

And meanwhile, gasoline here fluctuates arond the $3.65 mark... and oil companies still pretend they're selling at a loss at that price! >.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually, for the relative isolation of Madagascar, that doesn't seem so terrible though I doubt they are taking a loss on it. If they were, the price would just go up. Europe pays double that and more.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Our gasoline varies from $2.65 to $2.75. I was more amazed that milk, even whole milk, at BJ's, has been at $1.89 a gallon for a month or more. And that's for Land'o'Lakes, not some generic unknown.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Milk prices are weird. It used to be that whole milk was higher because the butter fat was worth so much more on its own. Now the price of whole, 2%, 1% or skim are all the same here. You're paying for the packaging and shipping, it seems, and not the product. Even stranger to me is the fact that a gallon is $1.89 and a half gallon is $1.59. Expensive packaging apparently. The dairy farmers are dropping like flies, I hear.

At least it's logical that the price of butter has plummeted. A year ago it was as high as $5 a pound, and now it's as low as $1.29 or less.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want to be a dairy farmer, or any farmer at this point. The only profit goes to the damn suppliers, not the growers, or so it seems. I remember when milk was subsidized, and a carton at school was 3 cents... does that take you back? ;o)

I saw on the news when they were paying the dairy farmers to reduce their herds: branding the faces of the cows that were supposed to be cut out. brrrr. I vaguely understand economics, but to purposely not produce food when so many are in want of it is insanity.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This is an old problem in the US. Capitalism has run wild here for far too long, and greed governs everything. The current economic crash in banking and real estate is clear proof of the fact. The same problems permeate everything else to varying extents, and food is one of the bad places. Have you read The Omnivore's Dilemma or In Defense of Food yet?

Yeah, I do remember the little square three cent milk cartons. We seem to be pretty much of an age.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Now that I think of it, even though that was the McCarthy era and I was already fairly aware of politics and actually reading newspapers, I don't remember screeching teabaggers screaming "Socialism! Socialism!" about subsidized school milk or surplus food for the elderly and unemployed, both of which were large programs back then.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

What I really recall was my Weekly Reader and LBJ's (Ladybird's, I guess) highway beautification program. That and the Space Race. I'm fairly apolitical.

I haven't read the mentioned book, but maybe after finishing Catching Fire I'll rip the cd's and listen to it at night at work. Makes the time gallop by.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

That's actually pretty steady :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Steady except for that absurd twitch around Wednesday. I still think that prices here are being set by purely arbitrary means.