Vacation Time, And The Grocery Shrink Ray…
Five weeks. That’s how much vacation time I have accrued. My employer allows us to store up to three months worth and then you begin to loose it. I doubt I’ll ever get that much stored away, but a couple years ago when the layoffs were pending I had two months stored, because if they lay you off you get your unused vacation time as part of the severance. A lot of us back then were hording our vacation time in case we needed it to tide us over between jobs. I’m not willingly hording mine now…I just can’t afford to take the kind of vacation I like…the extended road trip. The cost of gas is forcing me to hold off until I get some actual money saved up, as opposed to vacation time alone.
But saving that money has become unaccountably hard lately. Well…not… I know what’s happening. I only think I’m cutting down on my gas expense. In reality, I’m just nibbling at it. You may think you’re saving money by not driving as much too. Well…no. You aren’t.
Oh yes…I see the price of gas creeping back down a tad at the local gas stations, and the corporate news media is waving that around. Whoop-de-do. Oh look…it’s back below four dollars a gallon now! Sweet! But you need to keep in mind that you’re paying for fuel every time you buy something. What’s that you say? Your grocery bill hasn’t risen all that much? Hahahahaha…
Here’s a fun little mystery for you guys. How can taking away 4 oz of coffee produce more cups of coffee? We’ve been thinking about it ever since Blueprint for Financial Prosperity sent us this photo the other day, and we just can’t figure it out. Could it be magic? Some strange new property of the Grocery Shrink Ray?
Click on that last link…the one marked Grocery Shrink Ray. Go ahead. In the meantime, I need to add The Consumerist to my blog roll. They’re kinda like the Upfront and Selling It pages of Consumer Reports, but more pissed off.
August 7th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Dieting just got easier! 2 out of 3 doctors got herpes from partners that chew gum! Chesterfields: Good for you! Or…best for you!
Of course the oil companies are posting obscene quarterly profits….yet the neo-cons poo-pooh that claiming that it is only "Virtual profits" in that it is based on oil futures for crude that hasn’t yet been harvested. Yeah right, at best thats really a hedged bet on the war securing more oil supply.
But your basic theory is flawed: You STILL have to drive to the store to pay MORE for less. So you CAN afford a long drive in the country…..just don’t eat.
I have been working on a hydrogen generator. A device that uses electricity to break water into its Hydrogen and Oxygen, which is an extremely useful and clean fuel. Yes it works. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
I haven’t yet settled on a design efficient enough to mount the thing in my car, but it is entirely feasible. There is always a trade off with Newton’s laws. It draws a bit of amperage off of the alternator to produce the hydrogen, and unless you go REALLY over the top, you won’t run your entire car off of such a device. BUT the "Hydroxy" will suppliment gasoline and give you considerably, and noticeable, more mileage.
A $150 dollar Volvo will be especially immune to such experiments going wrong: If it doesn’t work out, it is easily reversable. But I doubt you’d want to tinker with a really nice Benz with this thing.
I think my best hope is for 40 MPG. Some people claim up to 90 MPG…..Maybe on a moped.
But that is not going to solve my coffee addiction becoming much more expensive. The coffee houses around here have had to jack their prices up by .20 to .50 cents per cup.
And do we dare to think that Obama can actually reverse this?
The silver lining, in a sour grapes sort of way is that all of this is FINALLY forcing the consumer to at least THINK about a more "DIY" and smaller shoe-sized carbon footprint. And things such as public transit….which is ALSO going up cost wise, for the same reasons.
In other news, the Topeka blvd bridge across the mighty Kaw river is finally finished. $51 million bucks. And I’m not sure that the $51 million is entirely out of line. And they added a whole lot of pretty, decorative, attractive lighting on the thing…..but as soon as the grand-opening party for the bridge happened, they told us "The lights will remain off, it costs too much to turn them on and run them".
Too bad it never occured to anyone before hand to make the lights solar-powered, wind powered AND hydropowered from that river below. Those devices can be "prettied up" easily, and could be a neat-o "bragging point" to the world: Topeka has the best (And maybe only?) solar-powered bridge in the world.
Of course the draw-back is that it leads to north Topeka…..where we keep all of our broke white-trash who can’t afford gas to drive across the bridge anyway.
Babble babble rant rant rant…….I can do THAT for free!