&%!@#*! Updates

For those of you keeping track:

we’re still flailing around with the WordPress install on my own server

still experiencing technical difficulties with the paintball website

still re-doing the pages for the rim worlds website

still in the process of selling our business

STILL trying to squeeze out a couple of uninterrupted hours to finish the current story

and

very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, frustrated with the non-resolution of so many different things.

To give you some idea of how frustrated, I didn’t copy and paste those ‘very’s, I typed every last one of them – not that it helped any.

I hate sitting and twiddling when you’ve done everything you can to make things happen.  I know it’s not talk like a pirate day but – AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGH!

Anyhow.

Food shopping yesterday did not help my mental state in the least.  Our larder needed a serious restocking and I generally look at food shopping (which I do the majority of) as a fun adventure where I scope out the best buys and get creative in putting meals together - good meals – as inexpensively as possible.

Me, a bowl of ramen noodle with a couple of hot dogs cut up into it will do, but Karen really prefers a little more variety although – and here’s a major tangent -

we were talking last nite about what an utter waste of time eating is, and we both agreed that eating is, in fact, an utter waste of time.

I recounted how the joke around the neighborhood where I grew up was that ‘Steve wants to eat like the Jetsons, one pill and off you go’, and Karen lamented the fact that not only are there no personal jetpacks, but there are no three course meals in a pill either.

I don’t know where Karen obtained her disdain for meal time.  Mine is almost definately genetic. When I was a mere babe my Mother tool me to the doctors because “he’s just not eating”. The Doctor (a practical, old school, house calls in a buggy type GP) examined me, found me entirely healthy and said to my mother “He’s healthy. He’ll eat when he’s hungry.  You can either deal with it or give him a complex.”

Fortunately, my long suffering mother (and at that time she had no idea HOW long suffering she was destined to be) decided to skip the complex.  I was famous for eating TWO cheerios out of an entire bowl and then declaring that I didn’t want any more breakfast.

I strongly suspect that Karen’s early childhood was similar.

Back to the shopping.

I don’t mind having to hunt for deals – I’ve always done that. I’m willing to experiment with generic brands (I know a lot of folks aren’t) and found it to be a mixed bag.  You’re usually pretty safe with staples, but not much else. (Dave’s Dumpster Dogs are NOT ‘just the same as a name brand’.)

Shopping as I do pretty much on a weekly basis, I’ve been accutely aware of the steep and unending rise in food prices.  I watched as canned cat food went from a (bargain rate) as low as 18 cents a can to 50 to 60 cents a can.  I usually paid 23 cents, so no matter how you slice it, the cat budget has doubled in a couple of months.

And, yeah, that’s all part of the economy, stupid & etc., but I’ll tell you that the advantage that the supermarkets are taking of the situation really, really drives me right up the wall.

It’s bad enough that everything has virtually doubled in price, but when the marketing mavens at the stores start screwing  – deliberately – with pricing in an effort to fool you into spending more money, it’s time to do something.  What, I don’t know.

Our local supermarket which is in the (unfortunate) position of having a local monopoly (the next closes ‘market is at least 20 minutes away) has relatively high prices to begin with.  Now they’ve taken to fixing prices that take advantage of people’s ingrained habits.  Like – larger quantities are supposed to give you a better unit price, right? 

Not there.  I’ve checked.  Every single item that has two or more size offerings is MORE expensive when purchased in quantity.  Here’s an example:

Bumblebee tuna, 12 oz cans at 3.49 per. 

Bumblebee tuna, 8 oz cans at 1.00 per.

I took the 10 cans for 10 dollars special on the small size, netting 80 ounces of tuna for 10 bucks.  I was originally going to purchase four 12 ounce cans, for a total of 48 ounces and a price tag of  13.96.

But here’s the kicker: the reason I was going for the large sized cans was they were on special too – 2 cans for five dollars. Ten bucks for four cans – but only 48 ounces of tuna, not 80 ounces of tuna!

I’ve learned their little scheme and now have to spend even more time in the store calculating; it’s not easy any more.  It used to be that the ‘large size’ of whatever was two, or three, or four, or more of the ‘small’ sized packages.  Comparing prices was easy.  A single can of whatever costs 1.19. The large size is two of those and only costs 2.06 – bargain!.

But now they’ve started screwing with the package sizes.  The large size is no longer two of the small size, it’s only one and a half.  Looks like a bargain, but isn’t when you do the math.

Don’t get me started on paper towel.  Every single damn one of those packages has a different price, a different number of sheets on the roll, a different total length…YOU try comparing mega pack with 80 sheets per roll and x meters total to the bargain single roll with 63 sheets and y meters of paper.

And don’t get me started on people who get into the express lane with MORE THAN TEN ITEMS!!!

I’m tellin ya, one of these days I’m going to find out just how far you can cram a perdue oven stuffer roaster up someone’s fundament…