And I bought a lottery ticket, because that’s my best hope of building the Bucket.
Check that, it’s my second-best chance. My best chance is going to Richard Rawlings with my parts and saying he can keep the car if I can drive it to Goodguys and SCCA Solo events with Gas Monkey on the sides. So I see that as slightly better than the proverbial snowball in Wichita Falls on the finish line of the Hotter ‘n’ Hell Hundred in the full sun. And given the odds on winning the lottery, that shows how much I believe that will work. “Hey I have a choice between winning the lottery and convincing a reality TV star to build my car, which do I think is more likely?” Obviously convincing the reality TV star is going to be easier more likely than winning the lottery, but not by a whole bunch.
On the groceries, I have noticed that corporate tax breaks haven’t shown up in consumer prices any more than they have in paychecks. Groceries are way up in the last few months, especially in the things I can cook and eat. We actually bought a package of fish fillets for the week, after buying a pound of ground beef last week. Milk is back up over $2.50 a gallon for the store brand, near $5/gallon for brand name. The little pizzas we buy have gone from $0.99 each to $1.49 each. Pop Tarts are stupid expensive, with the 8 count boxes almost $3, and the generic stuff is exactly the same price per pastry after you factor in the lower count per box. Sure it looks cheaper, but the store brand has 6 per box compared to the 8 of the name brand. At least potatoes are still cheap, but I noticed that dried beans on sale are more than they were regular price a year ago. I don’t know how I could lower my standard of living any more and still continue to eat.
And while we are on the subject of maintaining a standard of living, I still haven’t been able to find a plasma center that will tell me what I will make before I commit to their center. How can a person comparison price, if the price is a deep dark secret? Turns out the business is pretty much a cartel system with only 4 buyers who collude to keep buying prices as low as possible while charging as much as the market will bear for the collected plasma. That’s in this country, over in the EU donors are restricted to 1/4 the donations extractions allowed in the US and the per-extraction price more than reflects that. And I’m Just Some Dude so I have no say except to not participate.
And another cold front is moving through with more freezing drizzle, yay! I have no place to go so I’m mainly worried for my friends who have to travel for work tomorrow. And the forecast is high 60s when I head to the Lab Rat Keeper on Valentines Day, and near 80 the day after. Yay!Texas weather. 😛
Witch on a Bicycle 