It's alive!!

[wraithfodder]

Yes, my life is so exciting I'm videotaping the bluebbery pie that's fresh out of the oven. However, the bubbling, and squeaking noises, are amusing. Okay, maybe just to me, but I'm waitin for it to cool down so I can eat it! :)

Otherwise, today I got robbed. Bought gas. $3.579 a gallon!!! for the cheap stuff! However, I drove by another gas station and it was $3.759 for the cheap stuff. It's insane. Gas is gonna be over $4 if not more by Memorial Day, which will make our annual MediaWest*Con drive rather pricey, and if you attend MW*C, the sign-up phase is now going on. More details at http://blog.mediawestcon.org/

Also, I've discovered the joys of audiobooks (okay, I'm a bit behind). I went through the cassette audiobooks I got at the summer library sales - got a Tony Hillerman novel and a Robin Cook one (that's because my car is so old it has a cassette player). It really  makes the daily commute better. However, got my hands on the doohickie connectors so I can now connect my CD players to the cassette player and listen to the books on CD, of which there are LOTS more in the library. I'm working my way through thrillers. Just finished Kyle Mills' Darkness Falls, about ecoterrorists of sorts destroying the oil fields. I listened to that as I watched gasoline go up over a dime in one week. ACK! I've determined, despite length, that unabridged is far better than abridged (listened to one abridged one done by Stephen Collins - about a killer shark - and it was like listening to a SyFy film) ;)  Right now I'm going through the library stock, as well, it's free, although if anybody  has recommendations for good thrillers/horror/scifi. There's still a few more Robin Cooks and Tony Hillermans to go through at my library.

The snow is melting. A day or so of rain, plus no snowstorms and some higher temps, helped immensely. The driveway is now basically snow free. The lawn is not. The bluejay I buried in the snow has yet to resurface. Sorta hoping something digs it up as frozen food soon. I had to clear all the ice/snow/bird seed under bird feeder as it turned into a hideous mess, and oh yea, they found the pumpkin! I had put it there by the birdfeeder, hoping squirrels would eat it, but it got buried under snow. Then, the squirrels found it and hollowed it out. Here's the pumpkin pothole picture:

Comments

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

1 gallon = 3.7854 liter.
German gas is 1.57 Euro per liter at the moment(depends, can also be 1.55 or 1.59)

So 1.57 x 3.7854 = 5.94 Euro/gallon.

5.94 Euro = 8.18 USD. So, don't complain? LOL

Seriously, gas in the US is quite cheap.

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

According to dieastra's calculations (thank you, I only work in Finance!) 1 gallon = 3.7854 litre. Thus we are paying from $1.29 to $1.41 a litre which converts to....um... $4.88 to $5.34 a litre. Agreed that US prices are waay cheaper than most places. :)

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

Oh, I got the gallon-liter thing from google ;) Hope it's right.
And it is possible that my Euro-Dollar conversion is not exact either, working in Finance you surely know that there are several different prices, not only just one, which always confuses me.

I tried three different (online) calculators - two gave me the 8 Dollar price, and one also some that was more close to your 5 something. So anywhere in between!

And I really wonder what we will do once the oil is finished. It's not only gas that's going into - so many other things, including medicaments. But we throw it away with cheap plastic bags... (I'm from former Eastern Germany, and we did not have those. Everyone had a bag with him all the time, in case the shops had something special. Also not everything in the shops were sealed three times in plastic. Pencils for example were sold just laying in boxes. To they really need an extra plastic cover?)

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Once oil is finished? Unless there's a new energy source, society crumbles. No more plastic bags, no more DVDs. Petroleum is sooo prevalent in so much that well, it won't be pretty (that is of course if we're not all nuked back into the dark age by some stupid war starting).

I agree on getting rid of plastic bags (with exception of carrying some food stuffs, like meat). Far too many of 'em end up in landfills, do no one any good.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

No more DVDs? OMG hadn't thought of that. What shall I do without DVDs? Well, I guess by that time we all have super fast DSL and stream every movie we want to watch directly. No DVDs needed, but lots of energy!

Guess with the things that happen in the world right now, this will be the least of our problems.

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I've seen articles about the price of gas/petrol overseas. It's horrendous. I think here, even though it's cheap, it is painful because many people have long commutes (45 minute commute one way is the norm around here) and whenever gas goes up, all the business jack up their prices, so we get hit with that hidden 'gas tax'.

The only folks getting rich are the *#!#! commodities traders who are driving up the price so they can get rich.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

There are certainly a lot of people commuting in Germany as well. Some even so far from Eastern to Western Germany, Monday there and Friday back. But they get tax money refunded for the kilometers.

Have you heard from the bio gas? We got it a few weeks ago, but nobody knows what it does to the engines, and whether it is really better for the environment or not.

[mechturtle.livejournal.com]

If you have an mp3 player (my cassette adapter from my CD player works fine in my iPod's earphone jack), you may find something you like at the Audiofic Archive. It's a searchable database of fan fiction read aloud and recorded by fans. There's a range of reader and technical quality, but I've found some good stuff there. Some of the first stories of Martha Wilson's Retrograde series (SGA/SG1 alternate timeline with Sheppard whumpage) are archived there.

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I should be able to burn to CD and listen :)

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

I work in Finance means I can't count 2 + 2 without a calculator :)

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Ha! You should work for the US govt then ;)

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

I work for the State Government!!! LOL

[archersangel.livejournal.com]

that's quite a pothole

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the ice was several inches thick. I chipped it all out so it's back down to dirt now.