Gas and Snacks

Here's another weird thing I am wondering about. So where I live, gas is down to $1.74. Whoo Hoo! Yay. Do you think that now that gas prices are less, people will buy more snacks at the gas station?

I read or heard somewhere that gas stations make most of their money on snacks and stuff sold inside of the gas station, rather than from gas. If gas costs less, are you more likely to buy a candy bar than if it costs more?

I think so for most people, but even when gas prices were so high this past summer, I still bought snacks. The difference between this summer and now is huge though, even with my 10 gallon gas tank. $4.25 a gallon translates to over $42 a fill up. And $1.74 a gallon translates to $17.40, so that's a big difference.

I'm glad my car isn't bigger though. I know a woman who drives a Suburban, and she was paying over $100 a fill up this summer. I could not have afforded that! Although a Suburban isn't exactly in my budget either... I'll keep my Civic with it's 36 miles per gallon average for city and highway. (I calculate my gas mileage periodically.)

A stumper...

I'm trying to design a pattern for knitting socks, and here's something I am wondering about... If a number is divisible by both 4 and 3, is it also divisible by 12? If so, then I could make the number of cast on stitches divisible by 12 and life would be easy.

I want to do a ribbing pattern of 3 and 1, hence the 4. I like my stitches evenly divided among my 3 sock needles, hence the 3. I am strange, I know. Although I could do a 4x1 rib and deal in multiples of 5. I'm inspired by a cool sweater I saw somebody wearing. It was either a 3x1 or a 4x1 ribbing. I didn't want to stare though, so I couldn't determine which it was. But I thought, hmm that would look good in a pair of socks. And the numbers wouldn't matter so much, but I want to carry the ribbing down the top of the foot too.

What's an Alberta Clipper?

Alberta Clippers are dominating our Madison, WI weather, and will through the week. We've got one on the way tomorrow and one following that on Friday. So what's an Alberta Clipper? A new hockey team from Edmonton?

It's a low pressure system that originates in Western Canada and brings snow, high winds, and unseasonably cold weather to the Great Lakes region. These are not the systems that bring the most accumulation of snow to our region, but they can bring up to 6 inches, just enough to make driving challenging. Once it passes over the Great Lakes, it can produce lake effect snow and if it goes into the Atlantic Ocean, an Alberta Clipper can become a Nor'easter. And I believe, if I am not mistaken, that Alberta Clippers travel along the Jet Stream.

I wonder how much snow we'll get tomorrow. I'm hearing 3-5 inches on the Weather Channel.

death valley

Craig and I just got back from our Mojave Desert Vacation. We visited the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and Death Valley, all of which are in the Mojave Desert.

This is me at the Devil's Golf Course at Death Valley National Park. It's all salt deposits like the chunk I am holding up, and apparently only the Devil could play golf here (don't ask me). The elevation was somewhere between -182 and -282 feet below sea level and the temperature was 91 degrees F.

This is Craig at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. He's surrounded by salt deposits and extremely salty water. You wouldn't want to drink it, hence the name Badwater.

Death Valley is a funny place. It's between two mountain ranges made by two faults, and it's still sinking today because the area is still seismically active. What's weird though is that although we were so far below sea level, it didn't feel that way. The ocean was nowhere in sight, and all we could see in any direction was mountains.

The Lake is gone - not a good way to wake up

Every morning, for years now, I've been listening to the Greg Bair morning show on 93.1 The Lake in Madison. It's a Classic Rock format, and it was a good mix of music and news. Too many morning shows are more talk than music, and that's just not what I want. This morning, my radio came on but the music was different. Hip Hop was playing, not Classic Rock. It turns out that The Lake is gone. What a horrible way to wake up!

I'll have to find another radio station. But for the record, I do not approve.

I hate stumps!

I cut down these ridiculously ugly bushes in front of my house. Mostly I did it because they greatly reduced the visibility along the steps leading up to my h0use, making it very easy to trip! Cutting them down was difficult but not impossible. I used a chainsaw and loppers. It took a few days, but I was happy to see them gone, and I cannot wait to replace them with something pretty! My only stumbling block is the stumps they left behind.

I don't want to use one of those stump-dissolving chemicals because that would take a long time. I thought I could cut down at least to the ground with my sawzall, but no luck there. I saw a site online that suggested using a spade to dig a trench around the stump and then using a landscaping bar to break up the roots and lever up the stump. So, I went to the local hardware store to buy a landscaping bar. The trouble... Yes there was trouble. I couldn't lift any of the landscaping bars there! Ugh! So I couldn't even purchase a landscaping bar, let alone whack at roots with it.

So I'm at an impasse. I will probably hire somebody to come in and remove the stumps for me. Grr though because I'd really like to be self-sufficient in this matter and remove the stumps myself.

My inability to remove stumps also presents me with an expensive problem. I have a yard full of unwanted, ugly, and overgrown bushes. I could cut them all down, but I'd still be left with the stumps which would just regrow ugly bushes!

The Pineapple Project

In every episode of Psych, there is a pineapple somewhere. Sometimes these pineapples are obvious, and other times, they are rather subtle. I looked around online and even on the Psych official web site, and I could not find a source listing the pineapples on Psych. I was left with one choice: watch a lot of Psych episodes and compile my own list.

Why is there a pineapple in episode? I don't know, and the Psych cast and crew have many of their own theories. By the way, there is a pineapple in the fish tank on the top of the official Psych web page.

Here are my pineapple sightings so far (at some point, I will organize this list by season):

• Psy vs Psy: Shawn makes a pineapple upside down cake using an EZ Bake oven he bought on eBay.
• If You Are So Smart, then Why Are You Dead: There are pineapple drink glasses on Shawn's Dad's tiki bar.
• Gus Walks into a Bank: There are 3 pineapple sightings in this episode!
  • Shawn complains about the pizza toppings that they don't even have ham and pineapple
  • There is a pineapple in the fruit bowl. Shawn walks past it on the way to the bathroom
  • There is a pineapple cutout on the zipline snack delivery system
• American Duos: Shawn brings Emilina a Pineapple
• And Down the Stretch Comes Murder: Shawn's dad gets him to wear a green Hawaiian-style shirt emblazoned with pineapples.
  

Pineapple picture courtesy of Flickr user Giniger.