>My nominees:
>
>Cheap mustard, up 10%
>Hot dog relish, up 10%
>Yogurt, up 20%
>Blue Windshield fluid, up 50%
>
Get thee to a Walmart.
Also, do you recall if what you bought originally was on sale in the first place? Same store as you shopped at the first time? Not to be discriminatory or anything but I really just don't trust a man--especially a tenured prof--to really know a whole lot about how to shop and get the best buys. I mean I do know some men who are capable and competent, but I know many more women who are sensitive to the subtleties of shifts in prices for ordinary foodstuffs and sundry items like windshield fluid. For ex, if you bought the fluid just before the snow season it was likely on sale since most of the stores run this item as a loss leader in order to get folks into the store to stock up because most folks use the blue stuff in the winter and don't use it during the rest of the year because you can easily use water instead of the blue stuff. Why are you using the blue stuff right now, btw? It's not *that* cold in Albany yet??!! All in all it is much cheaper to concoct your own version of the stuff: alcohol, a bit of vinegar, and h2o. If you buy the alcohol on sale (3 for a buck at your local Eckerd's about once every two months), it should cost you about forty cents. You can even make it *any* color you please. Why be blue? Also, make your own hotdog relish--just mix mustard and regular relish. Very cool and to suit your taste. Oh yeah, this list is dominated by economists who would say that you'd have to account for the cost of the time it takes to make all this stuff. Hmmm, how much more would that make it? And when you calculate the cost of Greg's time, would it be counted at his prof salary or as the average wage of a food service worker? Of course, could there be some benefit that one could actually reap from doing these menial sorts of tasks. And could that benefit be measured and counted? How?
Oh and afaict meat prices have decreased by 15%-25%
SnitgrrRl, tongue-in-cheek and non-econo-drone