Consumer Goodwill

Wow. The teahouse near work has added salads to its menu, and I ordered a personal favorite: Insalata Caprese (fresh buffalo mozzarella with basil and roma tomatoes). At about $7 for an entree salad, it's a fair price especially considering that this is in Palo Alto. And they gave me the whole cheese - imported from Italy, basil as strong as I've ever had it, and about 3 Roma tomatoes, flavorful and fresh. Again, wow. Very generous - and practically at cost! I couldn't prepare it at home myself for less (especially after gas).

Mmmmmmmmm good.

Triviality

Filled up to a half tank this morning. One side effect of higher gas prices is that managing a "perfect pump" is considerably harder than it used to be. Back when local prices were around $2.35 a gallon on average, I managed a perfect pump perhaps once out of every two fill-ups. The amount of manual-temporal precision required now that local prices average $3.60 a gallon, however, seems to be beyond my ability. No perfect pumps in the last year. It's not a big deal or anything, but it's just one of the many ways it has managed to make life less fun than it was before.


"Sweet Mother of God, STOP!!"
- M. Mellow, paying for gas and watching the pump meter on the road trip back from San Luis Obispo