I went to the flea market at the fair grounds today (free parking and free entry, by the way). It was HUGE!! as promised. There were vendors in all five buildings, plus tents outside around the buildings. Lots and lots of stuff, some new, some old, and all of it really cheap. I hadn't intended to buy anything - I'm mainly in throwing-out mode these days - but it was only 41 degrees at noon and raining steadily, and after two weeks of high 60s/low 70s, I wasn't dressed warmly enough. One of the first booths I passed was selling sweatshirts for $3, so I bought a really nice fuzzy gray one.
I walked around checking prices on items similar to things I have and want to get rid of, and admiring the crafty things. Despite my promise, I did buy something - a carved walking stick. The guy finds oddly shaped sticks/branches, and fashions them into fantasy animals. I bought a beasty with googly eyes and a mouthful of real deer teeth.
Because of the rain, it was very crowded. You had to weave in and out of clumps of people. I had my cash, folded, in a half-zipped pocket in my purse. The purse was in a large tote bag over my shoulder. I had peeled off $3 to pay for the sweatshirt, and $20 for the stick (inside the purse - I never actually took the wad out) and then I got hungry. At the food booth, I discovered that I had no money. There had been somewhere between $85 and $120 in there. I searched the purse and the tote bag, and it was gone. A pickpocket? I figure that'll teach me. If I had bought everything I wanted, at least now I'd have something to show for the money!
After the fair, I picked up the keys for the rental car (I'll drop off the van and switch to the rental tomorrow), and then met the roofers here and signed the contracts for the roof and the exhaust fan. Now we need a week's worth of dry weather.
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Nightline did a bit on rising gasoline prices last night. They laid the blame mainly on two factors. There's a law that requires that refineries add MTBE (ethanol?)(Later correction - see explanation at bottom of entry), and few refineries are currently set up to do it, which is causing an artificial shortage. China and India have increased their energy demands over the past few years, which puts more pressure on the supply, and therefore increases the price. I would add drivers of SUVs and Hummers (which Nightline mentioned but not so much as a cause, more as victims, who don't care because they are willing to pay it), and something that no one ever mentions - the building of all those superhighways and the increased power of the trucking companies, both of which led to the demise of the railroads and mass transit. A news program today pointed out the huge profits of the oil companies, and included a clip of GWB promising to look into gouging.
(Is it gouging when a company charges what other companies charge, everywhere? Is it gouging when we still pay about half what Europe pays? Is it gouging when pharmaceutical companies charge what the market will bear for cancer drugs? If US oil companies charged too little for the gasoline, then what's to stop other countries from buying it out from under us and taking it on home, causing a major domestic shortage? If I were France, I would! At what point does capitalism turn into gouging? Just a question -- no point intended.)
It bothers me that the perceived high price of gas increases anger toward middle eastern countries, when the US gets only about 15% of our crude from the middle east. Middle Eastern oil goes mainly to Europe and Asia. We get ours mostly from North, Central, and South America and a few other African countries, who, of course, charge as much as they can get away with. No altruism.
(Later edit - That didn't sound right, because I remembered that MTBE is a groundwater polluter, something I was worried about when Daughter was living in the middle of what amounted to an automobile junkyard, drinking and showering from a well. So I looked it up. The requirement is that refineries move away from MTBE and switch to ethanol. Since some localities will no longer allow the sale of gasoline with MTBE, and refineries are slow making the switch, the demand for gasoline with ethanol exceeds the supply. MTBE and ethanol both combat air pollution.)
2 comments:
I think you mean MTBE.
That was an additive used to meet federal requirements for carbon monixide reduction back in the early 1990s. Among other things, it also added about five cents a gallon to gas prices (back then) and reduced overall mileage by about two percent (yes, decreased mileage, thus using more gallons to cover the same distance).
The EPA said it would reduce carbon monoxide output by 25 to 30 percent. Now it turns out that it may barely reduce it by 10 percent (if event that much) while increasing the output of formaldehyde. Despite that, by 1995 or so, the EPA was mandating that it be used year-round in a dozen metro areas (including NYC and Long Island).
Of course it then turns out that MTBE easily leaks from gas stations and gets into ground water, etc. and that may be a dangerous carcinogen.
Yes, so now they want to add ethanol instead. (By the way, that will also increase costs and reduce mileage.)
"Hello. We're from the government. We're here to help you."
Jim, you are correct, it should be MTBE, and I'll edit the post to correct that. Hearing it, it's hard to differentiate between "N" and "M", so I had done a Yahoo search on "NTBE", and got a hit at http://www.fb.org/views/focus/fo2000/fo0410.html, and STILL didn't notice the "M" instead of "N". (I'm left wondering how Yahoo got that hit.)
~~Silk
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