March 10, 1998: 97⁹.

March 10, 1999: 85⁹.

This year, the price around here loitered around a buck and a quarter until last Friday (March 3), when prices jumped to 149⁹, the highest many of us have paid in our self-service lives. And yesterday I paid the price in the photo, 157⁹, a new high for me.

Those prices from past years return to me easily because I am the geek ahead of you at the pump taking the extra thirty seconds to record the date, odometer reading, price per gallon, price paid, and gallons pumped, and then calculating the miles per gallon on the previous tank. A set of grubby spiral-bound pads of index cards (a new one for each vehicle) holds the record of my gasoline consumption for the past -- well, for a long time, okay?

My 45/49 mpg, three-banger Metro is looking better and better, despite the facts that it stays closer to the low end of the EPA range, takes a good chunk of eternity to accelerate to 70 MPH, and will probably never escape the earth's gravitational field no matter how hard I push it or what kind of snazzy headgear I wear while operating it.

Although many of the world's drivers would regard these gasoline prices as ridiculously low, to most U.S. residents these prices are an unspeakable horror, or so I would have thought. A gallon of gas should cost less than a super-sized soft drink or an order of fries. We budget and we purchase our vehicles with that in mind, or at least that's the way we act if we believe that by the time the sun burns out, we will have replaced it.

And yet, nobody but a few politicians and the media seems to be particularly exercised about it yet. Maybe we've finally recognized that the price is still low compared to inflation since the last oil crisis, but more likely we regard this as a temporary inconvenience that our gubmint will soon correct. Let the political grandstanding begin!

But let the grandstanding happen without the rockets' red glare, and bombs bursting in air.

In other news from my part of the planet, at the fellowship board meeting this morning, we set the agenda for the annual meeting in April (election of officers, approval of a new budget, authorization to proceed with design plans for new construction, and amendments to bylaws), while from their perches in the crabapple tree outside the window, robins, cardinals, and house finches took turns watching our deliberations and maunderings. At least three shades of red from the birds, a fourth from the leftover crabapples.

Am I ready to relinquish the chair at the fellowship, to turn back the papal robes, to dismiss the minions spreading herbs and rose petals in my path as I approach? You bet. And someone else can pick up the damn mail too.

I don't have a meta section on these pages, and I haven't solicited the attention of the search engines, but I got my first hit from a search engine the other day. Some hapless schmoe using Google entered this query

"kitchen sink" school of writing/literature

and received this link,

• aboutme...
  ...chicken, eaten cold over the kitchen sink with nobody watching. ...English composition, creative writing, literature and some general...
  rcpatt.tripod.com/aboutme.html

an excerpt from my bio page. The page was the second of two choices listed. Beware of what you ask for: following random links could be hazardous to your mental health -- or at least to your time.

I blame a friend's casual mention of an item on James Lileks' site, not even his journal (The Daily Bleat), for leading me astray into online journaling. Woe is I...