Gone!

We‘re on a little trip, and you know how it is…you choose to indulge yourself in small pleasures usually left alone. Today I had one fun activity in mind which I almost always do for myself: a pedicure.  In California there is a nail salon or two in every strip mall, but even though I found a page and a half of salons in the phone book, when we actually tried to find one, they seemed to be nonexistent. The hotel desk clerk assured me there’d be one in the mall one street over, but lo and behold, it was out of business! Not wanting to take any more time to look, we went to Target (always there) and I bought nail polish. Then…you guessed it! We found a salon which assured, “walk-ins welcome” just around the corner. So I hopped out, went in, and was greeted with  “We’re booked up!"

            This little scenario or one very similar, takes place with us often. If we’re looking for pizza, donuts, Chinese, Mexican, or any other special type of food, all those restaurants or shops are gone, at least in a five mile radius. Seriously, when we left the airport in Arizona in our own car, we had driven into a suburb and decided to get gas. You know, fuel for the car, usually on every other corner. I programmed the GPS to find fuel, and the nearest one to the major highway we were on was 2.7 miles away! I know, as our granddaughter tells us, “This is a first world problem!”

            I’d be interested to know if other people have this trouble, or if it is peculiar to this Clucas couple.

Price Per Gallon

Today Don and I were groaning about the rising cost of gasoline, and we started wondering about the price of other liquids which are important to us. Naturally, coffee was the primary part of our discussion because I’m such an addict. There are basically three ways we get our brewed coffee: I make it in my regular pot, in the Keurig, or we go out for it. Feeling a bit like Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land, we came up with the following figures.

            Home brewed with market coffee at $9.00 a pound yields approximately 32 cups to one pound which equals $4.50 a gallon not counting water and electricity. Keurig packs have 18 cups for $11.00 which comes to approx. $0.61 per cup. Again, not counting water and electricity, it’s $9.75 a gallon. Going out to the local coffee shop costs about $1.50 for 8 oz. which comes to $24.00 a gallon.

            Needless to say, we’d be smart to always make it at home because the cost of drinking the brew at  Peet’s, Coffee Bean, or Better Buzz is  much more than the cost of the gas to get there.