Black gold woes

So I was watching Inside Africa on cnn and one of the stories they covered this week was the attacks on oil pipelines in Nigeria. I have always heard of these attacks on the news and how oil prices shoot up shortly after but never really heard the reasons behind such attacks. Apparently the locals around the Niger delta live off $1usd a day whilst they see billions of dollars in oil being pumped out of the ground and they want the money to benefit the people.

Where does the money go? good question I wasn't paying that much attention but I think they were saying to corruption in the government. Anyway to add insult to injury the oil industry also was causing great damage to the environment and their way of life fishing and farming are no longer viable. I guess I can support their cause but they need to find alternate ways of resolving that situation.

In the mean time gas prices are breaking records worldwide. What was funny/sad that after 7pm news on Wednesday(when they announced massive gas price increase effective Thu) I was on the road I saw long lines at many gas stations because people where trying to cash in on the cheap prices before the increase. Things look grim as the prices per barrel we are hearing now are futures contracts and are yet to take effect.

So have y'all started feeling the pinch yet? if so do you plan any lifestyle changes to help ease the effects? I think I am a minimalist by nurture so there isn't much for me to change. I remember I used to have a bad habit of driving over to the supermarket close to me for small items.. what a waste, it literally takes me a minute to walk there. Maybe I can get a scooter, I hear those things get 80 miles per gallon.

House sitting

Do retired people take vacations? Well my parents seem to be off yet again and can be spotted all over the eastern side of North America in what I have dubbed their back packing trip. They asked their helper to keep coming and watch the house during the week and me to house sit over the weekends when she is gone. Friday, Saturday and Sunday night up here in the sticks.. *sigh*. I am not about to be driving this far just to water their plants, feed their dog and ensure someone is in the house at nights so for the past few weeks I have ended up spending from Friday straight through to Monday morning up here.

One would think that spending so much time trapped in the bush would make me a better blogger and post more or read all those posts my blog friends have been typing up but the time has been flying while I'm up here surprisingly. As y'all can see from my last post I took a trip down memory lane and went through some old photo albums. In fact most of the time spent up here is a trip down memory lane as this is the most time I've spent up here in a couple of years.

Spending time up here has made me reminded me off all the things us townies take for granted. Water is gone up here all the time and my parents have a 2400gal. water tank but when there is no pressure it sucks just as bad. Watchable cable.. their cable quality sucks, nobody wants to watch grainy TV. Higher speed internet, am I really complaining about 1MB dsl? when I left here I was on 56k dailup.. anyway the internet is still much faster at my home back in town. One benefit up here is there is no traffic noise, only the chirping of birds :)

Anyway while we are still living in the past, how great is this video? yup, I've been also browsing youtube for my favorite 80's songs too.

Back to the present, what is sad is that they didn't leave an itinerary. I think they are in New Jersey now but I have no idea where they will be until they come back. I don't even know when they are coming back or the flight information, my guess is sometime around the end of this month.. and of course they expect me to pick them up from the airport.. slackers.

It was written in the stars

*sigh*

Once upon a time there existed such things as $1 and $2 JMD notes.

Also there once existed a 7 year old boy who saved his dollar bills in a cardboard box. I guess it explains why I am like this now.

What does the future hold? The immediate future looks grim, I wouldn't be surprised if inflation surges past 20% this year.