Signs of the Changing Times

Okay, lame title, I know. Everything's always changing, the river is always in flux, etc, etc, thank you, Heraclitus, we got the point.

But you know how all you hear about anymore is economic hardship and fears about the future? Two small things are bringing it home for me (as if I wasn't already having dreams about a Dark Angel/Jeremiah future).

1. My mother used to buy several gallons of milk at once. Two with different milk fat quantities, and a spare one for when we run out. (An instinct left over from the days when all six of us kids lived in the house and from when my brother could finish one gallon in two days by himself.) Now, however, because milk is $5 a gallon, she's buying them as we drink them. So we only have one gallon of milk in the house at once, and I'm feeling guilty if I have one of my homemade lattes AND a bowl of cereal in one day.

2. I'd heard that the govt mint was putting more nickel, less silver into coins. It's true!! Working as I have been in retail for the past three years, I've watched prices go up, sales go down, and cosmetics get a hell of a lot more expensive. :( But yesterday, I opened a roll of those new state quarters (is that state quarter thing just an attempt to distract us from the lesser value of the money?) and started when I heard the coins fall into the drawer. I could have sworn they were FAKE bc of the sound they made. Not that heavy clunk but rather the light clink of aluminum.

Huh. So yeah. I'm thinking of adding Alas, Babylon to my library so I know what to do when nuclear bombs hit all the important cities. Not a good thought, when you live outside Atlanta. Is it lame if I admit it's one of the reasons that I want to go to grad school in Wisconsin or Michigan?