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Prices for oil took their biggest leap ever today, to $138.54.  Gas is already well over $4/gallon at most stations in Gainesville; $25 put only a half a tank in our Beetle a few nights ago.  These high fuel prices are making everything we buy more expensive.

I have no proof, but I am making a prediction: these high oil prices are a scandal waiting to be uncovered, quite like the high energy prices in California in 2000.

Today is Miriam’s birthday, and although I want it to be the most super-special day ever, the reality is that she and I are both at work.  On this date in previous years we have been in Venice (2001) or Miami (2006), or even in honeymoon bliss. It’s a sorry testament to the weak Dollar ($.64 to the euro) and the unprecedented high price of gasoline ($4.01 in Gainesville this morning) that we are unable to make as many pleasure trips on our own dime.  Miriam’s work, fortunately, is making up the difference, and later this month we’ll be in Chicago for a few days.  Later this year we may go to South Carolina and Washington, D.C. 

On the plus side, however, we are among the very fortunate who have been unaffected by the housing crisis, or the recent budget cuts at the University of Florida that have cost many their jobs.  We can still afford to have dinner out with friends and if I wanted to I could probably have the good root beer that comes in glass bottles.

So, Angel, happy birthday.  I promise that on some future birthday I’ll give you a kiss atop the Arc de Triomphe. 

A three-panel painting by Francis Bacon (not the philosopher, unfortunately) entitled Tryptich, 1976, has sold at auction for over $86 million.  Although I certainly know what I like and what I don’t, I can’t claim to be an art expert by any means.  I’d love to hear from someone who is an expert who can defend such an astonishing price for what I consider a completely underwhelming painting. 

 Maybe I just need more education.  I recognize that the more you learn the more you can appreciate things that once appeared to make no sense.  And I am apt to defend abstract music that others may call noise.  Towards the end of the semester, as I was leaving a class in the Music Building, there were a hundred identical metronomes set up on a brick wall, all clicking away at different tempi.  It was György Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique.  There are no actual instruments, and, by its very nature the music has a huge degree of unpredictability and every “performance” will be different; the metronomes swing back and forth until they stop, at different times depending on how much they were wound.  I wouldn’t compare it to the Missa Solemnis, but for what it is it’s okay. 

Of course, nobody can put a price on a hundred clicking metronomes.  And if they could, it wouldn’t be $86 million.

My favorite chain pizza restaurant is Hungry Howie’s (spare me your mockery).  I’ve liked it since I was a kid and they had a franchise right outside the gates of our apartment complex.  By the time I was in high school their carry-out special–a large one-topping pie–was $3.99.  By this Spring the price had risen to $6.99.

Sunday afternoon I was amazed to see the price has been reduced–though perhaps only temporarily–to $5.88.

First, let me say that right now it is very, very cold outside. It’s not yet eight o’clock at night and it’s literally freezing outside, and will get to 20° before dawn. This is the first real freeze we’ve had so far this winter, which has been surprisingly mild so far. Whereas in previous years our heater has seen considerable action by the first week of January, I think we’ve used it only once before the present cold snap. And I don’t regret that it has been thus. My cold tolerance has decreased since we’ve lived in this ice box we call home. I especially dislike how painfully frigid the water from the tap is. And, oh, how we need new windows!

I am one of the few people, as far as I can tell, who prefers Hungry Howie’s for my pizza needs. This evening I ordered pizza, as I have done several times recently. It costs more, of course, than making it at home, but, obviously, it tastes better, and for less than $7 I get two meals. On my last two visits, however, my local Howie’s has found a way to botch my order. Last week I called and specifically requested my pizza be made with garlic crust, NOT garlic-herb, a new flavor I saw listed in the shop. Naturally, when I opened the box I saw herbs with my garlic. So I had to wait while they made me a new pie. No big deal, mistakes happen. But tonight I went in to pick up my order–same as last time–and a calamity: they had given my pizza to the person who had just walked out, and, again, I’d have to wait while they made me a new pizza. So I take the opportunity to run up the street to Publix and when I arrived back at Hungry Howie’s they had again sold the re-made pizza to the person who had just left. They seemed genuinely embarrassed about it, though, and a few of the staff were congregated at the counter discussing what had gone so wrong. But, in the end I walked out with two large pizzas for the price of none. Regretfully, they let me know that regular garlic crust is being discontinued in favor of garlic-herb. So, another victory for Big Vegetable.

Finally, I uploaded a gallery of photos from last weekend’s visit by Jeff and Sandi, and our dinner out with Steve and Kathleen for trivia night at Kazbor’s. I don’t think anyone really enjoyed it as much as I did, but what are you going to do? It was good fun, still, to go watch episodes of Flight of the Conchords at Steve’s house. Huzzah, fun.