Canon PIXMA Printer

Canon MG Series PIXMA MG2525 Inkjet Photo Printer with Scanner/Copier

Finally broke down and bought a new printer. Darling daughter hasn't replaced the toner cartridge in her laser printer that is sitting in the dining room so the printing was getting a little light. Then the Ziply Fiber guy was here and replaced the router so the wifi address has changed and who knows if that will ever get fixed in the laser printer, so new printer for me. $70, which is probably about the same that a new toner cartridge would cost for the laser printer, and it sits on my desk which means I don't have to run up the stairs to collect my printouts. Ha, like I run anywhere anymore. Probably have to buy new ink cartridges for this one in a few months, and they'll probably cost a zillion dollars because that's how the Inkjet printer business works. Unpacked it, plugged it in, turned it on and it worked.

Back when gas was $2.50 a gallon I was thinking that inflation had cut the value of a dollar by 10 since I started driving 50 years ago, but now gas is $5 a gallon, so the value of a dollar has gone down by a factor of 2 in the last few years, and it's liable to go down by another factor 2 in the next couple of years, which means this printer cost less than $2 in terms of 1970 dollars. (70 / (10 x 2 x 2)). Fifty years ago, you could buy a six pack of Golden Goebels Beer for a buck, which means this printer costs as much as two six-packs of beer. Except mass market beer, like Coors or Bud, costs about $1 a can. Hmmm. What's that old Roman dictum? Bread and circuses? Well, we've got cheap beer and political circuses.

Champagne

    I don't drink much these days - recovery takes too long. I had a half bottle of champagne when I got back from Eugene Friday evening and Saturday, well, here it is Sunday, yesterday must have been Saturday, but I'll be darned if I know what I did yesterday, if anything. Probably took a series of naps, with just enough time in between to have a snack.
    When I was younger I used to drink a bit. There was a time, it must have been my nadir, when I was living in Houston and drinking a pint of liquor a day. If I was prone to alcoholism, I think that would have been when alcohol had the best chance of getting it's claws in me. As it was, I may have been habituated, but circumstances changed and I eased off.

    Mostly I've been a beer and wine man. Having been raised to be frugal, and having a talent for dealing with numbers, I was all about price per ounce of alcohol, and liquor was just generally a few cents higher, that is when I had enough money to even consider buying liquor. When I was 20 (+/-) we could buy a six pack of Golden Goebels for a dollar at the corner store. Why spend more?

    One summer me and my buds discovered Mogen David 20-20, a fortified wine that was 20% alcohol., otherwise known as Mad Dog. I damaged three cars that summer. That was enough of that.
    At some point I quit drinking red wine because of the histamines, ya know. What with hayfever and a runny nose, it seemed like a good thing. Later on, I thought beer was giving me bad hangovers, and I had more money so I switched to Bourbon, a good old American whiskey, none of that furrin' stuff for me. Besides I ain't gonna pay no $30 a bottle.
    But I never cared for Champagne. Some people really liked it. There was one girl I knew who really liked the $100 a bottle stuff. That relationship didn't last. I mean it's fizzy, but so's beer. And price really seemed to matter to people who liked it. I couldn't understand it.
    A few years ago after a long drive my mother-in-law fixed us all some French 75's which I thought were really good. They're made with Cognac and Champagne. Good Cognac and cheap Champagne, if I recall correctly. I tried making them for myself sometime later, and they just didn't cut it. Eventually I figured out that alcohol tastes a lot better after a hard days work. Drive a couple hundred miles and unload a car-full of stuff and then have a drink. So Friday evening after I had driven to Eugene, helped younger son unload his stuff, and then driven back, I was ready for a drink.

Apu

   I stopped in North Plains for gas and picked up a bottle of Cook's Extra Dry Champagne from Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart. They also had Andre's Brut Champagne. I recalled from my last excursion into Champagne land that Brut is drier than extra dry, and I'm thinking I don't need drier than extra dry, so I sprung for the extra dollar for Cook's ($7 versus $6 for Andre's), and it was pretty good. Older son tells me that Cook's is well worth the extra dollar.

Cook's Champagne

Update February 2016, replaced missing champagne image.

Update March 2022 replace missing image of Apu. It has been deleted from the Simpson Crazy website.

Drywall

We are patching holes in the walls. Some of them are tiny, like screw holes. Others are larger, like the two foot square holes in the garage that were made in order to fix leaks in the plumbing. Went to the local building supply to get some drywall, but we don't really need a full sheet, so we picked up (3) two foot square pieces for $5 each so the total was as much as a full sheet. But we didn't have to wrestle with the full sheet, or borrow Mom's car so we could tie it to roof rack, and we aren't going to have to dispose of a big piece of leftover drywall. So, $15 worth of drywall. We won't talk about the $50 worth of auxiliary do-dads we needed.

The last time I checked on the price of a sheet of drywall (aka plasterboard) it was $1.50. Of course that was 50 years ago, and that was same price as a six pack of beer. Actually, Golden Goebels was only a buck at the corner store. Premium beer might have been $1.25. Just another bit of evidence to support my factor-of-ten inflation history.