Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Sad Joe

This morning when L had the tube on, I saw a group of women interviewed on how they rearranged their lives to save money in these troubled times without actually suffering. One said that if eating out was too much a thing to sacrifice, one could still give up Starbucks. She said it by name. Starbucks. Everyone nodded. The same interviewee talked about becoming conscious of "little things" like ducking into stores to get a $3 bottle of water, to the same nods.

I'm sorry, if someone tried to part $3 from me over a bottle of water I would react as if mugged. I can't quite wrap my head around not noticing an expense like that. To avoid this kind of gutting, I've spent hundreds on a water filter system in my kitchen (now apparently obsolete, and filters will get hard to find; it's time to move!) that takes everything including radon out of the water for a per-gallon cost of a dime. I've had the system for about ten years, and change the filter every 750 gallons. It even purifies my refrigerator's icemaker water, so my ice cubes are free of bad tastes.

But back to Starbucks. Poor Starbucks, synonymous with overpriced pick-me-ups, previously described here in the most bearish terms I could politely muster, is closing stores. What's surprising, folks seem happy about it.

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