She had that high-heel strut thing going on in that video for “What’s Love Got to Do With It?“
Ike, on the other hand, just sloshes all over the place, blowing out windows and flooding neighborhoods.
Also, driving up gas prices. In my area, the prices I saw for unleaded today ranged from $4.079 at a regional-chain convenience store to $4.359 (or thereabouts) at another regional-chain convenience store.
And yet the highest price I saw for diesel in the same sampling of gas stations was $4.199 at a freeway-side gas station. Flash Foods had diesel for $3.999, and its closest competitor (literally and figuratively) was selling diesel for the same price as it had for unleaded: $4.099.
Now, I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve noticed an equilibrium of sorts between the price of gasoline and the price of diesel at stations that sell both. Generally speaking in our area—at least until the last few months—diesel has tended to be priced at most a few cents higher than premium. If any grade of gasoline went very much higher than diesel, one of two things was pretty much guaranteed to happen: either diesel would start creeping upward, or gasoline would eventually drop back down where the price of diesel indicated it should be.
During this past summer the gap between diesel and premium soared, even as the prices of the various grades of gasoline was going way up. Recently, until the Ike scare set in, that gap has been narrowing gradually as the price of gasoline has subsided and diesel has come down with it.
Now, while the Kroger fuel center sells unleaded and diesel at the same price, and Metro Petro actually sells diesel about 25 cents cheaper than unleaded, I think it’s fair to say the price of gasoline is going to be coming down fairly quickly unless the infrastructure damage from Ike matches the worst-case scenario predictions trumpeted in the media.
I’ll say here more or less what I told my wife’s aunt via Facebook a couple of nights ago: unless you’re really hurting for gas right now, hold off a while before getting into line at the pumps.
Never participate in a price panic—it costs you money and it doesn’t teach the retailers noth’n’.
