Why do vacations have to end?

Okay, let me get the financial crap out of the way first.

Take a snapshot, folks. Nobody knows where the bottom of the stock market is (at this point, the Dow at 5,000 by mid-2009 wouldn't shock me overmuch), but you can take this to the shuttered bank: the U.S. dollar will not stay strong much longer. Everywhere I'm scouring is suggesting this is a temporary side-effect of massive deleveraging and that "economic fundamentals" will return shortly. Which means: the C$ will rise again. I'm predicting dollar parity by March. Oil will hit its floor this week or next and by next summer will be back in the $90-110/bbl range. And if you've got any money hanging around, you might want to consider gold. (There is phenomenal value to be had in blue chip stocks, but I'm still leery. A friend of mine is "nibbling"--it's hard to resist the low prices--my concern is that the market isn't finished unravelling. We still have a monstrous thicket of hedge funds and credit-default swaps to go boom...if it all goes, or even half of it, it'd make the last three months look smooth as glass in comparison.

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Now, on to the personal stuff.

Going back to work almost makes it not worth going on holidays at all. (Almost.)

Just returned today after two weeks away from the job. In one sense it was as if I'd never left...holidays fly by, and I've gotten to that age where every fortnight off serves as dress rehearsal for what promises to be a perfectly lovely retirement, once I reach ninety years of age or so.

In another, it felt like I'd been gone for months. I tried very hard to shove Price Chopper to the deepest darkest recesses of my brain, with some success, I might add...until Wednesday of last week. That's when this week's Price Chopper flyer arrived on my stoop with a thump that soon transmigrated into my head and took up a backbeat, which eventually got so loud it was kind of hard to sleep last night.

I knew about some of the madness two weeks ago--this flyer bears a suspicious resemblance to one from this past March. The same 1L milk in all its splendor (except now our 4L bags are $3.97--thanks, Wal-Mart--so 4x1L @ $1.00 each isn't any kind of deal. I didn't know whether they'd keep the retail on the bags or raise it, so I had no idea what to tell them to bring in.  I pre-booked the Aunt Jemima waffles, and also some Asto yogurt cups at 3/$1 (900 cases). We've done the Real Dairy and Smarties ice cream often enough now to have a good idea how it will sell--we hope. 

I didn't count on the pizzas.

Nobody counted on the pizzas. In fact, nobody from Head Office bothered to count the #%$&^ing pizzas. That'd be the Kraft Delissio 2-PACK pizzas, featured oh-so-very-prominently on the front page of our flyer, for $5.97.

Did you see that price?

$5.97.

That represents a savings of $7.52 off the price of a 2-pack (which I don't carry); closer to $10 off the price of two single Delissio pizzas. 

And Head Office's allocation was woefully inadequate. The stock we got lasted us until Saturday noon: one day and four hours. And by that time there was no more pizza to be had anywhere in the chain.

(And I wasn't there, ha-ha.)

But I was there today, and so were an awful lot of people who, quite reasonably I should think, read "while supplies last" in our flyer and kind of expected supplies to last more than halfway through the ad. (Never mind a day and four hours...)

All things considered, that was my only real headache today: otherwise it was a more-or-less-normal Monday, which means I was run off my feet. But my feet aren't used to running at this point, having been unrunning for two-weeks-cum-eight months or so, and I am bushed. So night-night, dear reader, and may the Ghost of Delissio haunt somebody else's sleep for a change.