Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Cooking dinner last night, the girlfriend pulled a can of corn out of the kitchen cabinet and remarked that it was the last one. My reply, naturally, was “No its not, theres another dozen or so stocked away. I’ll pull a half dozen bring them to the kitchen, and when it goes on sale I’ll resupply our stocks.”

See, that’s why I buy things the way I do. We use something up, replenish it from our stored supply, and when it goes on sale we restock that supply. In the meantime, theres still plenty on hand in case things go south in a hurry.

Speaking of food, the folks from HippieMart called. They did shoot me a price on dehydrated whole milk. Surprisingly, the source is local. Really local. Like six blocks from here local. So Im going to wander down there later next week and find out if I can have a sample of their product and get some information…specifically, what kinda packaging.

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The big news today was that gold briefly broke the $1000 mark, the Dollar Index briefly dropped below 72, and oil hit $110 a barrel.

Whats this mean to me? It means that I expect fuel prices to continue with the attendant increases in goods because of increased shipping costs, foreign goods (like gun parts) will go up in price (American dollar price, that is), and its apparent that people are continuing to lose confidence in the economy.

The short version? Prices go up, prices of foreign goods go up, your dollar buys less, people are going to start circling the wagons soon and its gonna be a tough time to be selling luxury goods. On the other hand, if you’re situated fairly well this may be a good time snag yourself bargains on things you’ve been wanting.

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Spring is in full swing here in Montana, which means that its 60 degrees one day, 35 the next, and the nights are always about 30 or less. In short, it’s the beginning of bicycle season. And, hey, at $3.10 a gallon why wouldn’t you find alternate transportation when your work is only nine blocks away. I purchased a mountain bike about five years ago for $500. At the time I thought it was an outrageous sum for anything that didn’t have a motor or a trigger. However, in retrospect, you get what you pay for and other than the occasional over-the-handlebars chain issue the bike has served me quite well. If you don’t have a quality mountain bike I urge you to acquire one.