Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Well, it went from 75-80 degree days to snow like *that* [snaps fingers]. Guess it’s time to pull out the cold weather gear and do all the ‘winter is almost here’ stuff.

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The wife brought this product – Jarbox – to my attention. Definitely one of those ‘why didnt I think of it’ kind of products. I figured if you had to transport canning jars you could just get some foam pipe insulation, cut it to length, and make little beer cozies for each bottle. This seems handier, although a good bit more expensive. I’ll have to see if theres some sort of discount program available or something. Be nice if they had it in a size to accommodate pint jars as well.

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I don’t have a lot of self-destructive vices…I dont drink, smoke, do drugs, etc. My biggest bad-for-my-health vice is that I suck down a few cans of Coke every day. Okay, maybe more than a few…probably about…mmmm….five or six a day. So when we go grocery shopping I pay close attention to the price of the little red cans of death. For quite a while now the best price I could find was $0.27/can at either WalMart or CostCo. Since both places had the same price I figured that was about the best price they were going to get from the company. Went up to CostCo the other day and, surprise, it was now $0.31/can. Headed over to WallyWorld and it was also $0.31/can there as well. Obviously the new floor price was $0.31….a 15% increase. Why the increase? Price of corn syrup going up, perhaps? Whatever. The point is that a 15% increase in the price of *any* grocery product is worth standing up and taking notice of. True, this only comes out to about a $0.24/day increase in my drinking habits but that translates into $7.20/month…which is about the cost of a case of Coke. In short, I’m paying for an extra case of Coke per month but not getting it.

I expect these sorts of revelations about groceries to continue as our economic …turbulence…continues. This is why, folks, you gotta make every dollar count.