Currency

Last fall I was out to dinner with a friend. In the usual settling up of the bill afterwards, she gave me a dollar with a stamp on it, directing me to www.wheresgeorge.com. I might not have even noticed, but she told me I should check this out--it was an interesting site. I actually meant to tuck it into a Christmas stocking as a novel (and cheap), activity, but I forgot. Then, afraid I would accidentally spend it before logging on (a shrewd move as it turns out), I stashed it in a galaxy far far away in my purse. There it sat.

A couple of weeks ago I got a second bill with a similar stamp. This caused me to remember the first one, but in the meantime I was craving popcorn, so I noted the serial number and fed it into the snack machine at work. Then I logged on to the wheresgeorge site and my eyes were opened.

I found out that the site is supposed to track the natural life of the currency. I think it is a bit ironic that the natural life of the currency was interrupted by my curiosity about the site itself. Nothing else would have made me hoard a dollar bill for 8 or 9 months. In addition, it turns out that this is a major hobby for some people, like scrapbooking or gambling. There are people who have set loose $20,000 or more in currency, just to see where it goes. There are blogs, chats, opinions. etc. There is also vocabulary. What I had in my possession was a "Wild" and it has a "parent" named Denny. I don't feel as special about it since discovering that Denny has a lot of Wilds out there. Does this suggest anything to you? Or is it just me who feels like I just became a stepmother while wondering about all of Denny's other offspring? Denny must be feeling disappointed about this particular offspring since it was last seen at a Walgreen's in 2008 and hasn't done much with its life. Never fear, Denny, as of yesterday, this dollar bought a cookie and is on the move again.

And the other dollar? I honestly answered the question "Is this note now in your possession?" with a "no"and I got a lecture. Apparently that is a very big rule violation because it might lead to notes being entered out of order. I figured with the Swanson's vending machine company I had a few days of grace, but wheresgeorge did not agree. And this from a site that tracks dollar bills into and out of all sorts of places I would rather not know about. If you happen to see me about town receiving change in my surgical gloves, cut me a little slack. I may know more than you want to about where your money has been.

Cheese of the Goat

They say the best classroom is life itself, and I have to agree. For example, we have all learned a lot about economics in the past few years, especially the economics of oil. We used to think that prices were set at the pump, and having gas stations on four corners of an intersection was bad because it drove gas prices to unreasonably low levels. We now know that gas prices respond to major economic factors such as a hurricane, a leak in an oil refinery tank, or Labor Day weekend.

So you can imagine how alarmed I was to read that, in the past week alone, over 100 goats were stolen from area farms. The response has been a big snicker--from lardhappus: "That'll make a lot of gyros" and abcd: "I'll bet that really got his goat." They are missing the point. We are about the see an unprecedented rise is the price of goat cheese. Based on what I have seen in the oil arena, I would say that it will happen immediately, never mind that not all of these goats were producing milk yet. They represent goat milk futures--so cheese prices will rise today, tomorrow, next weekend.

Being the prudent consumer that I am, I stocked up on goat cheese as soon as I heard the news. But being a consumer, I am sorry to report that the goat cheese has itself been consumed. It was delicious. I am now left at the mercy of rising goat cheese prices just like the rest of you---but don't say you weren't warned.