Filling Up

I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out of their sockets last night: gas is $2.27 in Denton right now! The crazy thing is, the cheapest place in McKinney is $2.57. Normally the two cities are about 3 cents different on gas--fifty cents tacked on isn't enough to talk about when I'm already paying on average $60 a tank.

But thirty cents difference?! Okay, I have a 25-gallon tank. That means that my total per-tank difference between McKinney and Denton is $7.50! I feel like I should be making some public service announcement to tell McKinney residents to come gas up Denton.

I just can't believe that I'm finally paying closer to $2 than $3 per gallon. My pre-gas-hike memories are so dim, but I do remember after 9/11 when $1.75 was shocking. Ah, yes, those days. Those days when I would have snorted in derision at anyone who suggested that several years--not decades--later I would be paying $3.01. The days when car manufacturers never thought they'd see SUV sales drop.

I try not to think about 2000 when gas was routinely $1.15 in Dallas and $.88 in San Antonio. I don't like banging my head against brick walls; it hurts, and it doesn't change anything.