PSoTD

Well, our daughter's basketball season ended yesterday with a tournament at Mount Saint Mary's College in Maryland. Our 5th and 6th grade girls played as tough as they could, winning the first game before running into much taller competition.

It's a long season even as a rec coach, and I'm surprised to admit that I'm ready for it to have ended now. Our daughter has already started softball practice, and our son starts baseball practice on Monday, and I'm ready for the change in sports seasons.

BTW, if you're ever looking for a place to eat at when in Emmittsburg, I can recommend Dave & Jane's Crab House. We only got sandwiches there, but for the price we received more food than we could finish. If we're at this tournament again next year we'll go back.

Funny... I don't think my wife is part of that 15%. I smell carrots.

"Note to dads...What gets us in the mood:"

1. Foreplay 45%
2. Romantic gestures, like flowers and holding hands 29%
3. Choreplay (i.e., Dad chipping in around the house) 15%
4. A glass of wine 11%

You're like me, a full-sized cart person, having to go down every aisle, looking at the long list of items compiled.

You find yourself in the packaged food aisles. You look at the packages. Hey, prices haven't really changed. But wait a minute, that box is smaller. There's only 12 cookies in this container? Does this salad dressing really have an eye dropper to distribute the sauce?

The kids keep getting bigger, eating more. The packages keep getting smaller. Oh, except over there in dairy, and in packaged meat. There they get bigger - no, we don't want you buying 10 ounces of colby cheese, you have to buy 16 ounces. Eggs? You really can't buy 6 any more, you'll have to buy 12 or 24. Sorry. That's just the way it is.

What games they play with us. The packaged food doesn't expire for a long, long, long time so the contents are small, you'll be back to buy next week. The expirables, such as dairy, they maximize your weekly purchase, because it isn't going to last that long in your refrigerator, anyways. And in both times, every time a packaging size changes, there's a price increase. We know it, they know it, they just try to hide it a little by changing the quantity.

And we mull around the aisles and just take it. What can we do? Everyone in the supply chain is in the game - the grocery, the distributors, the manufacturers. We have to figure out something better to do, as consumers, than walk around with glazed eyes in the grocery, remembering the old days when ice cream came in half gallons instead of 1.75 quarts.