09:34 – I’m not sure what’s going on with the Colonial Pipeline thing. On Monday and Tuesday morning, most analysts seemed to agree that Colonial One might be down for at least several weeks. Then, yesterday afternoon, Colonial announced that Two was already back in service and that they expected One to be back on-line by the end of the week. That’s good news, if true. But as of last night the fire was still burning, which makes me wonder how they can possibly expect service with Colonial One to be fully restored by Saturday, only three days from now. I’m wondering if the initial third-party estimates of repair time aren’t more accurate than what Colonial is saying. If so, the gasoline situation is going to become critical here in the East.
Yesterday was the start of the open enrollment period for Obamacare. I got onto the website first thing yesterday morning. I logged on successfully, and filled out the first screen with my email address. When I clicked the continue icon, I got a pretty green Please Wait spinner. Here it is 24 hours later, and I’m still looking at that spinner.
Two Iowa cops were shot and killed from ambush overnight. The authorities are looking for a suspect, whose photo they published. He appears to be a low-life white guy, which no doubt is why he was identified and pictured so quickly. If it had been a black guy or one of Middle-Eastern appearance, we’d still be waiting for details.
We’re down to our last box of dog treats, so I checked Amazon and Walmart for prices. I’d ordered them from both places in the past, but lately I’ve been ordering them mostly from Walmart because Amazon’s price is so high. This time, Walmart was charging $2.87/box versus Amazon at $7.93/box. This kind of ratio is getting more and more common with Amazon Prime. They used to be competitive on price. Nowadays, they’re more often not competitive. When my Prime membership comes up for renewal, I may not bother.
Lori and I discussed the gasoline situation this morning. Monday night, I called her cellphone and left voicemail for her about the Colonial Pipeline explosion. She immediately headed out to fill her tank, and called her daughter at college to tell her to fill her tank. Lori’s Jeep is also her personal vehicle. It gets truly awful mileage during stop-and-go mail deliveries. She has to fill up every day. She said that until the pipeline situation is resolved she may start filling up twice a day, assuming she can find gas stations that are open. That would allow her to keep her tank at least half full at all times.