Wow! I'm in Hillsborough, and a gallon of Walmart milk was $3.80 on Tuesday, almost three times as much! Do you have Aldi or Lidl nearby? It seems to me that milk prices go down when one of these stores open up nearby. A few summers ago we found milk for $1.00 a gallon in Winston-Salem where a Walmart, Lidl and Aldi were all in close proximity. An Aldi is under construction now in Hillsborough, across from the Walmart, so I hope we'll see some benefit there.

My younger son has been accepted into the mechanical engineering program at UNC-Charlotte. He's also been accepted into engineering at Western Carolina. He's waiting on a decision from NC State. He'll be a junior transfer student so notifications don't go out until April 15. A few days ago he got an update from NC State saying that they are actively considering his application and to please submit his current grades for this semester as posted on Sakai, Blackboard, Canvas, etc. I'd like to think that was a positive thing, since he was able to post all As, but I'm trying hard not to get my hopes up for him. So meanwhile, we continue to wait. It's so frustrating because he can't make plans for UNC Charlotte until he knows about NC State. I guess we will have a very busy end of April, no matter which way the NC State decision goes.

What a beautiful doggie! It's never an easy decision whether the pet is young or old.

One of the best basketball games I have ever watched. I rooted for the Tar Heels, but even when the outcome was uncertain, I still enjoyed the game.

I feel the same way. It's so much work now to feed my family and try to stay within budget. And the increase in gas prices is limiting me further. I've got to think, "OK, if I go to that store for the specials, it will cost me $8 in gas. Is that worth the savings?" We're doing OK for now, but I'm running out of things to cut.

It's severely affecting us. In March we have three trips planned in the RV -- one trip to see a child over spring break (this trip is now done), one with another child for his spring break (leaving tomorrow and this one is close by so we probably have enough fuel in the tank), and one trip at the end of March which is just my husband and me. I was thinking of canceling that last one, but at this point we'd probably lose more in cancellations than the additional price of gas, so we're going. I'm not planning a summer trip, though, and probably not a fall trip either. So very disappointing. With both of our kids finally at an age to leave alone, this was going to be our break-out year for longer trips in the RV. My younger son commutes to a community college in the next county over, and now it's costing him around $8 each time he goes, although luckily he only goes three days a week, and the rest are online classes. He had been planning to buy a car to take to college next fall, but he has now decided it's not worth it at this time -- used cars are up, in addition to the cost of fuel. I hope we can get him in a dorm or in an apartment close to campus. Dorms are hard to get for junior transfers at many of the NC colleges due to dorm shortages and freshman getting preference. Finally, the gas prices are even affecting where I shop. I can go to the Food Lion that's close by for about $1-$2 in gas, or the Walmart across town for about $4. If I want to go to any of the other places I like, like Harris Teeter or Aldi, it will cost me $8 in gas, so I just don't go to those places unless we're in the area for something else.

I get that weird panicky feeling when grocery shopping, too. I find it so much more work to shop for groceries now, trying to stretch my grocery dollars as best I can. I've been managing to keep the amount I spend fairly steady, but we've had to make some changes to the things we eat, and I also have my biggest eater away at college on a meal plan. Thank goodness! But that is only a temporary fix.

This happened to my son as well, except with Calc 3 and Calculus based physics. There was only one section of each, and they were scheduled at the same time, which made me scratch my head because Calc 2 was a prerequisite for Calculus-based physics, and obviously for Calculus 3, too. You would think the people scheduling would have noticed this. And this is one of the issues with smaller community colleges. There is often only one option for each class. And then also with smaller schools, there are often not enough students with interest to take some of the harder courses. For example, this semester my son's CC offered Differential Equations, but only two people signed up, and so it was canceled.

This is a very good thread, and a lot of valuable points have been shared. I will add one more that I don't think has been mentioned, and that's that even if a tech transfer student is able to complete the desired degree in four years, it can be hard because all the "easy" classes have already been satisfied at the community college, leaving all the upper level courses with nothing lighter to break them up. My son is majoring in bio, minoring in chem, and his first year he was in a scholarship program specifically for transfer students in STEM fields. At a roundtable at the end of the first year, one of the common things the students in the program mentioned was how hard it was to transfer and have only the difficult classes left to take. Had my son started out at the 4-year school as a freshman, the sequence of courses was planned to allow at least one liberal arts/elective type of class per semester. For the transfer students coming in with an Associate Degree from a NC College, all of the liberal arts requirements were automatically waved -- they were transferred in as a package deal from the CC, so he had none left to take. Starting off as a junior transfer student with a full schedule of sciences with labs can be very difficult. Anyhow, we have no regrets about taking the CC to 4.5 year path. 😄 It has saved a heap of money -- basically, no student loans for the first 2 years, and that's worth a lot. My older son is going one extra semester, but he picked up a chem minor along the way and is doing a heavy research load, so we're OK with that. My younger son will be transferring into a mechanical engineering program, and he will probably need 3 more years, but given that the schools generally recommend 9 semesters for engineers anyhow, that's only an extra semester, and our hope is for him to co-op for a semester or two, so it might take longer still. My older son will graduate with about $18,000 in student loans, and it would have been way more than that if he hadn't taken the CC route.

One thing to keep in mind is that squirrels love fruit, and they can do a lot of damage and do it rapidly. Every time we think we've taken care of the squirrel problem, another one or two come over. My husband is trying a new trick this year for our plums -- he's going to put some kind of metal collar around the trunk to see if it will limit the squirrels' ability to climb the tree. I don't have high hopes. We have a squirrelanator trap, and that has been very helpful, but we still lose so many plums to the squirrels. Deer like plums, too. I put chicken wire flat on the ground all around the trees and that helps to act as a barrier because they don't like to walk on it. And I've also been known to surround my plum trees with lawn furniture as well. The deer can't jump it when it's close to the trees. But squirrels can jump, climb and wreak all kinds of havoc.

I probably shouldn't admit it, but this has happened before 😄

I'm hoping to expand the veggies I grow. I had a large crop of tomatoes and cucumbers last year, along with a reasonable amount of peppers and lot of herbs. My beans and Swiss chard were obliterated by the very significant deer population we have, and the ever populous squirrel population did some damage to our tomatoes and devastated our small plum harvest. I'd love to eat the deer 😄, but we live in a neighborhood so that's easier said than done. I imagine if there were a true crisis, rules about hunting would not be enforced and the deer population would quickly be diminished. Not sure if people would be quite as willing to eat the squirrel population...I guess if they were hungry enough they would. Anyhow, I'm going to try squash this summer. Apparently deer don't like it very much, although they will nibble it, too. And I've got Florida Broadleaf mustard that has overwintered, even with temps down to 12 degrees and a layer of sleet on top of it. The leaves got quite freeze-burned, and I'm surprised it survived, but it's growing again and I hope to have enough to start eating it next month.

We were able to find thyme at Dollar Tree. I was surprised because often they only have the very basics. But they have a greater selection now that they raised the price of stuff to $1.25.

This is an interesting discussion. My kids are beyond this now, but both kids took their high school higher math classes at the CC. Both took/are taking the path of Associates Degree then transferring to a 4 year school with one kid being a biology major/chem minor and the other transferring into a mechanical engineering program this fall. My son who is the bio major was required to take Calc for his degree, and he did well, but he told me that the basic stats class he had back at the CC has been way more valuable in his bio classes than the Calc class ever will be. Which makes me wonder, why doesn't the bio degree require stats instead of calc? Stats is encouraged, but it's not required.

Just a question, here, but is AP Calc the only calc offered in high school? I mean, if a school offers calc, is it going to be AP Calc? (Neither of my kids attended public school so I am clueless about this)

I KNOW I am getting old because I didn't even understand half the commercials! 🤣 I confess, some I had to google to figure out what they were about.

This is exactly what I was asking. Thank you so much!

I just had a thought and can't find an easy answer by googling. Do the college app people making any decisions about the worthiness of a college application before it goes to the individual universities to which a student is applying?

We like baked potatoes and also various soups. But those are not good for summer! What about a pasta salad? You can make a big batch of it and dish it up for a couple of lunches. The one I make is penne, olives, roasted red peppers, provolone & salami, but you can add in anything you want. Or leave stuff out, like the cheese. I make a home-made vinaigrette, but you could use any store bought dressing as well.

Hope you made it safely. I very occasionally shop north Winston Salem enroute to taking my son to Boy Scout camp around Mt. Airy. In normal times (hah!) the grocery prices there are really good due to much competition. Pre-pandemic I found a gallon of milk for $1, which was more than $2 less than my area about an hour east of WS. It made such an impressionsthat I have fond memories, lol.

I think the run has already begun. I'm glad I have what I need or at least enough to get by.

It sounds like my local Food Lion is not the only one with issues. I would think that Food Lion is a large enough chain that they would be able to manage their supply a bit better. Unfortunately, in my town we only have Food Lion and Walmart, so I shop in other places when I'm out and about. I was in Chapel Hill yesterday for an appointment, and I stopped at two Harris Teeters, and while they were out of a number of things, there were people out stocking the shelves, including management. BTW, HT has those V8 Fusions on sale this week for $3, although that doesn't mean the'll have what you're looking for. I got one of the last Spicy V8s that I need for a soup I'll be making. Oh, both HTs were very busy -- I think a lot of people were out yesterday, already stocking up or the storm. That's kind of what I was doing. I don't plan to leave my house again until well after the storm. I was rather looking forward to cooking some cozy winter food, but with the high potential for an ice storm, I'm probably going to have to change my meal plans.

For me it's our local Food Lion that is like this. I've really come to dislike shopping there because they are out of so much. The other stores in the general area are never this bad, so there's more than supply chain issues here. I would like to say it's poor management since other stores seem to have more goods on hand, but maybe it's just the Food Lion in my small town. Anybody else living in central NC who wants to comment on the Food Lion in their area? I'm very curious about this!

For me, 2021 was worse. The hope of ever returning to a pre-covid normal is fading fast. In 2020, there was still hope that we'd eventually return to living like we did. Now I'm pretty certain things will never the same.

I definitely thing life requires greater executive function skills than in the past.