Small economic victories

Today I picked up my dry cleaning. The shop is, I would say, a 15-second walk from the front door of my building. Less than 100 feet.

Total items collected: Two shirts, one pair of pants.

Total cost: Dh11. For those of you keeping score with the currency of the United States of 9.4 Percent Unemployment, that's $2.99.

With a turnaround time of two days! Brilliant. They also do ironing for, I believe, Dh2 per item. I really, really planned on ironing my own shirts after I took them down from the clothesline, but... well... you know. So anyway, they have three wrinkly shirts to work on now too.

Spike of Prosperity: Not as dangerous as it sounds. My apartment: about 15o feet to the right of the store's front door.

I also picked up a loaf of bread and a half-gallon of milk from the corner store and paid a bit more than I expected: Dh15, or $4. Not bad, but not awesome. Certainly more than you would pay at a big grocery store, but hey--you're paying for convenience when you patronize* the Spike of Prosperity grocery.

*Scary event: I just spelled "patronize" with an S and had to go back and correct it.