I was at the store this afternoon, and I happened to notice something that I don't recall really paying much attention to before. I was out of milk at my apartment, so I headed to the grocery store to pick some up, along with a few other grocery necessities that I had run out of since the last trip to the store. When I got to the back dairy cooler section of the store, I noticed one of the stock guys taking down the milk price signs and replacing them with new labels with slightly higher prices. At first I didn't think much of it, but then I wondered to myself why the price was changing. I guess that I don't usually pay much attention to the price of things that I buy all the time, because I'm just going to buy them anyways. It never really dawned on me that the price of milk wasn't fairly set, like the price of a jar of tomato sauce for example. Of course, I always pay attention to the fluctuation in prices of things like meat and some fruits and vegetables, because I'm always waiting to stock up on things like chicken or ground beef for the freezer. On the other hand, I will only buy certain fruits and vegetables when they happen to be on sale. Otherwise, many of them are just too expensive to keep on hand all the time. I guess I should have assumed that the prices of dairy items fluctuate as well, but I hadn't really ever thought about it. As I saw the guy changing the price on the milk in the cooler, I began to wonder about the other dairy products and their prices. Do the prices of eggs, sour cream, and shredded cheese change often as well...beside the regular changes due to going on sale? I suppose that when you're just out looking for the sales, you don't often worry about what the true base price of the item is. I wonder how much of it had to do with supply and demand when it comes to milk. I wonder if there are certain months out of the year when farmers jack up the prices for milk because the cows just aren't producing enough. I suppose that it's also probably locally based, since the dairies that supply the milk for certain grocery chains can't be all that far away from where the milk is sold. Well, maybe I take that back. I remember back when I lived in Florida that the milk was always kinda funny. It had a funny taste and it always went bad pretty quickly. I always attributed it to the fact that there weren't exactly dairy farms all over the south...so the milk from came from "distant" cows. I remember wishing for the delicious milk from back home in New York, because I knew that if I were to get in my car and drive twenty miles or so south, I would run into the dairies that were supplying the milk that was in the local grocery stores. MMM...this is crazy...I don't think that I've ever given this much thought to milk in my whole life, but I really do think it's a valid thing to talk about. I mean, like I said before, milk is usually one of those things that most people have in their homes on a regular basis. Therefore, it's kinda like gasoline if you think about it...we all use it, and therefore we are subject to whatever price the "powers that be" want to stick on it...be it the Food and Drug Administration, the grocery stores, or the individual dairy prices. I think that I'm going to have to start paying attention to the price of dairy things like milk just to satisfy my curiosity about these price fluctuations. I wonder which types of dairy products aren't subject to the fluctuations as well. I mean, does the price of yogurt go up and down as well...and is it at the same time as the milk fluctuates? So many questions...anyone out there have any answers or suggestions for me?