Two of My Favorite Words If Used Together: Commodities Boom -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

This morning on the way out the door, I saw the subject matter on CNBC Squawk: "Commodities Boom" with file footage of railroad cars -- black oil tank cars, and the distinctive orange and black BSNF locomotives. See Carpe Diem's recent posting.

This a..m., one of the Yahoo!Financial headlines: oh, the headline changed -- the original headline was "Oil Nears $95 With Signs of Improving US Economy." Now the headline is: "Oil Hits 3-Month High After Greek Vote Scrapped." I did not read the article.

And I forgot it was Friday until it was mentioned on the radio. And, yesterday someone said we change our clocks this weekend.

It is an incredibly balmy Friday morning here in the Bakken. I can't tell if the skies are clear because it's pitch black -- I guess I could have looked for the stars, but forgot. But the Cenex station at the second busiest corner in Williston was empty of 18-wheelers. Not one big truck was at the pumps. In fact not one vehicle. While getting my coffee, three pickup trucks pulled in but no oil trucks. The men at the coffee klatsch had no explanation.

When I see "commodities boom" as the CNBC subject matter on a Friday, one can't help but get excited. I told someone last night, "you know, at $93, for all intents and purposes, that's 100-dollar oil and folks seemed to have gotten used to price at the pump. There are mixed signals about the strength of the economy, but it appears that in the aggregate, companies reporting their earnings for 3Q11 have done very, very well.

Even Starbucks surged on "loyal sales."

Starbucks Corp.'s fiscal fourth-quarter profit jumped 29% as the coffee giant benefited from continued loyalty among U.S. customers and its expansion overseas.

Starbucks said its U.S. stores saw more traffic and higher bills per customer. Overall, U.S. same-store sales rose 10% in the fiscal quarter ended Oct. 2, outpacing Dunkin' Brands Group Inc.'s 6% growth in Dunkin' Donuts' U.S. same-store sales in its third quarter ended Sept. 24.

Helping Starbucks's U.S. stores has been a new loyalty program, which allows users to load money on a Starbucks card and use it like a debit card.

Just for the record, I prefer Dunkin' Donuts. And when I get back to Boston, the first coffee shop I will visit will be the one just down the street from our granddaughters.

Okay, enough of this. Back to sorting through comments to the blog.


Little Darlin', The Diamonds 1957: I was six years old. We lived in a new subdivision. I remember them paving the road, and a kid on a bike almost getting run over by a "grader."  I would never have heard this song then. I was listening to country music if I was listening to anything. Williston was "booming" then, too, I suppose, though on a smaller scale and I really don't the details or remember much more. Except the huge piles of snow during the winter that the graders would leave at the corner by our house. The video? It was sent to me yesterday. The individual who sent it to me would have had no idea it was my wife's birthday yesterday; purely coincidental. Funny how things show up in one's mailbox completely unexpected.