Gas prices in Tacoma keep falling, with Friday’s price 5 cents less than Thursday.

AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report puts the average price of regular gas at $2.55, more than $1 less than last month.

The cheapest gallon is $2.24 at a Safeway at 224th Street and Meridian in Graham, according to Tacoma Gas Buddy. Within Tacoma city limits, the cheapest is $2.29 at the ARCO station at 1440 Puyallup Ave.

The average for Washington is $2.67, and the national average is $2.50.

Oil settled at $67.81 a barrel at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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In case anyone has driven by and wondered what’s going on at the stripped-down apartment building on 19th and Stevens Streets, here’s the situation.

Dobler Management Co. is spending almost $2 million to renovate Boardwalk Apartments at 1825 S Stevens St., across the street from Fred Meyer and a Shell station. The management company is renovating the 1979 building, not just to update the property, but also to improve the neighborhood, Dobler’s Senior Vice President David Dearth said.

“The neighborhood can either be bad or good, it’s kinda what you make of it,” Dearth said. “We want a product that attracts high quality tenants.”

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Attention James Gilmore of Tacoma, Kelly Heine of Lakewood, Jason Huery of Gig Harbor, Neil Lapham of Puyallup, Steven Lyons of Bonney Lake, Jimmy Overly of Roy, John Russom of University Place, Gregory Fields of Ashford and around 5,594 more of you.

The Internal Revenue has some checks – with your name written thereupon – just waiting.

In Washington, some 6,000 taxpayers have not received their stimulus checks, or, in some cases, refund checks, because the postal service returned them due to address errors.

The checks in Washington total $6.2 million. The stimulus checks average $581, and

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Two minutes to show time, CEO David Haggerty handed out single-stemmed roses to the women huddled around the TV in his North Tacoma living room.

“I appreciate all the support and everything,” Haggerty told his mother, Hazel; wife, Jeanette; daugther, Melissa; sister, Dawn; and friend, Wendy.

The young Tacoma company, which makes a novel bed sheet set with warm fleece on one side and cool cotton on the other, hit the big time at 2 p.m. this afternoon with a six-minute sales segment on the nation’s most popular shop-from-home TV station.

I told you the Split the Sheets story in an Oct. 19 column.

David Haggerty invented a bed sheet with warm fleece on one side and cool cotton on the other after he and his wife, Jeanette, argued over how warm – or cool – to keep their bed. (TNT Photo by Peter Haley)

So, how did sales go?

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The Seattle-based developer Tarragon announced today that it has signed 10 leases for its Sunrise Village Shopping Center – which opened earlier this month at 156th Street and Meridian Avenue.

The new tenants include: AT&T Wireless; Games Workshop; Hand & Stone Massage Spa; Sleep Country USA; Soleil Nail Spa; Urban Tanning Spa; The Ram Restaurant & Brewery; Pizzeria Fondi; Qdoba Mexican Grill; and Big Foot Java, which will open what if calls a "flagship cafe" featuring an indoor-outdoor fireplace.

The newly signed tenants join anchors L.A. Fitness and Target. Already signed as tenants were Famous Footwear, Staples, Bright

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A friend from Vashon called this week to lament the absence of Mother’s Circus Animal Cookies from his grocer’s shelf. He regularly gave them out as a treat to his high school students. And now there are no more.

I missed the Associated Press story three weeks ago, but here’s what it said:



"An Oakland (Calif.) cookie company has closed its doors for good.

“After operating in Oakland for 92 years, Mother’s Cookies shut down when its parent company filed for bankruptcy protection Monday.

“Plant officials told

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The average price of a gallon of gas in Tacoma dropped five cents from yesterday.

You think that’s good: The price – $2.63 – is $1 less than you would have paid at the pump a month ago and 48 cents below what you would have paid a year ago, according to AAA. Tacoma is tied for the lowest in the state with Bremerton and Olympia. The state average is $2.75.

The cheapest place in Tacoma according to Tacoma Gas Buddy is $2.38 at the Valero station at 1730 S. 72nd St.

Now that’s reason

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A few notes on today’s market:

Up 889.35. That’s quite a day for the Dow, even in these volatile days of triple-digit swings.

One note on today’s activity – I’ve heard from Steve Claiborne at Russell Investments, and he tells me that as far as the Russell 3000 goes, this was the third-most volatile day on record for the broad-market index.

The most volatile came on October 19, 1987 – when the index slipped 18.03 percent. The next came on October 13, just two weeks ago – when the index gained 11.47 percent. And then comes

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