Wednesday, January 31, 2007

I've parked in the same city neighborhood nearly every day for the last 704 days. I follow a methodical route which prioritizes the areas statistically more likely of securing an empty parking spot. When I find one, I compute a formula in my brain which weighs the benefit of taking it and the risk associated with trying to find one better. Yet rest assured that if someone happens to be in my passenger seat I will hear some variation of the phrase, "you can find a spot over here." And God forbid it's a tough parking day and I actually drive the fourteen miles my route dictates I take before I pass the mentioned area and there's a spot there. That's when the imaginary friends in my car get real cocky.

There's a lot of things I think I know about parking in this city. I know that two hour parking will last you about four and a half hours. I know they don't ticket load/unload spots, but if they happen to be loading or unloading at that time, you're hosed. I know that with minimal effort you're more likely to pay less per month in tickets then you would if you purchased your own spot. I think I have parking pretty well figured out: figured out that it's a pain.

I'm tired of parking. I'm also tired of driving 25 miles to and from work everyday, tired of sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, and especially tired of paying to fill my gas tank once a week. Add it all up and that's quite a force coming at me. I've been fighting this battle defensively for too long, and its time for a counter-attack. I'm taking the bus.

That means more the just sitting on the bus everyday. There's no convenient route from home to work, so I've had to leave the car overnight at the park and ride two miles away from work. I then take the bus out of the city to the P & R which saves me forty minutes and two extra buses over actually getting dropped off at work. But I'm confident this will be a good thing. It allows me to nap, or read, or even write. It also means dealing with the people on the bus, but that should add some more interesting stories. In the meantime, I could use some good book suggestions.

  Sunday, January 14, 2007

I'm obsessive compulsive about my blog archive. It's imperative that I have a page for every month; I don't know why, it just is. So I've just back posted two stories to fill in the 88 day gap I have. It's cheating I know, but isn't that archive pretty. Go ahead, look how nice it is, I don't mind. If you got it, flaunt it, right? Anyway, two new posts, after this one - decent read.

This was going to be a post where I lie to save face about why I've back-posted. I'd come up with some excuse for not blogging, like loosing my fingers in a strip-mining accident, or having some new disease that causes the body to give off a localized EMP pulse. Lying is fine, but making excuses for not blogging, whether real or fictitious, is lame. So I feel the only adequate punishment for even considering this and for making two posts to fill in the missing months, would be to purposely surrender face by admitting a few embarrassing things: also regardless of whether real or fictitious. Here goes.

We have a rope tied to the tree in our front yard; that rope was my first girlfriend. During many a summers I spent alone, I would watch cartoons while laying naked on the couch and eating pop-tarts off my tummy. Our small dog would poop wherever the hell it wanted, this was inspiration for me to try the same thing. Staying late for a club meeting and other after-school activities meant an opportunity to use the women's bathroom. Frightened by puberty, at age eleven I shaved my giblets. I've chewed gum off the bottom of a desk, I know the words to every Avril Lavigne song, and I'm also the girl in the R. Kelly sex video.

Whew. I feel better.