Hail Asphaltia, full of grace, help me find a parking space

This is the prayer some guy in an article I read this morning says when he's looking for a parking space. On the one hand, it's pretty clever. On the other hand, it's a sad commentary. The article was about how bad the parking situation is getting around here, particularly downtown. And of course the people working for the city think it's great -- they have tax revenues coming out their asses. But for those of us that need to, oh, I don't know, GO TO WORK and shop and occasionally go out to eat down there, what a pain in the ass! We've had this massive influx of people over the past 5 years and the freeways and parking lots are showing the strain. And people are walking around so angry inside that when one person scoops another for a parking space, they come to blows over it. One woman in the article said when a guy stole a parking space out from under her, she made a hand gesture and he GOT OUT OF HIS CAR, went over to hers, screamed obscenities at her, spit all over her window, and TRIED TO OPEN HER DOOR. It was not until she started honking her horn like mad that he left her alone. The moral of the story is, people are freaks, don't provoke them.

And the other thing in the story that annoyed me was how the people running the city were bragging that they had to buy 4 new "boots" for cars the first week that they got this new technology that reads peoples' license plates and "marks" them with some kind of GPS technology so they can come back and ticket them like 2 minutes after their meter expires. And state workers (state workers, helloooo, we already waste a butt-load of money paying these peoples' salaries and benefits while they brag about sleeping on the job) are complaining about how they have to park at METERS for work and watch the clock all day and run out to the street to feed meters or move their cars so they won't get ticketed. WTF? This is not something to be excited about! The goddamned local and state governments are so orgasmic over the prospect of tax revenues and revenues from fees and fines that they are completely blind to problems that are kicking them in the f'ing head! It's just annoying. No wonder so many people around here seem to be talking about selling all their shit and moving to Idaho to buy a 3,000 square foot house on 5 acres for $150,000! Problem is, what the hell do you do once you're there? Oh, yeah, that.

So anyway, although that article annoyed the shit out of me, I do have to give praise to the fact that I did 75 all the way to work this morning. Got there in 20 minutes. I don't know why some days the commute is a dream (rarely), and other days it's a frigging nightmare (generally). But the dream days are a nice, if infrequent, surprise.

My newsletter is coming right along; I decided not to get hung up on the fact that I'm still trying to figure out the basics of MS Publisher and just created the guts of my document in Word. So it's about done and now I can focus on figuring out how to plop the guts into the body of the newsletter. Nice!

I'm out of Sierra Nevada and we have Corona but no limes, so it sits in the fridge taunting me. I can't believe I'm even gonna say this, but I am drinking a Michelob Ultra right now. It's some kind of low-carb beer that my carb-phobic friend Skindy drinks so she can feel like she's being good when she wants a beer. I think she left 4 of 'em here last time she was over and this one lonely bottle was languishing in the fridge. Kinda tastes like Budweiser or something, if I recall correctly. Still, somehow it's better than a Corona w/o lime. But there's only 1 of 'em, and I'm 3/4 of the way through it -- so I'm kinda sad.

Could someone throw a lime my way? I've got the salt covered.