Thursday, October 4, 2007

Woo! Just in time!

As happens every time I have off on Thursday, I got up 10 minutes after I should have already moved my car for street cleaning. But like always, ran outside wearing my clothes from yesterday and got my car moved with like 5 minutes to spare before the Parking Authority ticketed me.

That's the thing about living in the city. It doesn't matter if my car's in the way when the street cleaner comes or not. If it's somewhere it doesn't belong when the APA car comes by, then I get a ticket. Usually the APA person is just ahead of the street cleaner, but sometimes they're a couple blocks or more and sometimes they come back after the street cleaner, just to make sure nobody moved their car back before the signs say you can.

On top of that, the new mayor did us the huge "favor" of making street cleaning year round, not that they actually do it when the weather's bad anyway.

Then there's the great snow removal plan, which as winter approaches, I'm really hoping that they won't use again this year, because it sucks. Rather than plowing as the snow falls and cleaning up the plow piles on what would normally be a no-parking, street cleaning day anyway. They wait until the snow has totally stopped to do anything and then they, apparently randomly, select days in addition to street cleaning that the roads will be no parking and come around with a mutated combine and pick up all the snow.

The pick up all the snow idea is great. Except that I had to call in to work because I couldn't get off the block I live on because they hadn't plowed at all. And except for the fact that when they finally did plow, they plowed me in so hard that even with the help of a guy with a little Bobcat plow it still took up 3 hours to did out my car because I had to crawl under and use my ice scraper to get the snow and ice out from around my exhaust system.

Can you tell how excited I am to live in the city, where we supposedly have "better" snow removal than everybody else? My best friend's parents live on top of a mountain and have less trouble leaving their house in the winter than I do.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

The best part of that "live on top of a mountain" bit? They live on a TERCIARY road, it's not even a secondary. This means they are one of the very last roads to get plowed, ever. Based on what you've told me about last year's snow removal, I am SO not looking forward to living in the city during the snow months. On the plus side, I don't have to worry about leaving a change of clothes at your house anymore! :-)