PREVIOUSLY: Another Update From The Apocalypse (Car Trouble)

Well, things had been going pretty well. I’m still mostly quarantining myself as much as I can due to the coronavirus, so Monday-Friday I’m pretty much just going to and from work, along with brief stops at the grocery store and for gas. And then I stay home all weekend. The car’s been holding up, it still takes a bit getting used to driving it, but I manage. There’s still a lot I need to learn, I only just figured out this morning how to straighten my seat, it was leaned back a little when I bought it and I thought that was just how it is. Last weekend, last Saturday night around 11:45pm there was a car crash on my block, a couple of houses down from mine, someone crashed into a car that was parked. When I heard the BOOM! and went outside I was partially expecting that someone had crashed into my car, but mine was fine. So I hoped that was a good sign. But then yesterday. . .

Yep, I got a parking ticket!

I was parked across the street from my house, and Thursday is trash pickup/street sweeping day for that side, so there’s no parking allowed from 8am to 3pm. I overslept and didn’t make it out until 8:14am. What really sucked is that as I opened the door to leave I saw parking enforcement car driving away. So I just missed him. Meaning if I’d gotten out maybe 5 minutes earlier I could have probably gotten out of the ticket by moving. But as I got to my car there was the ticket on my windshield. $55.00 down the drain…

Okay, it could be worse. And it was my fault. I knew the night before as I was eating late that I was risking my sleep that night. And when I woke up around 7:50am, I rushed to hop in the shower and get dressed, knowing I was running late. I guess I could have quickly instead gone outside and tried to move my car somewhere else, except I know even that would be difficult since the entire other side of the street was already taken. I’d probably have to park all the way down and around the street, then walked back to shower and get dressed and then walked down to my car. It just seemed simpler to risk showering first (even though, to save time, I skipped shaving my head or my face, and then I spent the rest of the day at work feeling uncomfortable because of that).

Still, it’s annoying because that’s more money that I didn’t plan on having to spend (and at $55 that’s up from the $40 it was the last time I got a parking ticket 6 years ago), while I’m trying to save as much as I can due to the increased expenses that this new car cost me. Plus there’s the fact that I was only parked on that side of the street that morning because, as usual, I couldn’t park on my own side of the street as all of the spaces, including the three in front of my own house, were already taken by various neighbors the night before.

And also I can’t help but think, is this even really necessary? At a time like this, with the Mayor reclosing Los Angeles County due to rising cases of the Coronavirus, are parking enforcement considered essential workers? But of course I know the answer is yes, because parking tickets are easy revenue for the city, so there you go. Oh well, my bad.

On a lighter note, I just started trying out this new nootropic called THRIIV which I discovered last week. It’s only been a few days, but so far it does seem to be giving me more energy than caffeine does. Whether that also leads to increased “mental quickness, verbal fluency, creativity, and confidence,” as their website states, remains to be seen. I’ll be sure to update my results on it at the end of the month.