Today was destined for utter badness, but somehow ended up ... not bad at all. It's amazing really. Some days, the only things that go wrong are the little ones, and they just ruin all the great stuff. This day was kind of opposite.
I had planned to use this week to practice the bus and drive during regular traffic to be certain of promptness when classes were on the line. To that end, I was going to leave a bit early, and carefully time each stage of the process. From the apt to the lot. Bus arrival. From lot to bus stop nearest the building. From the stop to the actual building. Etc.
I have gotten into the habit of checking my email weekdays just before I shower, sort of to be sure of the day's schedule. If there's something for early that I need to be doing as soon as I arrive, or if my boss is working from home that day, it pays to know what you're going into. It'll be more so when there are meetings that get added to the schedule (= dress differently, get there earlier, rearrange the day, etc.), deleted from the schedule (= possibly not even come to campus, come later, don't bother with the skirt, etc.), or moved around in time, place, or both (= just an all-around hassle).
I checked my email this morning, only to find that the billing schedule had apparently been altered from years previous. In previous years, the addition of my fee waivers would automatically push the grand due date into mid September. This is nice. Usually, they send out an e-statement about this around orientation, so I wasn't too upset by the presence of this email. Until I read it. This year, it seems, that fee waiver means nothing. This year, it was all due today. They were so kind as to send me a reminder ... today. Lots of time, you see. It must have been automated, as it arrived before 8am. They should probably think about timing those better. Maybe a few days in advance of the due date.
To make matters more fun, when I logged on to see the dang bill, the loan I'd gone through all that hassle to get (they have you go through a how-to about loans that you'll promptly forget because you're only going through it to get the actual loan) was not in evidence on the statement anywhere. The fee waivers helped cut the cost down, but there was no loan.
Surprisingly, this in itself did not ruin my day. It was before 8, so I showered, dressed, and picked up the phone at 8:05, because their watches are usually a little slow when compared to mine. It was busy. I needed to leave the apartment in order for my practice run to work, but I had to talk to the tuition people about this due date and missing loan stuff. So I tried the line again, and again, and again. By 8:25, I determined that they must have only had a single phone in the whole office; desperate to get to work, and unwilling to pay tuition
at work, I checked my balance and wrote out an e-check.
As of this moment, the loan is still not on the form, but I am still enrolled. At least a minor disaster was diverted. What I think will happen is that the loan will float in on the first day of classes, and be direct deposited in its entirety. Nevertheless, I intend to call them again tomorrow morning and ask about that. I tried throughout the day when I had downtime, and they were busy each time. Probably there were a lot of us who had the due date moved up nearly a month at the last minute. Wednesday, I'll have some substantial down time at work, and can actually walk over to their building. If something comes up that day, I don't work at all Thursday, and can wait in whatever line of concerned students they've gathered.
In any case, I threw my lunch and breakfast in my bag, donned shoes, and drove to work. This week is the first week when the busses are running, and I am expected to park in Satelite Parking. I've done this before, and as you might recall, I enjoyed that lot for the last part of the prior semester, just because I wanted to. This time around, I parked in Satelite 2, a little lot that's a tiny bit closer, but still off the map. [well, it's
on the map, but that's a figure of speech...] There's a very large sign on the stree as you turn into the lot that identifies it.
But there are no signs inside the lot itself. This is bad. You see, every other lot on campus (and some off-campus) has a series of different kinds of parking spaces. The Commuter lots have special spots for gym-users, coaches, motorcycles, etc. The Residence lots have special spots for teachers, maintainance workers, etc. The Reserved lots have special spots for teachers, maintainance workers, motorcycles, tagged visitors, park-and-paying visitors, and more. All of these lots have handicap spaces. And all these different areas are marked by in-lot signs.
This lot had none of them. In fact, it also had no Satelite parkers. All the stickers and mirror-tags were yellow for staff and faculty. You get major tickets on top of towing if you park in their spaces. I looked around for someone to ask, and even consulted my map, which indicated that I was in the right place. But I've never known a faculty-staffer to park anywhere but a Reserved lot. I parked there and stood by my car waiting for a bus to come by, thinking surely a bus driver would be able to tell me what I needed to know. I waited a good 15 minutes, but no bus came. This only strengthened my feeling that the lot was actually a Reserved lot for faculty-staff of nearby buildings (though I actually don't know any departments that far out except museum folks).
Unwilling to take a chance, I restarted the car and drove around to the other Satelite lot. I was one of two cars. I waited in the car, which turned out to be a major mistake. When no bus came after several minutes, I got up to walk around a bit. Left the door wide open and my stuff in the back seat. Why carry it around, when I can see the bus coming from a long way off? I'll have time to come back and get my stuff.
Well, I saw another car come and park all the way across the lot from me. These are football field sized lots. It was very far away. I got back to my car, and grabbed my stuff from the back seat. I pushed down the lock on both back and front doors. I closed the doors. And then I realized that, actually, the keys I was holding went to the English building, and not to my car. Those keys were still in the car itself. Locked very soundly inside where I couldn't get them.
I know a lot of people do this on a regular basis. I ought not to feel bad about doing it once. It was, after all, the first time I've done that (and only, if the next two hours in this little story taught me anything). But after all, this wasn't the end of the world. My cell phone was outside of the car, as was my wallet with the AAA card. Thank you parental unit for the gift of AAA. I called the number, and they told me they were running quite a bit behind schedule and were very, very busy, but if they could take my number and location, type of car and all that, they'd get there as soon as they could.
After about 30 minutes (with still no bus, I might add), I decided to call the campus folks as well. The traffic folks have a system by which they'll jump your car once, bring you some gas once, change a tire once, and glory of glories, get your keys out of your car once. I think you get a single shot at each, but it might be a one-time deal for any of those things. Despite the trouble I had a while back with the alternator, I hadn't used up my once of anything. So I called.
They do not, it turns out, unlock automatic car doors. That's fine, I thought, since only one of my car doors responds to the clicker anyway. They can open up one of the other three. Nope. That one door that clicks spoiled the whole thing. Not only that, but they were also incredibly busy and running behind schedule. I gave them the car info and my location, still forlornly almost alone (remember the social butterfly who parked as far from me as s/he could get?) in a big, big lot, far, far away. They said they'd come try after I convinced them that the doors were not actually automatic. I believe pity had a bit part to play in that. Had I been within walking distance of ... anything ... they would probably have not come out.
But another 30 minutes sauntered by, during which I sat down on the rain drizzled curb and ate my breakfast. I guess I forgot to mention the heavy rain last night, the mud and humidity this morning, and the faint drizzle that graced my wait. Oh well. There was a nice clammy wind to liven things up (and frizz my hair something awful).
Then, behold! A little truck like the pink elephant we had at the CA house came puttering up the drive toward the front of the lot, where mr/s social was parked. It was all cab, and no back, more golf cart than truck, and probably a bit shorter than I am. It stopped by my only form of companionship, allowed itself to loaded with bags and boarded, and then... not what you're thinking, probably. It did not putter over to me and offer a lift. It did not putter nearby, allowing me to shout out for assistance, or reassurance about busses. No. For all I waved my arms and ran toward it, it turned around and left the way it came. I never got close enough to see the driver's face.
I became truly alone out there. A single person, in a field of empty spaces, with three cars, none of which were of any use to me. AAA called and said they'd be another hour, was that okay? The traffic people called and said they were "on their way." At 10:45, only 15 minutes short of a full two hours on campus, a traffic guy arrived. He looked at the car, took down the info again, told me he couldn't do anything. But that there was a new policy where they called in a local company (I think local) called "Pop a Lock" to do the job, and that I wouldn't be paying for it (at this point, of course, I'd have paid quite a lot to get into that car). He'll actually wait with me, he says. Shouldn't be but a minute.
Well, we got to talking. About his own car, a new Nisson van with all sorts of bells and whistles. We went over every whistle he'd played with to date. Especially the DVD player. For his grandson, you see. Cute little boy. 3 years old in October. He showed me pictures. Told me stories. Imitated the darling voice of his favorite little kid in the world. We talked about Ford, and about all the things that could go wrong with cars. We talked about the parking rules, and how they made sense if you had time to really read them. We talked about how poorly marked some of the special space signs are. We talked about the fines for parking in a handicap space, and how if you don't pay that ticket, they'll arrest you the next time you're pulled over for whatever it is. State law, apparently. We talked about his son and daughter, their respective wife and husband. The degrees they were all working toward, or had obtained. My own degree. The one I was working toward. We talked about TAs and GPTIs, and all manner of graduate teachers. We talked about required courses, and how to make them bearable. About attendance policies, and class structure, and cell phones in class. We talked about state employees, democrats and republicans, politics in general, and of course, the weather. All the repairs that needed to be made around campus due to the heavy winds last night, how very muggy it was, the drizzle. So much more.
By now you can no doubt guess that it was more than a minute or two before the Pop a Lock folks arrived. In fact, during this lengthy conversation, his boss called no less than 7 times asking after the Pop a Lock folks, and AAA called me once to announce another hour delay. They were very sorry for the inconvenience, but the rain and winds last night had done a lot of damage. And speaking of calling folks, I called my own boss to let him know what had happened, and where I was, and why I had no idea when I would be in to work.
Then it happened. Near noon, the Pop a Lock guy arrived. He spent about 20 minutes working on the car, trying and failing to open the doors by all sorts of ingenious methods. I was very impressed, despite the lack of progress. He joked that there was a hammer in the back as the last resort. We all had a laugh. Because, for some reason, none of this put the slightest damper on the day. Yes, I had narrowly avoided losing my enrollment. Yes, the bus system seemed to be off today. Yes, I was more than three hours late to anywhere I wanted to be. Yes, I was soaked through. Yes, everything was going wrong, frustratingly wrong. Excpet that no, it was not actually frustrating. Not at all.
After stumping the Pop a Lock guy, my car finally gave in, and one of his ingenious tools (seemingly little more than a rubber band and a thick wire) opened the back passenger side door. He breathed a sigh of relief that his record was unbroken, The traffic guy breathed a sigh of relief that he could get out of the rain, I breathed a sigh of relief that I could get into my car. I thanked them both profusely, and we went our separate ways. I called AAA, told them about the traffic thing, and thanked them for their efforts. I drove to the Commuter lot. I parked. I wrote a note explaining the failure of the bus service and my unwillingness to park without it. A please-don't-tow note. You know the kind.
Then I walked to the building from there, and arrived in time to begin giving demos on how the equipment works in the classrooms, ghosting our two new laptops, troubleshooting some wireless issues, and recabling the multimedia rooms. After work, I returned books to the library and made my way to the car (hoping it was still where I'd parked it). My boss was kind enough to wait in case I needed a ride to get my car out of impoundment. Thankfully, that wasn't necessary, and I even made it home without negative incident.
That isn't to say there was no incident, of course. I was forced by marauding BigTruck into the turn lane at the intersection with Brownfield, and had no choice but to take Brownfield home. Brownfield, as SR might remember, wasn't fun two years ago. Now it's under construction the entire way across Dirt Town. It goes from one lane to three and back again, has turn lanes in the middle of a maze of orange cones, and arrows that literally mean nothing to my driving sense.
But I was home in about half the time, and had no freaky "oh my God where am I?!?" moments. It wasn't too bad. I'm planning to take it up to school tomorrow, to see if I can get the landmarks down. I did some thinking on the way home and figured that most of my current routes were not at all preferred at first. I had to drive them once or twice, figure out what the landmarks were and which lanes did what. Then, and only then, were they comfortable. Brownfield, construction aside, is a straight shot, with very few lane breakoffs, except where it could become 19th for an unaware driver. I have no problem with 19th, and tend to be very aware on the road. So I'll give it a week (this week) and see if it doesn't become something I'd like.
All in all, today was a very, very long day, for all that I missed the first half of work. Lots of things to make it sucky. I'm not sure, in fact, what it was that made today not suck. But I haven't felt upset once. Maybe not gleeful. It's hard to be gleeful in the rain with a stubbornly locked car and a lot of nowhere between you and anything. But it's also hard not to be upset.
I'm hoping the emotions of today last, though I'm banking on the rest of my week being markedly improved on the actual incidences side of things.
I'm off now to knit. I think that will be a fun way to wrap up my evening.
Love and Peace
