Guess how happy I was on Thursday afternoon at 2:20 pm.
If you picked "Not very," then
CONGRATULATION
You a winner, HA HA HA.
Because on Thursday at 2:20 pm, I had the idea that I should bike down to the golf course on Friday morning. But in order to do that, I needed a pump for my bicycle tires - it wouldn't be too bad to have a flat en route to work, which is only ~1.5 miles away by roads, but getting stuck 9 miles from home without a functional cycle would have been bad. But it was 2:20, and I had to work at 3, and the bike store closed at 7, before I would be done with work. So in order to save time, I decided to drive over to the bike place real quick, head home and then bike to work. So I walked out to the parking lot.
The eerily empty parking lot. The one WITHOUT MY CAR!!!
After about 2.3 seconds of brutal panic, I realized that everyone else's cars were gone, too, so unless we had just been victimized by a very shwanky and very targeted crime syndicate, my car was probably not gone. Also, there was the fresh smell of tar in the air - I am, as mentioned here, Smelltard the Magnificent, but that putrid scent does not escape my attention. It turns out that though they cannot afford to pay their water bills, my condo association can afford to repave the parking lot. And apparently can afford to tow people's cars out of the way.
I was, understandably, miffed, as there had been no warning of any of this. But mainly, I just wanted to find my car so I could get to the bike store and then on to work. So i went to the office, land of the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track Girls. Who are OH-SO-EFFING-HELPFUL, not. Beck has a particular hatred for them since the incident when they refused to let us park our moving truck in front of our apartment (they claimed it would block the sales spaces, and made us park across the complex. It was 115 degrees at the time. And no one parked in the spaces the entire time; Beck checked). So Beck routinely parks in their Sales spaces out of spite. YEAH! I have had several encounters with them where they treat me with something in the contempt to utter disregard range, so I am not a huge fan either.
All of this is meant to indicate that I didn't particularly expect any help when I got to the office. I was not disappointed. I first asked, "Do you know where the cars are?"
Unhelpful lady says, "I don't know; I think they're around back."
"Where around back?" I asked, as "around back" is about a mile long area.
"I don't know. You really should have moved your car ahead of time."
"Um, how was I supposed to know you were repaving today?"
"Uh, yeah, we sent a letter." Trust that this was in the best possible tonally inflected Frank Zappa valley girl type accent.
"I didn't get a letter. To whom did you send them?" (And yes, I busted out an objective pronoun).
"Well we sent them last week to the condo owners."
"But, you see, I am not an owner, I merely LIVE HERE."
"Well, the owner should have told you."
"You didn't think notifying me directly or maybe posting some signs would have been a good idea?"
"That wasn't my decision to make."
Buck passed! Obviously this interaction was going nowhere, so I left, tracked down one of the pavers and asked him where they had moved the cars. *He* was helpful and even apologized for having to move the cars, realizing that the complex's representatives had not exactly done the world's best job of notifying people. So I found my car, drove to the bike store, got a pump, headed home, and rode my bike in, just a couple of minutes late. So all told, no damage done. But in the eternal humankind basically evil / basically good game, chalk another couple up for the BE. Though I don't know if the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track qualifies you as human. Can those gals use tools? I mean, besides blackberries and dirty looks?
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Now playing: Gang of Four - Natural's Not In It
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