Disneyland!

In one week I will be at Disneyland, the happiest place on earth. I'm counting down the days!

I'm probably going to jail...

...because I'm going to adamantly, if not violently, refuse to pay the TWO parking tickets that I got on two consecutive days.

Ticket #1: Thursday morning, 8:44am. I arrive home late Wednesday night and park in a metered spot because there are no zone spots available in my neighborhood (which are reserved for residents and which there is a serious, almost offensive, shortage of. Anyway, I run downstairs in my pajamas at 8:45 Thursday morning to go move my car and hopefully find a zone spot. I'm still groggy and half-asleep, and I probably look like one of the hobos who frequents our street in the wee morning hours. I see the meter maid car parked in front of mine, and I run to my car to go and move it before I get a ticket. Too late. The meter maid is busy ticketing the car directly two spots behind mine. I pick up the ticket and hold it out to her, pleading, and say, "Please, is there anything you can do?" She looks at me and replies mechanically, "Sorry, the ticket's already been written." $35. $35 for 45 minutes. I am basically in tears as I go to move my car. And this lady is particularly ruthless. I see her all the time in my neighborhood, whipping out her stupid little machine, issuing tickets left and right like it's her god-given duty on this earth.

...and it gets even better (or worse)....

Ticket #2: Friday, 5:14pm. I go to the U-District Friday afternoon to meet with my new employer and fill out some paperwork (more about that later). I park in a metered spot, PAY the meter, and assume that I'll probably be out of there within an hour, but give myself 10 extra minutes just in case. I head back to my car right around 5:30, make brief conversation with a confused old Asian man who is a real estate agent but is asking me about a parking lot across the street, and hop in my car and drive off. About ten minutes later I notice a white piece of paper gently flapping in the summer breeze on the righthand side of my windshield. My eyes take a minute to focus, and I feel like I'm seeing a phantom. You've got to be kidding me, I think to myself. But the ticket remains stuck under my windshield wiper, taunting me as I'm willing it to just blow away in the wind and claim ignorance to the whole pathetically unfortunate fiasco. When I finally arrive at Safeway, I rip the ticket out from under my windshield wipers and open the envelope. The meter I paid for expired at 5:12pm, and the ticket was issued at 5:14pm. Two minutes! Two freakin' minutes!?! And this is on a Friday afternoon, when the damn parking meters are all turned off at 6pm anyway. Another $35 ticket. For two minutes. What the hell is wrong with the city of Seattle? Aren't there more important things to do than ticket innocent people?

One thing is for sure, though: I am sure as hell not paying these parking tickets. I would seriously, I swear to God, rather spend a night in jail than pay these tickets. $70 f-ing dollars!?! That's unreal. Sorry, city of Seattle, you can all just suck it on this one. Because I'm not coughing up $70 for a combined total of 46 minutes of unpaid parking. Especially when 44 of them don't even count because there aren't enough damn zone spots available in the first place. Maybe if we didn't vote against the monorail or had a reliable, actually useful public transportation system none of this crap would have happened. If I could use an Unforgivable Curse on meter maids, I would. And I'd do it with no regrets. But alas, how is a Muggle to fight a Death Eater?

HP7

I can't believe I'm reading the last Harry Potter book. It's completely crazy. I'm so deathly afraid of inadvertently finding out how the book ends that I'm sheltering myself as much as possible from the outside world-- and I'm doing minimal surfing of the Net, which means no blog-reading until I'm done with Harry.

I truly can't believe it's the last book...OK, enough talk about Harry...time to go read!

Alright, I admit it...

...I'm bored. I've been done with school for almost 6 days now, and I'm getting pretty bored. And I've worked three of these six days, too, so that's saying something right there. I think the problem is that it's just really difficult to transition from being insanely busy with barely enough time to sleep to having absolutely nothing to do. Here's what I've done these past few days in my abundant free time:
-applied for jobs
-run 13 miles (not all at once, so don't get too excited)
-surfed the net
-watched three "On Demand" episodes of "The Facts of Life" (embarrassing but true)
-cleaned the apartment

Ruminations

I can't believe it. I'm done. I'm actually finished with school. No more papers, no more homework, no more projects and portfolios... You know when you finish something big and you feel like you're expecting, I don't know, fireworks or something? But then nothing really happens and everything's just sort of anticlimactic? Well, that's how I feel right now. It's weird when something really important in your life occurs and you come home to an empty apartment-- well, almost empty, except for your lazy cat sprawled out across the floor, sleeping the afternoon away. I feel kind of naked without school, like it was protecting me from having to be a "real" adult. And now I have to venture back out into the great unknown and find a job and live a life. I kind of just want to be a student forever.

Waiting to exhale

Three days left of school...I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

"Little engine that could" references aside, the one bright spot in my week is seeing Harry Potter tomorrow at the Imax. I can't wait. Unfortunately, between now and Friday I have a buttload of work to do. Now that I've actually reduced myself to typing the word "buttload," I'm really beginning to question my graduate-level education...

You gotta love city livin'

This past weekend I went to Pike Place Market and then to a little park by the waterfront. Everyone was just hanging out, lounging around on the park benches and grassy hills, when, out of nowhere, this totally random black guy saunters by, a boom box hoisted on his shoulder and the "Ghostbusters" theme song blaring from the speakers. It was great.