Grrrrrr

I received a parking ticket while downtown during an interview last week.

Five days later, I am still a tad put out and here is why:

• I didn’t notice a sign saying I couldn’t park on this small side street.
• I did notice the car behind me had a parking permit on its windshield. So I called the woman I was interviewing and asked if she knew if I could park on this residential street. She said the parking permit was so the resident could park overnight on his street and it was fine for me to be there.

Great.

So I interviewed this woman about pottery (fascinating, both the subject and the woman) and walked back to my car to find a yellow ticket flapping on my windshield.

According to the Toronto parking authority, you unable to park on this street Monday to Saturday from midnight to 7 p.m.

As I am terribly bad at directions, and I can’t parallel park, I always grab the first drive-in spot I can find.

In this case, it was pretty far down the road. As I was driving out, parking ticket beside me, I noticed the no parking sign at the top of the street.

I am paying the $30 ticket not because I think it’s right but because I am not driving back downtown to fight it.

It’s not worth it.

However, I did send a note along with my cheque with a suggestion to the City of Toronto.

Prior to hosting the 2015 Pan Am Games, the city needs to come up with some consistent parking rules and post multiple signs for the dos and don’ts of parking downtown.

I am not a mind reader. I don’t live in the City of Toronto so I do not know which streets allow parking on which side on which day. I don’t know which streets allow you to park without a permit and which ones require you to purchase the right to park.
I do not mind paying to park. In fact, I would rather just pay to avoid receiving a ticket.

So here is a suggestion for the money-hungry city – install ticketed parking metres on one side of every street.

That way people will know where to without having to read the City of Toronto parking manual.

On a side note, no matter how angry I was about receiving a ticket, I would not punch the parking person in the face, as one man is accused of doing in East York over the weekend.

Regardless, parking ticket people are just doing their jobs and the driver who is accused of the sucker punch should give his head a shake and get some help for his obvious anger issues.

Ideas, Ideas, Everywhere

I haven’t been sleeping well the past month.

To be completely truthful, I am dreading going back to work. I am lucky in that I really do love my job. It allows me to be as creative as I want. However, I finally got my dream job - being a mother - and I really want to do that full time or at least most of the time.

So while I am grateful to the women’s movement, which allows us to decide if we want to stay home or to have a career instead, I am also sickened that I have to go back, and have to go back already. (Where did that year go?)

Money. It’s the root of all evil.

However, not sleeping isn’t all bad.

I spend hours in the dark coming up with ideas for online features for work. I have the idea, I have the sources, I have the links, I have the graphics and I have the writers in mind

I am an idea machine.

And I have other ideas as well. Hopefully everything will work out.