Snow Days and Parking Nightmares

As I was driving to school this morning, around 30 minutes before my first class started, I was reminded of how much I hate snowy weather. This was not always the case, in fact, when I was a kid, I really loved the snow. The touch, the cold, looking out the window and seeing that everything outside was blanketed in white powder and clear ice was always a pleasure. Of course, snow days were a pretty significant part of my love of the snowy weather as well. What kid doesn't love a day off of school? Now that I am in college, though, school is rarely ever canceled. I think out of the year and a half or so that I've been going to school, I've only ever had two or three class meetings canceled because of the weather. There is really nothing for me to gain now by having a snowy day, so I guess the selfish kid in me just feels like since I can't enjoy them, no one else should be able to either. I feel like the enjoyment of snow days is just another casualty of growing up.

Anyways, what I was getting at with this story was a particular aspect of the snow that I don't like that just today occurred to me. I absolutely hate trying to find a parking spot on campus during the snowy weather. Today was not that bad as far as driving is concerned; the roads were fairly clear and wet rather than icy, which was better for driving and keeping the flow of traffic. Once I got to campus, though, I found that the first parking garage was full, not only of parked cars, but it was also completely gridlocked with cars looking for a spot. I would later find out that this could be attributed to the fact that half of the fourth floor and all of the top were closed for plowing/salting, thus displacing all the cars that would have parked there. This in itself is understandable, some weather needs to be handled this way for safety purposes. If this had been all that I encountered, I probably would have been able to deal with it.

What I absolutely could not stand about this situation involved the twenty car gridlock of traffic I found myself in five minutes before my first class started. I hate when I'm stuck behind a car that is waiting for a parking spot that someone else is currently occupying or exiting. I get that in some situations, like the one I just described, this is a smart thing to do, but it just irritates me. While I was stuck in this parking garage, I had to have been trapped behind three or four people doing this very thing. Invariably, the person who is entering their car is in absolutely no hurry, taking the time to start their car, get out of their car, open their trunk, put their bookbag in, check their makeup (if applicable), start a phone call, or any number of menial tasks that could just as easily have occurred about ten seconds from then when they were not holding up ten people. I guess the martyr in me says to just bite the bullet and keep moving, rather than wait for someone to pull out of their spot. Because of this added wait time, and the fact that the first parking garage was full, I needed to park in the other one. Long story short, I ended up about fifteen minutes late for the second class session of the semester for this particular class. There wasn't really a consequence to it, so I guess it could be worse. This was just on my mind when it came time to blog, so I figured why not write about it.

A short standard introduction will probably follow this entry at some point. Or not. I'm pretty sure this is around 650 words in and of itself. Yay for being efficient and productive.