Adventures in the cold
It's weird how you can be having a perfectly good night and all of a sudden something happens and you're completely cranky. Okay, maybe that only happens to me. The situation:
I joined a group of friends for dinner at a local vegetarian place to celebrate Audrey's birthday. It is currently about 15 degrees in Ann Arbor with a wind chill of 0. So I decided to suck it up and pay a couple bucks to park nearby. No problem. When I went to leave the garage, I realized that my window was frozen shut, so I actually had to get out of my car to pay the attendant guy my two dollars. No problem. Of course, I had pulled off my right glove with my teeth and dropped it in my lap in order to have enough mobility to pull two dollars out of purse. When I got out of the car, the glove fell to the ground. I noticed this as soon as I had driven through the gate thingy to get out, because (as it is 15 degrees) my hand is already painfully cold. So I pull over and stop illegally for a moment to look for my glove and, not finding it, run back to the attendant's booth in time to see a couple of cars run over my glove. I picked it up. It is still intact. No problem. Just a fun winter adventure.
The next part of the evening involved drinks at Gracie's one of our favorite Ann Arbor bars. It isn't very far from the aforementioned restaurant, and under non-15-degree circumstances I would have walked. I drove around for half an hour, unable to find a parking spot. There was no street parking available, as is to be expected on a Saturday night. I decided to park in the lot across the street, but it was full. I thought I might park in a little metered lot that most people overlook, but it was also full. I decided to just pay to park in a garage again, but there were no attendants on duty and I didn't have correct change for the machine. So I ended up walking 5 blocks or so, which again, not bad except for the 0 degree wind chill.
As if all this weren't enough, I had decided I wanted to wear my glasses because a) they're cute and b) I didn't feel like putting in my contacts. So when I entered the bar I had to stand for several minutes, lurking in the doorway until my glasses un-fogged and I could see to pick my friends out of the crowd. They were over in the corner, perched right next to a blaring speaker. I paid $7 for a glass of barely mediocre wine and yelled at my friends over the loud, loud music (the band was very good, but I was not in a loud music state of mind...)
So yeah. Nothing significant or detrimental really happened to me tonight. But the accumulation of annoyances went a long way toward ruining the evening.
I joined a group of friends for dinner at a local vegetarian place to celebrate Audrey's birthday. It is currently about 15 degrees in Ann Arbor with a wind chill of 0. So I decided to suck it up and pay a couple bucks to park nearby. No problem. When I went to leave the garage, I realized that my window was frozen shut, so I actually had to get out of my car to pay the attendant guy my two dollars. No problem. Of course, I had pulled off my right glove with my teeth and dropped it in my lap in order to have enough mobility to pull two dollars out of purse. When I got out of the car, the glove fell to the ground. I noticed this as soon as I had driven through the gate thingy to get out, because (as it is 15 degrees) my hand is already painfully cold. So I pull over and stop illegally for a moment to look for my glove and, not finding it, run back to the attendant's booth in time to see a couple of cars run over my glove. I picked it up. It is still intact. No problem. Just a fun winter adventure.
The next part of the evening involved drinks at Gracie's one of our favorite Ann Arbor bars. It isn't very far from the aforementioned restaurant, and under non-15-degree circumstances I would have walked. I drove around for half an hour, unable to find a parking spot. There was no street parking available, as is to be expected on a Saturday night. I decided to park in the lot across the street, but it was full. I thought I might park in a little metered lot that most people overlook, but it was also full. I decided to just pay to park in a garage again, but there were no attendants on duty and I didn't have correct change for the machine. So I ended up walking 5 blocks or so, which again, not bad except for the 0 degree wind chill.
As if all this weren't enough, I had decided I wanted to wear my glasses because a) they're cute and b) I didn't feel like putting in my contacts. So when I entered the bar I had to stand for several minutes, lurking in the doorway until my glasses un-fogged and I could see to pick my friends out of the crowd. They were over in the corner, perched right next to a blaring speaker. I paid $7 for a glass of barely mediocre wine and yelled at my friends over the loud, loud music (the band was very good, but I was not in a loud music state of mind...)
So yeah. Nothing significant or detrimental really happened to me tonight. But the accumulation of annoyances went a long way toward ruining the evening.