I live in the city and when I drive i mostly do city driving. In observing my city driving habits I’ve come to the conclusion that I am going to be one of those pain in the ass old ladies that’s always hitting the brakes and freaking and making her passengers very nervous in the city (sort of like now, but I will smell like lilacs and pee when I am old).
The thing is, I have shitty-to-no depth perception and that makes driving a fascinating exercise for all involved. Mostly, it’s not the moving that’s an issue, but the parking. I hate any sort of parallel parking, I also hate trying to find a damned parking spot on a city street because you have to go slow enough to look for the spot and be able to stop for it but you can’t go so slow that you mess with traffic! It can be panic inducing!
Plus you have to deal with one-ways and weird street configurations and blah blah blah.
So! Being the doofus that I am I’ve taken to hitting Google maps before I leave and scoping out the entire area on street view before I go! This way I can see all the cross streets, figure out the one-ways, find nearby parking lots and basically preplan the minutia of the trip.
In less than an hour I am meeting a friend for coffee. The intersection she gave me is a pretty busy part of town! I could not picture the coffee shop in my head so I went to look and LO!!! the angels sang on me! There it was! With a large, accommodating parking lot no less! Easy! Total doofus, no panic! I love Google street view!
In other news…
Will be in Chicago for the weekend with Lisa and John and the kids. We’ll be making Christmas cookies! I’ve never made Christmas cookies with kids before, I’m very much looking forward to this (and the mess!).
Have 7 skeins of yarn to post and sell (4 pangolins, 3 hippomoons). Just need to take photos. Almost done with my first batch of I’m Your Moon, the Pluto/Charon yarn named after the JoCo song. And I realized that I need to make an official Auntie BubboPants colorway. If you don’t know Auntie BubboPants, don’t worry, I’m trying to figure out the best way to share her with you and that should be ready soon!
Okay. Stop. Shower time!
“sort of like now, but I will smell like lilacs and pee (IN THE PANTS!) when I am old”
Oh my stars! If you would just abandon your coolness and move across the river, you would drive just fine! We do not have the maddening one-way streets. Instead, we have ADHD streets which forget that they are streets for a block or two, then remember where they were and start up again.
You can drive slow on the hard to find parking streets. We have tourists on those streets. Grumpy drivers find other routes. Plus, since we are a frumpy city, we have more houses, which means garages sometimes, which means less parking competition. This is part of the price of coolness. We know and are OK with that.
I already smell like lavendar and choose to spell it with an A. I also spell that other cool color with an E. Yep, grey. It looks nicer that way. You can do things like that when you live in a frumpy city which is next to a cool city.
Come join us!