life update

[tla]

I haven't made any posts with content in a while. So here we go.

Today I woke up in Somerville to the sound of street sweepers, and thought "oh shit." Sure enough, I was in their path. I didn't get towed, but I did get ticketed. Grr. And the fine has increased by $10 since I lived there.

But no. There were two tickets, not one, waiting for me. The second one was for having an expired resident permit. Now I do have an expired resident sticker, because I was a resident a year ago. Now that I'm not a resident, I'm fairly conscientious about getting a visitor's permit when I visit people. The (valid) visitor's permit was on my dashboard when I received the ticket.

Now I get to go dispute a parking ticket, and I'm afraid that they'll just flat out refuse to believe that I had the visitor's permit, because it's not like I can objectively prove it. And, you know, budget crunch, tickets help that.

I also had my third chiropractor's appointment today, since I started going back last week. I showed up at 1:30 to discover that I should have looked at my calendar to double check the time -- the appointment wasn't until 3:15. There went two hours of sleep I could have used. So I took my car home, ate some cereal since I hadn't eaten yet, and went back.

I mentioned to Rita (the chiropractor) that my jaw had been hurting, so then I had the novel experience of her putting on gloves, reaching into my mouth, and rubbing a spot around my jaw until the pain went away. When I opened my mouth without pain my day started seriously improving. (The pain has been kind of intermittent since then; I hope this doesn't become a chronic problem.) The downside to all this was the dreaded diagnosis of TMJ. People have asked me for the past several years whether that's why I get headaches, and the answer has always been no. I liked it better that way. (I suspect the headaches and the TMJ and, for that matter, the RSI have the same cause, which is my whacked-out neck, but I didn't need *another* problem stemming from that.)

Came home, finally took a nap, dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 so that a) I wouldn't screw up my sleep schedule more, and b) I could go sell my camera as arranged yesterday. So now I have money instead of a camera, which I can apply to the purchase of a spiffy new camera (the Canon S400, if anyone wonders.) (The one I sold was a Canon S100, if anyone wonders that.)

Now if only I could so easily sell things that I mean to sell. (I was basically offered the chance to sell my camera, and took it; I wasn't actively seeking to sell it.)

Lastly, there is a VERY IMPORTANT email that is trying to make its way to me, and my mailserver is down. Again. Fucking ANS. (I don't want to mention the content here yet, for fear of jinxing myself.)

OK, so I've mostly talked about today, but most of the threads of things that have been happening with me lately have shown up today. Convenient, that.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

"The (valid) visitor's permit was on my dashboard when I received the ticket."

Yeah, they did that to me also. Bastards. I think they just ignore the permit, because you can't prove anything.

Having said that, they haven't gotten in touch with me so I can contest the thing, either.

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

My experience (in Cambridge, not Somerville, admittedly) is that they're pretty open to people contesting their tickets. I had all sorts of thoughts about using zephyr logs or whatever to prove my car's presence elsewhere (they gave me a ticket for storage when I'd been there only a few hours). But in the end, the letter I wrote was sufficient.

[crs.livejournal.com]

I have had good luck with contesting tickets, especially in Somerville... It helped that I was looking at two tickets as well, and wasn't contesting the more expensive one. The guy was a kindly gentleman, the kind who seemed quite open to listening to reason.

mail bounce

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

there is a VERY IMPORTANT email that is trying to make its way to me, and my mailserver is down.

His email bounced. He asks that I contact you directly, and ask you to email him your details.
His bounced mail said he wanted to discuss, and "when is a good time to call and on what phone number?"

Re: mail bounce

[tla]

Oh. Heh, and here I'd just emailed him another address to use.

Thanks.

[iabervon.livejournal.com]

I suspect that having the person whose visitor permit you used help will make contesting the ticket easier, since this person is a resident, and the point of the parking office is to keep the residents, on average, happy and able to park; truth and justice are somewhat secondary to the fact that they're employed by elected officials and have to balance complaints from people who couldn't park with complaints from people who got tickets.