7/20

I am still reeling a little bit in terms of the atmosphere in my apartment.

I took a ride to the Poquettes’ last night for dinner and a bit o’ ‘Pop Culture’ Trivial Pursuit, and when I left my house @ 5:30, the temp was nice, the air was movin, it was cooler than the outdoors, and I said to myself, “Perfect! I think I’ve got this place figured out!”

Well, then I got home later and it was actually HOTTER in there than when I left. So I’ve still got some figuring to do. I ran the A/C again while I slept, and then I turned it off this morning. By the time I left, 50 minutes later, the temp was up 4 degrees. I dunno what the story is.

Sunday night I got home from E.R. and I pulled my car around to the street for unloading a dresser. I figured it would be easier in the front than the back, since my apartment door is closer to the street. Well, then I forgot all about moving the car back behind the building, and in the morning I had me a citation from the City of Oshkosh for being parked out there between the hours of 2 and 5 AM. I’ve never seen a sign for that myself, so on my way home from Fond du Lac on Monday, I looked hard for one.

There was one damn sign on Main Street between 6th and my building, which, if you live in Oshkosh or are familiar, you know means the only sign was literally ON THE BRIDGE, then not one for blocks upon blocks. Does this fact give me the ability to dispute the ticket, you think? Ten bucks. I could kind of use ten bucks.

Reminds me I should pay the 5-dollar ticket I still have laying around for being parked more than 90 minutes in the lot behind the building.

Thinking about all of this this morning got me ranting to myself about parking. Try to follow the logic here…
-OK, so the city wants 30 bucks a month basically just to be able to park in that lot behind the building all day, every day if you want, without fear of citation.
-One can *already* park there without getting cited for 15 of the 24 hours in a day, as well as all 24 of them on Sundays and holidays.
-Additionally, we’re talking about 90-minute parking here, without payment. That means if your car is in the space at 9AM, that’s when the clock starts running, and you’ve got until 10:30 to move it. On the flip side, 90-min parking ends at 6PM, so if you’re there at or after 4:30, your 90 minutes don’t expire until after enforcement ends. Hence, you’ve got an extra three hours, bringing the grand total to 18, and now if you think about it, you really only need to find someplace else for your car to be for 6 hours a day, excluding Sundays and holidays.
-Let’s break this down mathematically:
30 dollars a month, 12 months in a year. That means 360 dollars (about a whole month’s rent) to park the car.
365 days in a year, less 52 Sundays, when parking is essentially free, and we’ll forget about ‘holidays’ for now, since I’m not quite certain which ones they even mean. This leaves 313 days that you pay 360 dollars for, and it’s roughly $1.16 a day.
BUT: as we’ve already seen, the 1.16 is *not* even for a full day, it’s for 6 hours, since the other 18 each and every day are also free.
How much parking do we actually need to pay for? Well, 6 hours a day for 313 days a year means 1878 hours, and that breaks down to 78.25 days. We didn’t consider the holidays in our count of 313, so let’s round this number down to 78. SEVENTY-EIGHT DAYS out of the whole year that you actually need to pay to park the car.
We revise the equation a little, and suddenly that 1.16 per day for 313 days has turned into 4.62 per day for 78 days.
I could buy a very unhealthy lunch for two-and-a-half months for that. I could get a Quarter Pounder w/ cheese value meal @ McDonald’s? for 4.62. That’s 530 calories for the sandwich, another 540 for the fries, and 3 more in my Diet Coke, for a total of 1073 calories. Figure you do that 78 times, that’s 83,694 calories from McDonald’s?. And I’m not even going to talk about the fat! I don’t need that…
Conversely, if I’m home all day (i.e., not in class or at work or out of town) for 150 days a year, that would be a lot. Walking down the stairs, getting in the car, moving it, and walking back up the stairs takes me 3 minutes. Tops. Three minutes of walking leisurely for a person 190 lbs. is going to burn like 13 calories. I have to move the car at 10:30, noon, 1:30, and 4:30, so 4 trips x 3 minutes = 12 minutes x 13 calories, and I’ve burned 156 calories a day just moving the car! Multiply that 156 by 78 quarter pounders, suddenly the difference between moving the car and eating fast food is a whopping 95,862 calories!
BOTTOM LINE: The City of Oshkosh is conspiring to make me fat, and as long as I can get a commuter parking sticker from the University for less than 360 dollars a year, the City can eat me, I’ll move the damn car.