Lament

NOW he cancels. I sat in my car in its spot in the Sanctuary this morning, cursing Mayor Bloomberg for not suspending alternate-side parking on a day that began with a snow shower and just happens to be New Year’s Eve. I had to be at my car at 8:30. I called 311 last night, checked my e-mail for an update this morning, called 311 again, and yet again from the car, but it was not till I got home, and Prokofieff’s “Romeo and Juliet” had spun to an end on WQXR, that I heard, at 10:15, that alternate-side parking was suspended today for snow removal. Quoth the city, in its memo of 9:42 A.M.:


Thursday, December 31, 2009
Alternate Side Parking Rules are Suspended on Thursday, December 31
The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) in conjunction with the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) today announced the suspension of Alternate Side Parking (ASP) regulations Citywide for Thursday, December 31 to facilitate snow removal. However, parking meters will remain in effect throughout the City.
The 2010 alternate side parking (street cleaning) rules suspension calendar is available on the DOT Web site, along with other alternate side parking information, at http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/scrintro.shtml. The calendar is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Italian, Korean, or Russian.


Grrrr. This does not bode well for the third term of Mayor Bloomberg. I could have stayed home. What did I gain by my morning excursion? I retrieved from the trunk my new Jesus Overnight Bag, a lovely, thoughtful gift from my friend L.; stopped at the bank; refilled a prescription; and bought the ingredients for chili. Now I am home, and it has stopped snowing, and the one thing I am grateful for is that I don’t have to feel guilty if I don’t go out again all day.

I was going to write about how I ran out of gas last week in Rhode Island, northbound on I-95 for Cape Cod. I was so distracted by my desire to get someplace fast that I forgot to look at the gas gauge. I had that awful sensation of the gas pedal, when you step on it, acting like the brake, and I looked at the needle hovering over Empty and wondered “How long has that been there?” The answer was "About sixty miles." I had just enough momentum to get from the fast lane to the shoulder before the car passed out. It was very humbling, like getting a sunburn in middle-age, though you haven't got burnt in decades, not because your skin has become less sensitive but because (duh) you've been applying sunscreen religiously. I spent about twenty minutes on hold with AAA (the phone battery, of course, draining, draining) before finally reaching an actual person, who said, cheerfully, “We’ll make this a priority—you’re in a dangerous spot!”