Sleepz and Thinkz

I am convinced that the Greater Boston area is out to get me. How? Micro-infrastructure.

There has, ever since I moved in, been a mailbox behind my appartment. One of those big, blue, bolted-to-the-street mailboxes. If I don’t want to walk the ten minutes to the post office (and I never do), this mailbox is my only resource for outgoing mail. Yesterday, it was gone. I was walking out to my car to head to work, netflix movie in hand, and it was gone. Gone. Vanished. You could barely even see the marks where it had been bolted in.

Whatever, odd as that is, no big deal. I’ll admit it, it rattled me, but life goes on. Anyway, I drove to work and parked behind my office, on Green Street—right in front of the old police station. The police station moved (or more accurately, those police officers that gave the building its functionality moved) a few months ago and that left us with a whole side of the street as unmetered, 2 hour parking. Just like the Monopoly Man, I had found Free Parking! So, naturually, I have been parking there for the last few months, ducking out every 2 hours to creep the car up and down the same street.

Yesterday, I came out at lunch time for the traditional ‘move the car 10 feet to avoid a ticket’ only to find that while I had been in the office, they had installed parking meters and ticketed all the cars on Green Street. Just as my mailbox vanished into the sidewalk, so these meters had sprung up. No sign of construction, the new concrete blending seamlessly with the old.

I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but now I owe this city of living sidewalks $40 and I still have this stupid netflix movie in my hand.