Grouchy

What a crappy day.

To be fair, last night was a lot of fun. I went out with Christina and Laura and we had an excellent time. I never really expected to end up in a pool (fully clothed) at a nightclub dancing to an 80's cover band, but the sheer novelty was partially what made it such an experience. I'm not sure I'd do it again, either, but ... you only live once, right?

Today was one frustration after another.

We got back in last night at around 0630, and slept for a few hours until about 1130, and then got up to help Laura move her stuff from storage into our apartment. I thought it would be a good idea to use my car to shuttle the stuff, but I'm pretty sure I just ended up making the entire endeavor take longer than it would have to just carry everything from the storage to the apartment since they're only a few hundred feet down the block from each other, and the driveway closest to the elevator at the apartment was full, so we hardly saved any walking and had the additional effort of loading/unloading to deal with.

Then we went shopping, and I think maybe I was just in a bad mood already, but blah. Usually I like shopping (yeah, this is a departure from my opinions of maybe a year or 6 months ago) but today it was just frustrating. I was trying to find a casual dress, but it seemed like everything was super low cut, or had that annoying v-neck bow thing that reveals a lot of boob, or had a fair amount of coverage up front but was made for a cup size about 3 bigger than mine. I hate shopping for nice clothes, because it seems like they just don't make cute stuff for those of us not really blessed with nice full bosoms. It feels like female's clothes are tailored for the "ideal" body instead of real bodies, or maybe mine is just really far out of the norm...sigh. So that was just depressing, and I am a bit disheartened...

Then on the drive back from the mall, I got my first ever citation for a traffic violation. I ran a red light at an intersection downtown, and there was a cop one lane over and a car back. I knew I was running it and chose to do so because there was traffic following close behind me and I'd already started into the intersection when it changed (it wasn't as though I was behind the line when it changed and flooded it or anything). Wrong choice, I know, I know, it's the classic example they give in driver's ed, and I finally got called on pushing the legal boundaries. What was really upsetting was the way the police officer interacted with me.

I pulled over immediately when I saw him, rolled down my window, and started fishing around for my registration. It took me a minute to find my most recent registration card, so he took the opportunity to CALL FOR BACKUP. No kidding. Another police officer arrived on her bike a few seconds later, and stood guard by the passenger side of my vehicle, glaring in at us occasionally. I got a stern lecture not only about running through an intersection on a red light, but about the importance of keeping my glove box organized enough to find my registration right away. Right, whatever. (Okay, yeah it should have been more organized, but all I had to do was pull out the pile, and look through everything until I found it - once through the pile, that was IT. Not like I had to dig through my entire car or anything...)

So then the cop took his OWN sweet time writing up the citation, gave me another lecture, and sent me on my way. When I got around to looking at the citation, I discovered that he'd managed to inflate a $25 fine up to $107 by putting in (seemingly) arbitrary amounts for charges and fines ENTIRELY unrelated to the citation. (Uh, for example, charging me $10 for EMS. Even though there was no mother-loving EMS involved. All I did was run a RED LIGHT, and I didn't hit anyone. There weren't even any pedestrians WAITING to cross.)

This sort of thing drives me up a wall. I'll accept responsibility for breaking the law, but I feel like there's no place for the condescending attitude and all the extra charges. I was TOTALLY cooperative and polite, didn't argue, didn't use any sarcasm, didn't even use any sort of emotionally charged inflections in speaking. To hear the way he was talking to me, you'd think that I'd been swerving down the road in a drunken spree of irresponsibility and then threatening him somehow when I got pulled over.

So, anyway. I dropped Christina off and Laura and I headed on to the grocery store. I got a bunch of groceries and headed up to the checkout to pay for my stuff with my campus declining-cash account (like a debit account, but with money deposited up front, and usable on campus and at a bunch of handy places off campus, blahblahblah). Incidentally, I had a HELL of a time getting the university to open the account for me yesterday, but that's a different story...anyway, when I tried to pay with the card for the account, the system rejected it. I asked the cashier to make sure they accepted it, and she gave me a blank stare and then mumbled something about the store only having one machine that accepted it, and that it wasn't connected, so they couldn't do it, mumble mumble mumble. There are some days when I've got an attitude disposed to arguing during these situations, but I didn't feel like dealing with it so I just paid and went outside to wait for Laura. I'll get a refund at the end of the year with whatever I don't use from the debit account, but...blah. I don't want to keep taking money out of my savings, especially since...

I got home and there was an email waiting for me from the fellow whose car I accidentally scratched in the parking deck the other day. It was actually a really nice and polite email, but he said that it looked like I did enough damage to the car that he's going to have to take it in for body work. He offered to let me choose the body shop, and he'll let me know as soon as he gets an estimate on the cost of the work. So I guess that's not so bad, I'm just not looking forward to paying it...and of course I still feel bad for doing it in the first place :-(

Sigh.