a gripey morning

This morning I was totally frustrated with the world. Well, with my very small world, anyway. It all started when I couldn't get up the hill ...

(This is the part where everything gets all fuzzy and we flash back to earlier today, with my voice narrating in the background. After a short musical interlude of course.)

The Ravenswood tracks go right through my neighborhood, so all of the E/W streets have to pass under them, including the side street that I take just about every day while going to work. Since Ravenswood Ave. follows the tracks, in some parts it is divided into a lane on each side. Where this happens, the cross-streets usually have a stop sign on either side of the underpass. This is the case on my normally trusty route to work. Well. The genius politicians in my dear city decided that this year they weren't going to salt the side streets in order to save money. (Can you see where this is going?) Having had a bit of weather over the last few days, the ice is beginning to build up. When you're driving on a flat surface, this is tolerable. However, the road slopes downward to go under the Ravenswood tracks, and back up to go back out. And I believe I mentioned the stop signs? The first one, not a problem. It's the one on the way back up that's the killer. If there's no traffic, I can safely roll through it to keep up my momentum and get up the relatively-tiny-but-covered-in-ice hill. But today, of course, there was a car waiting to go through, so I had to come to a COMPLETE stop at the sign. And when I tried to get going again? Well, let's just say that the wheels were on my side but the rest of the car had other ideas. Namely, not moving. Luckily, there was nobody behind me, so I backed down under the tracks again and tried to make it up with a "running start." It took three attempts at this before I finally made it through. Not a great start to the day. So. I think I'm going to be changing my route tomorrow.

Anyway, this got me thinking about why there's not enough money to salt properly, and where the money is going instead, and why they keep raising prices on things (Parking! Public transportation!) and yet we see little to no increase of service. Is it because of the recession? Is it because of the Olympic bid? Is it because of political corruption? Which, of course, opened up another can of thought-worms. I wasn't able to listen to any radio station this morning without hearing about how Illinois is by far the most corrupt state, according to the FBI, and how our dear governor is a sociopathic asshat. It all just made me want to move, but not enough to make me, you know, actually MOVE. I just wanted to. And I was grumpy. And now I'm grumbling to you about it because you're a good listener.

I know all of this is a pretty lengthy way of saying winter sucks, and politicians suck, and recession sucks. But hey, you asked. Oh wait ...