Done :D

In the first election in my pathetic voting history where I actually have an opinion, my vote has been cast.

This is actually a gold star day. I can NEVER be on time or early in the morning. This morning I needed to leave the house early enough to vote, not knowing what the crowd situation would be, and do a classroom visit in a part of campus that I cannot walk to at 8am.

I have been to neither of these places before, and I did not know where to park. Sounds simple enough to deal with, but this goes way outside my comfort zone and I normally will not touch situations like this with a 10-foot pool. This morning I managed to do both.

I drove to my polling place, saw the 10 cars parked on the street (I have never seen cars parked on the street there), and cars lining the driveway. I panicked and continued to drive right on past it. I got two blocks before I looked at the clock and realized if I went straight to the classroom I would be a 1/2 hour early. So I took a deep breath and flipped a U-ie. Plenty of parking available in the lot. Breathing resumed. Immediately back into panic because there is TOO much available parking. What if I am not supposed to park here? No one came screaming at me to park somewhere else, so it must have been okay. Actual voting was uneventful. Teeny little set of nerves because the address on my driver's license is not current. I was in there all of 5 minutes, 10 at the most.

I had already printed out the map with the building location of the classroom I was to visit and looked up the closest visitor parking, which was thankfully next to the building. Voting had gone so smoothly and quickly (even with my panic attack) that I was 15 minutes early. As I pull into the parking lot where the campus directions told me to park, I saw that it was a visitor lot but by temporary permit only. I stopped and looked around. There were no other cars in this little lot, no one walking around, no other place to park, and no street parking.

Naturally, I start to panic. What do I want to do? Leave! Immediately. What do I do? Sit there and argue with myself. I decided to leave the car parked there. I was only going in for 5 minutes and I would wait until the last possible minute to leave the car. Surely I could get away with this for a few minutes... What's the worst that could happen? A parking ticket? Surely I could deal with that. But I am so resistant to breaking rules that it fills me with guilt and dread to do so.

I get done with my visit and come back to my car. No ticket. Not towed. Whew! Dodged the bullet on that one too. Time to see if I can go 3 for 3. The last hurdle isn't anxiety inducing so much... it is just the final parking. Like most campuses they oversell the lots. Arriving at the parking garage at less than desirable times (it was 8:20) tends to mean I have to park on top, on the 7th level, with the students. I hate flights of stairs!

I managed to find spaces on my normal level, just about 100 feet further (farther? crap I am going to have to look that up again!) back than usual.

Yippee skippee!!! It is a gold star morning.

One more classroom visit this afternoon, but I can walk to that one. And I think I will stop at the Clinique counter in the campus bookstore and see if they are having any giveaways. I deserve a treat.