Big Girl Undies

Couldn’t find those panties this morning, so that didn’t happen.

You can’t believe how difficult it is for me to step out of my comfort zone and do something as simple as taking the bus versus driving this morning.

The buses in this area, especially the express bus to the University, looks clean, safe, fast, so I'm not sure what the holdup is.

It’s not like I’ve never been on a bus before. In fact, there was a time in my past when I did not have a car, and buses, trains, cabs were how I got around, no problem. When I did have a car, it was not unusual for me to leave it at home, continue to take the bus and/or train. I had a monthly pass and, before monthly passes were a thing, I’d drop money into a fare box.

It was simple back in the day.

Now it’s those daunting looking fare monstrosities, and machines that take money have never been good to me, so that scare me off; plus the fact that buses run on schedules, and if you don’t meet that schedule, there's wait time. Looking at the bus company's website last night, “peak” and “non-peak” hours were indicated, with wait times of 15 minutes and 1 hour respectively.

Life's too short.

Plain and simple, I’ve become accustomed to the freedom of not having to meet schedules, whether peak or non-peak, not having to wait for someone/something to get to where I’m going.

I needed more PokéBalls, plus I had a Lucky Egg – which is best utilized in evolving a Pokémon in a crowd, so I jumped in the car, drove around the area outside the University looking for a side street to park.

For those of you following along, learning the game with me, Pokémon Go is much more than just catching. I’m actually having to do research and make notes. A Lucky Egg is a PokéStop gift, the advantage of which is double points from PokéStops and capturing.

To take full advantage of the Lucky Egg, it’s suggested one finds an area with lots of PokéStops -- the University is the place to go, but also to go during the busiest hours of the day, activate the lucky egg and start evolving Pokémon – “Evolving” being transforming a Pokémon into a stronger more fierce version of itself.

You still with me?

At any rate, the surrounding neighborhoods are all marked “No Parking At Any Time” or “Permit Parking Only”. Even the residents of nearby homes had permit stickers on  cars parked in front of their own homes.

Driving onto University property, thinking I might risk it, but then deciding NOT when I saw the number of Parking Enforcement Men/Woman on duty, I spied a “Get Parking Permit Here” sign and decided to check it out -- $2.50 for 1 hour, $5.00 for 2 hours. One hour would be rushing my time on campus, but I went for it, fed $2.50 into the machine and got nothing in return.

I pushed, I banged, I cancelled … nothing.

See what I mean about me and machines that take money. Even when ATM’s first came out, I twice ran into an ATM taking requested cash from my account but dispensing no money.

So that’s $2.50 down the drain. The bus would have cost $1.50. I could have stayed home and bought 100 PokéBalls for $1.99.

Tomorrow is another day, but I don’t think my Big Girl panties are gonna turn up. I’ll just head out early, try to beat the triple digits Saturday/Sunday and, since there are no crowds at that time, hold onto the Lucky Egg for my next crowd event – the Halloween Monster Run 5K in October.