Or, As the Kids Say, "Goddammit!"
For the past few weeks, I've been doing my morning writing at a local Atwater Village coffee shop called Kaldi, instead of one of the four Starbuckses* that I've been rotating among for the past two years or so. This saves me eighty-six cents each morning. (At Starbucks, one bring-your-own-cup drip is $1.60, and the refill is fifty cents, for a total of $2.10. At Kaldi, one bring-your-own-cup drip is $1.24 and the refill's free.) Also, Kaldi's has free wi-fi.**
Initially, however, my daily cost-saving plan was flummoxed by the fact that I had to pay a parking meter at Kaldi, to the tune of fifty cents a morning. This week, however, I discovered free street parking within a half-block of the shop. This morning, however, I got a $45.00 parking ticket because I neglected to remember that they clean that street from 8:00 am to 10:00 am on Thursdays, and at those times, there's no parking there. (Or, rather, there is $45.00 parking there.)
In one fool swep, the city of Los Angeles has negated my intricately constructed daily cost savings regime for 52.33 days. In the immortal words of Ze Frank, "Assholes!"
(But wait, there's a silver lining! By which I mean that there is a lining of some other color that signifies badness rather than goodness. As of August 1st, Kaldi has started charging fifty cents for refills. "Assholes!" 125 days!)
* Gah! Does the word for more than one Starbucks really look like that? I guess so. Gross.
** Free wi-fi, of course, is not 100% benefit, since part of the point of writing out of the house is to avoid the Amazing Internet Time-wasting Contraption. It's been going well so far, though.
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