You might think that lauding a post office is a strange way to show appreciation for one's city, but that is what is going to happen in this post. Today is April 17, but due to the 15th being a Sunday and (presumably) Patriot's / Marathon day being important enough to disallow Monday the 16th from being considered a real work day, Tax Day 2012 fell on this very date. Meaning that when I realized I was still at work at 6:45 and hadn't mailed my checks in to the IRS / Massachusetts tax office, and that the lone blue mailbox down the street already had collection at 1pm, I felt like I was probably screwed. A friend kindly let me know that the post office in Central Square had its last collection at 7pm, and I jumped in my car (affectionately know as Yoshi, or, in comparison to my green bicycle, "blue Yoshi") and hauled you-know-what down Concord from work to Mass Ave. After a brief foray into Cambridgeport in a failed attempt to find parking, I briefly stashed my car (hazards on) in a handicapped spot and sprinted to the front doors of the quite (British sense here) epic Cambridge Post Office, where a woman opened the door to my pounding, asked, "Are these stamped?", and, upon affirmation, happily took the two envelopes from me for mailing postmarked the 17th. Crisis avoided!
Apart from madly dashing around to the post office (albeit dashing with happy ending), today's other joys included waking up to find my car had been towed. Granted, I had parked in front of someone's driveway, the irony of which lies in the fact that I had also parked in front of a fence, which under normal circumstances would have been fine. Except for the fact that the fence opens, and it has a driveway behind it. Mostly I'm including this tidbit to acknowledge the fact that I do not find Cambridge to be perfect all of the time. But isn't that part of its charm? After the bus ride to Pat's Towing (of course the car had to be taken to the not-quite-walkable spot in Somerville, rather than the towing service in Cambridge just up the block), my drive in to work was also filled with some Cambridge "joy", being honked at by cars who appeared to be doing nothing other than trying to hit my car. I like that, you know -- honking just to show that really, the car should have just been running in to me, because it was too impatient.
At any rate, the end of this rather frantic day was nice, culminating in a beer outside in Charlie's Kitchen's beer garden, which I must admit I felt was rather well deserved.
