You know, I had something to blog about before going to bed last night, but for some reason either my laptop, the Internet connection, or Blogger itself wasn't working.  So I decided to blog at work, where I'm at right now.

Still, I was uncertain about what to talk about for my daily blog post.  I was scared I wouldn't be inspired enough to write.  Well, after my murderous commute here, you goddamn right I have something I need to get off my chest.

I don't know what the fuck happened, but it took me 70 minutes, 70 fucking minutes, to get to work today.  This after needing almost half that the day before.  When you drive so far to work, the disparity in commute times are so fucking wide, so often, that it's going to drive anyone crazy!

I have to go from one highway quickly to another.  Yesterday I was shocked that I didn't have to wait at all, at all, to go through this cloverleaf.  But this morning I could see from a distance that there was traffic backed up all the way through it.  And that was the first sign that this commute wasn't going to go that well.  And when I looked to my left to see that the highway I was going onto was backed up as far as the eye I could see, well, that was the second sign.

And yet I still couldn't believe the stop-and-go-traffic I was going to be snarled in.  This part, this first part of my ride, took me half an hour to get through.  Even in my worst days, this part usually takes me ten minutes.  I was like, WTF?! all the way through this stretch.

I was going through the radio to see if there was any news about what the hell was going on.  I would think that if so many people were backed up on a major artery, for this long, when it usually doesn't happen (at least this badly), there would be some news on it.  But Minnesota Public Radio had nothing about it.

So I went to the jazz station, which still has occasional traffic reports, and there was some report about a rollover that spilled gasoline on the highway.  Oh, so that's the reason.  But I didn't see any rollover, and I didn't see any gasoline.  I did see a crash that was on the left side of the highway, but there was an even longer backup after that crash.  So what's the holdup?  I have no idea.  We were just crawling on our bellies, the highway hooked to the left, and all of a sudden I had room to accelerate.  Was there an accident that got cleaned up before I got to the scene of the accident?  Because if not, people were slowing down for no good goddamn reason.  And that would piss me off.

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What's even worse, however, is getting to work and finding a spot.  We have a vast parking lot which, ironically, I think, is farther away from the office towers than the visitors lot.  Maybe it was intentional; the longer walk is for our health.

But this parking lot was completely full.  I usually get one of the spots in the back of this sea of white stripes, but not today.  Every single fucking spot was filled.  Every one.  I've never seen that before.  Last Monday, during the snowstorm, I got here at 9:30 but I got a spot because there were plenty.  In fact, I probably parked closer than I usually do.  I get here, oh, 20 minutes late and we're all full.  Not a spot.

I was apoplectic.  I was going through some of the aisles, thinking that they must have missed a spot, somewhere.  Nope.  I can't believe it.  I still can't believe it.  So I had to drive to the spillover lot, across the light rail tracks.  Yeah, there are plenty of spots there -- because no one wants to fucking park so far away.  But I had no choice.  I have never had a Walk Of Shame until this morning.

That's the thing that really gets me.  When you are late for something early, that increases the chance that you'll be late for something late.  Me spending 20 more minutes on the first part of my commute eventually means, what, a walk of five more minutes to get to work.  So it took me, what, ten minutes to park my car and get to my desk.  Things just propagate: What usually takes me about 50 minutes from driveway to desk became 80.  And that doesn't factor in that I will have virtually no time to go out to my car to take my lunchtime nap.  All of this sucks because of what happened this goddamn morning.

But I love my job, don't get me wrong.  I can blog about my murderous commute at work, after all.