Typical/Atypical

In terms of weather, it was pretty crappy most of the day.  It snowed a bit in the morning – though as I heard people freaking out about it (I said to someone, “Back home this would be considered ambience, not weather.”) I was looking at pictures that a Facebook friend in the UP was posting of the six-foot plus snow drift piling up at her house – and then turned to rain for the rest of the day.
However, it showed signs of clearing up as I was on my way home, which pleased me, as it meant that the other commuters would be slightly-less panic-stricken.
In fact, the drive home proved to be relatively un-terrible all around – you can’t ever describe commuting conditions in NoVA as “good” or anything like that; it’s all varying degrees of terrible – and I even made out pretty well as far as the lights went.  I mean, I still hit every red light along the way, but I was generally at or near the front, so I never had to sit through multiple cycles.
Naturally it made me suspicious, and when I got home my suspicions seemed to be confirmed by the sight of a truck that was parked about a quarter of the way into my parking space.
I thought that I probably could have squeezed in, but didn’t feel like bothering with it, especially since if I did manage to fit there wouldn’t have been enough space behind me for my neighbors to swap out the smaller car for the larger car when the mom got home from work, so I turned around and headed to the parking lot.
When I got home I was pleased to find that both my Federal and State tax refunds had arrived in the mail.  This was, of course, good, which made me suspicious once again.  However, I considered the possibility that my “debt” to the Universe – that is, if something good happens to me, something, or multiple somethings, bad, or at least annoying, has to happen to make up for it – had already been paid.  After all, if I hadn’t screwed up filling out the direct deposit information when I filed my taxes, I would have already had the money two weeks ago.
I initially thought about just stopping and depositing the checks on my way in to work in the morning, but as the skies had cleared, the sun was shining, and it had warmed up a great deal, I decided I’d take a walk to the bank.
I had originally intended to stop at a grocery store on the way home, but I didn’t want to screw up the flow of my traffic mojo, so I decided I could do without the few things I was going to pick up.
As there’s a grocery store near my bank, and I was there anyway, I decided to grab the things I had neglected to get on the way home.
Naturally while I was in the store the rain clouds rolled back in, and I got to walk a mile in pouring, ice-cold rain.
Once I got back on my street I could see that the truck had moved, so I decided to get my car and park in front of my house.
Naturally while I was doing that someone else came along and stole my spot.
However, he was still there when I pulled up, and was courteous enough to move out of my way.
And then, after I got inside and was busily drying myself off, the rain stopped and it was sunny and clear again.
So all in all it was kind of a weird afternoon, containing elements of the typical and the atypical.