Snow parking zone

When I returned to Boston last week, I retrieved my car from the airport parking garage and made my way home. As expected, our building's parking lot was completely full and I had to search for a spot on the street to park. But since the Holiday Blizzard of 2010 had hit town, I realized there were fewer parking options than usual.

Instead, there were mountains of snow where cars used to be able to park and several vacant spots were coated with several inches of packed snow and ice. My little car is not exactly made for snow, and I am a thoroughly Californian driver, so I gingerly backed my car into a spot that seemed free.

Well, parallel parking in the snow is not a strength of mine, so I ended up leaving my car poking out into a driveway. Fortunately, it wasn't towed and i moved it to the parking lot the next morning.

But today, I realized that winter has just begun! And it's been so long since I drove to work that I didn't realize how mounds of snow had piled up on the sides of the route I take to work each day, rendering previous two-lane streets into 1.5-lane streets. So now, in addition to having to avoid the slick ice, I have to maneuver among Masshole drivers who honk at my grandma-inspired driving style.

And again, I was faced with fewer parking spots than usual this evening. Fortunately, I found a relatively close spot near my home, but the tires definitely started to slip as I backed her into the spot. This is going to be an interesting winter of commuting.