one little thing can revive a guy, and that is a piece of rhubarb pie.

You have probably heard the "Interrupting Cow" joke:
"knock knock"
"who's there?"
"interrupting cow!"
"interrupting c-"
"MOOOOOO!"
There is also a variation called "Interrupting Starfish," in which the interruption is a splayed out hand in the face. My friend also came up with a version, "interrupting completely uncalled for," which can range from a gentle, friendly smack to a full on tackle. Which is sort of what it felt like the world did last night.
My sword fighting group has been renting practice space from the Ann Arbor Community Center on Main St. for about 6 months. Every week, they're there from 7-9 on Wednesdays, and almost every week they go out for food afterwards (I say 'they' because I'm not usually there, just during the summer). Being at least somewhat eco-conscious, and not wanting to fight for parking, we usually carpool, leaving our other cars in the lot at the AACC. Since we're the last people there, we didn't see that this could be a problem, and we were never alerted to that possibility. Well, last night, we came back to find only one of the cars of the four cars and motorcycle that had been left still there. Needless to say, minor panic ensued. We were "greeted" by a lady, who informed us that our cars had been towed. To be fair, there is a sign that says unauthorized cars will be towed, and we were using their parking lot as storage for our cars rather than pay for parking elsewhere for the hour we were gone. However, let me repeat that this has been happening for six months, and nothing has been said, no warning has been given. Even though the janitor has been there all the time. Also, why does the building manager leave while there are still patrons in the building? He left at 8! That doesn't make any sense, and if he didn't leave, he could have told us that leaving our cars was not ok. No where in the contract did it say that we had to clear out of the parking lot at risk of being towed. It was never said unofficially either, which also would have sufficed. The lady did not see this as necessary, however, and was extremely unpleasant about it. Apparently, psychic powers are assumed, because heaven forbid she should have taken 30 seconds to warn us about their "stringent" parking lot policies. We should have known. As one of my friends put it, logically, why would we leave our cars where they were likely to be towed? so clearly, we had no idea it was a problem. It's never been a problem at any of the other rehearsal spaces we've rented. Why didn't we ask then, was the lady's response. PERSONAL PET PEEVE ALERT: you can't know what you don't know! By which I mean, you can't ask a question if you think you're doing something right. You only ask if you think there might be something wrong.
Now, I can understand that she was frustrated because she'd been called back to work at 10:30pm, and I can understand why they don't want people freeloading in their parking lot, and that she had no way of knowing they were our cars. But she had no call to be so rude, and she had a lot of call to apologize for not warning us, which of course she didn't do. I'm pretty sure she just lost our business. She certainly lost mine, because no matter how tired and cranky you are, you don't act like that to patrons. Even if they're wrong, which in this case, we weren't.
Then it turned out that it costs $235 to be impounded, even for 5 minutes. bollucks.
and that was my evening!
exactly 6 weeks, not that I'm counting...