Commuter Hell

So, yesterday class finished at 12:30, but there was a company coming out to meet with people and 'recruit' for their expanding offices right afterward. I got in to see them and discussed a few things (but don't expect me to announce a move to Montreal anytime soon!) with the HR guy.

I then bolted from the scene at 1pm, knowing I had to pick up my daughter at school at 2:30. I basically gave myself just enough time to get to her school to pick her up. At 2pm, I had to call the school and tell them either I'd be very late picking her up ~or~ one of her grandparents would be by to get her before 3pm. Since I'd been on the road for an hour and hadn't made it to the halfway point yet, I wasn't expecting to make it the rest of the way in 30 minutes.

Yep, 1pm on Thursday afternoon and traffic stopped, then crawled. It was raining for the first time in weeks, so the roads were slick, but as I found out later in the evening, it was a single car in the ditch at the 3/4 mark of my commute that had backed traffic up for a long, long way.

My parents, fortunately, were available to pick up my daughter, even though they had to drive a fair bit to get her. They were also on hand to pick up my son at 3 when I finally hit that 3/4 mark (although by that point I'd switched to a side road and was making better progress).

3 hours to get home. When I finally did get home there was an email message waiting for me. My 2 final papers were due at 5pm today instead of the original time given of 1pm Friday. My instructor emailed me 5 minutes after I'd logged out at school.

I should've stayed to write the papers.

But wait! There's more!

That was Thursday's nightmare and today's Friday! If traffic was that bad on a Thursday...

Around the same spot where I'd stopped and began the 'crawler commute' on Thursday, we heard a bang by the car. Not sure what it was, we joked about how sucky it would be to get a flat tire during the Friday commute. As we crawled along for another hour, I noticed the car was feeling like it was drifting to the left a bit. As we eventually made it to my side road offramp, we squaeled around the ramp at a very low speed. So, off I pulled into the gas station.

I have a big *^#$ing screw sticking out of my tire.

So, tomorrow I'm now buying the new tires I'd planned on purchasing on Tuesday.

Oh, and with the lameass spare on, we had to drive slower on the way home.

2 days and 6 hours of commuting. Enough already!!