The Advantage of Being a Packrat

Ha! You may groan about my cluttering habits, but I have the last laugh.

Not only is my house cluttered, so is my computer, which is why I had to recently get a terabyte external hard drive.

Now, backtrack to a couple of weeks ago when I went to the University to see a production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. As I have done for many years, I parked in the pay lot and placed my Davis enterprise business card on the dash boad.

Note that this does not have my name on it, but merely "staff writer." For many years now, this has given me a pass to park in the university parking lots.

However, when I returned to the car after Putnam County, I had a ticket.

I wasn't worried. I've had one ticket before and it was excused when I wrote to the parking office and explained my predicament.

So on Monday morning I called the parking office. Only now it's all computerized, so you are supposed to go on line and make your case.

I did that, explained what happened, included the above scan of the business card and figured it was just a matter of time before it was expunged.

HOWEVER, today I received a note from an Erin XX saying that because my card does not have my name on it, it is not sufficient to excuse the ticket and that I am responsible for it unless I can produce a PERSONAL business card.

Well, I still didn't think it was a biggie. I wrote to the woman in charge of publicity for the Theatre and Dance department and asked her to talk to the parking department and straighten it out for me. But I also tried to call the parking office and learned they had closed for the day.

So I decided I would try to write a note to this Erin XX and plead my case directly.

I began to address the e-mail. Now, as most of you probably know, if you have sent an e-mail to someone on Outlook Express, it automatically retains that e-mail address in your address book. I sometimes find this a pain because of how many addresses are there, but it's convenient that when you begin to write the address for someone to whom you have written before, it automatically fills in the address for you.

Before I had finished writing ERIN, the address filled in for me. Hmmm...

So I went to my inbox to see if there was anything in there from Ms. XX. Yes, you should clean out your in boxes. I have >7,000 e-mails in my inbox from people who don't deserve a special folder of their own, plus dozens of folders that filter the more personal mail. I rarely clean any of them out...especially now that I have a terabyte hard drive. I even have folders for dead people that I've never deleted.

Lo and behold there was an e-mail from Erin XX from April of 2009, the last time I got a parking ticket. It reads:

Bev,

I have dismissed this citation based upon your media affiliation. You should be able to park with just your business card displayed; it just seems that the officer that issued this citation did not see your card.

There is no further action required on your part, but please let me know if you need anything else.

Thank you,

Erin

A-HA!!! I forwarded this letter to Ms. XX, along with my comments about the current ticket and we'll see what happens tomorrow.

See? Sometimes being lazy about such things pays off!