A Theorem on Valet Analytics

I have had my car towed 3 times now. Twice in the last 2 months. West Hollywood off Santa Monica at night is just a giant trap - I think there are actually cameras waiting for lazy people like me to park in mis-marked spaces.

I had my car towed once in college, one of my miserable roommates thought it would be funny to call my car in because I was parked in her spot. In order to get it back, I had to bribe a cab driver to take me into the nether-region of South West Philadelphia - a place HE was terrified to enter...imagine how I felt. I also had to pay $280 in cash to a very angry and large man to get it back - the whole experience was balancing helplessly on the edge of my getting raped and slaughtered in a part of Philadelphia that even shady cab-drivers fear.

Here's the problem - in WeHo, it's only $122 (chargeable on almost any major credit card) and the towing place is right down the street. They basically moved my car to a slightly less convenient location. I'm not saying that I look forward to venturing into the poorly lit office space of Johnson's Towing, but I definitely hear myself say "fuck it" when taking a chance on an unexplained open parking space.

Now that parking tickets are payable online, they don't affect points on my license and getting towed is not likely to put a dark cloud over my day, I find myself racking up the bills payable to the state. I realized I've paid thousands of dollars to the cities of Philadelphia, Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Money that clearly doesn't go toward the bettering of street quality or comprehensible sidewalk signage.

It just feels like giving into the hypocrisy of a driving city when I pull into a valet-ed parking lot and fork over 5-20 bucks to park for dinner. Granted that's nothing compared to $122 and a taxi cab but there's this unspoken pride that bursts forth with finding a spot and not paying for it/not getting caught.

The best part is I could have walked to the restaurant from my apartment, but no one outside of bums and joggers dare be seen on the sidewalks of LA after dark.

What I've decided to do to solve this problem is, I believe, the rich kid solution. (The following reasoning will likely only make sense to a spoiled such as myself)...

Say I'm willing to spend $30-$80 on dinner and plan to leave a $6-$16 tip for that...and realistically there are about 2-5 drinks involved so lets round that number to an even $75. So if I spend an average of $75 on a night out, that's still less than getting towed. I've decided to forfeit one big night out a month and put that money in my newly designated parking pouch. Every month I will allot myself $75 to spend on parking in LA. If I run out before the month is up I either get a ride from a friend or I'm not going out. If I have left-overs, that goes toward the next month's $75.

On another note, I've been looking for the perfect black work bag - big enough to comfortably carry my laptop and designer enough to not have the word 'Coach' on it. Gilt hasn't had any great bags lately, suggestions?

Savoring the Savings

I am so hungry. Though my diet may be strict, I don't believe anyone, no matter how disciplined, can curb those late afternoon hunger pangs at work. It's far too easy to venture to the nearest coffee shop and snag a scone or cookie or grilled chicken and brie panini as I have for the last few days...and that piles up - both in calories and in cash.

Today I decided to try and beat the urge by bringing a baggie of red vines to work - they are the lowest calorie to chew factor ratio candy I have found and are going for $5 a barrel at Ralphs - what a bargain buy!

So I set the sad little plastic bag next to my computer on my desk and my boss walks in and, without even thinking twice, snags the bag and 3 of my allotted 10 vines for the day. My tummy just grumbled as I typed that. 3 whole vines - that over 20 minutes of savoring I just lost.

But I veer from my point - bringing snacks to work is the best possible way to avoid those unnecessary snack expenditures.

I stopped going to Pete's for my morning latte and opted to make my own - saves over 20 bucks a week! (though my real reason was the lines are just too outrageous to be standing in before 9am - the last thing I want to do before I've had my coffee is wait in an obnoxiously long line for my coffee). By brewing my own java and bringing some red vines, pistachios and chewy bars to work I avoid the whole mid-day binge. And we have all been at that point where stabbing a co-worker in the neck with a ball-point pen for a candy bar wasn't totally out of the question...

Also, it helps me keep tabs on my caloric intake for the day - it's a known fact that people gain weight at desk jobs. I don't think I have room for a treadmill in this office, so BYO-ing breadsticks is the next best thing. As delicious as those lattes and paninis are, I feel much better about gorging on post-work happy hour cocktails and canapé's - it's a trade off.

I bought an adorable pencil skirt on Gilt that just barely fits - I've def put on that post holiday poundage (if there is such a thing?). Off to the gym!

The Kink in Kinkos.

I've been having to get a lot done at Kinkos for work because we just moved into new offices and our printers aren't set up yet. It's fairly simple, I just need to print out some of our information and have it bound, and yet, of course, these Kinkos workers think I'm speaking another language. What typically sets out to be a 20 minute trek to the printing haven turns into hours of technological difficulty torture.

I lobbied my boss today for our own binding machine.

It's shocking to me also how unbelievably expensive this stuff is! Of course most locations don't let you plug in your own computer to print, so I have to put my credit card into this machine that seems like its swallowing it whole and sending it across the street to be used for online scams. At 90 cents a minute and snail paced internet I watch the dollar number increase faster than the pages load.

The printers always jam and I find myself standing in the awkwardly large empty space in the middle of the store, angry rap music coursing through my body, on the verge of threatening the copy machine a la Office Space.

Today I have been bombarded with empty promises and worthless encounters. I had to print my stuff 3 times in order for it to come out clear, and then the copy machine wasn't working so the guy made me email my stuff to him so he could print it on the 'special machine' in the back that normal people can't use. Luckily for me though, he didn't realize when I stormed out with my printed pages and only paid for the time I spent on the computer - his binding job was forcefully on the house.

I do feel a little bad about it, but honestly that company is so corrupt with its pricing that I feel like I got out of paying for a parking ticket in Philadelphia.

Each trip for a dozen packets bound ends up costing me over 100 bucks and hours of frustration. More than a trip to Whole Foods. Of course I get refunded by work, but those hours are going to cost thousands in botoxing wrinkles down the road - and you gotta think long term.

So we are going to buy a binding machine, which, though the lovely simpletons at Kinkos seem to be able to work while bitching at their baby daddy on a handsfree, looks like the earliest version of the computer chip to me. I know it will take me weeks to figure this thing out, but I'm determined to never venture back to that world of awful again.

I feel like this blog is turning more into a rant...I will do my best to focus on more imporant rich kid issues, like how to buy things on sale etc.