Welcome to vacation?

I set my alarm for 6 am but forgot to turn it on. At 7 I woke up and stumbled blearily downstairs and out into the street to feed quarters into the meter in front of the apartment, where my car is "parked." If the steering wheel wasn't locked up and the key would turn in the ignition, the car wouldn't be parked there still; in fact it wouldn't have been there for more than ten minutes while I ran and got my laundry and threw it in the backseat. But the steering wheel is locked up, and the key won't turn in the ignition, and countless phone calls and all the pulling on the steering wheel in the world later, the car is still there.

So it's 9 am and the meter has been fed, and now I'm just waiting for the tow truck, so that I can begin my morning at a Ford dealership instead of transforming yeast cells. So far this vacation isn't shaping up to be much fun, but it hasn't technically started yet, so maybe this is just the tail end of my crappy week.

You know what I want to know? Why does the car even HAVE that mechanism? And why isn't there a simpler fix? Something like, "stick the key in this other lock and unlock said steering column, and then proceed with life" would still prevent theft, because it would require the key. And then I could have done my laundry and picked up my packages in Orange and gone climbing and my Thursday would have been awesome.

I have recently become addicted to Death Cab for Cutie. The only song I'd ever had was We Looked Like Giants, but I downloaded the whole album, and then another album, and now I'm in Death Cab for Cutie overload. I know it's so emo, but I love this stuff.

In case anyone was wondering, New Haven is really pretty and peaceful at 7 am. We even had frost this morning. Maybe it will snow soon....