Clunker parking

It's kind of ironic that, on the weekend all the dealers are giving you thousands of dollars if you trade in a clunker on a new car, we end up with this beauty in front of our house.

Parking on our street can be a challenge, but for the most part, it works out fine. I'm amazed at how few times we are not actually able to park in front of our house, and even if a car does park there, it's usually gone in a few hours. We don't own the street or the parking, and grouchy as I am, I still have not sunk to the low of setting out orange cones with NO PARKING signs on them.

Thursday afternoon this car showed up. The aggravating thing was that, while we can normally fit two cars in front of the house, it was parked in such a way that nothing else would fit. We weren't just out one space, but two. By Saturday it was getting a bit more than aggravating. I joked that its registration was probably expired too, so Mrs Notthat looked and this is what she saw.

Nearly three years past due. We decided that if it is still there on Monday, we would call and report it. (Redwood City law is that you can't stay parked in the same spot for more than 72 hours.) In the meantime, I took these pictures on Sunday morning. Weirdly, on Sunday afternoon we noticed that someone had rolled the windows halfway down. This meant it really did belong to someone and was (probably) not a stolen car that had been abandoned.

Monday afternoon it was still sitting there, the windows still rolled down, and Mrs Notthat called it in.

Within a half hour, the car was gone. We never did see who drove it and have no real idea which house they were staying in. (We know it wasn't the police since it usually takes them a week to verify the car is there, then they mark it and come back in four days or so to see if it is still there - they never work this quickly on this sort of thing, and I can't blame them too much since, as with this case, the issue probably sorts itself out all by itself.)

So we can breath a bit again, spread out the cars properly, and get back to normal.

This picture has got nothing to do with the above story - I just like the way Mrs Notthat is doing the gardening under the watchful eye of Mickey Moose (who looks like he is about to pounce on her, assuming a moose can pounce).

That's it - move along...