Eight??  It’s eight freaking degrees out?  Shouldn’t there be a zero after that?  And shouldn’t all that white stuff out there be sand?  Eeeesh.  Grim.  I had a heck of a time getting into work yesterday, even with the city’s new snow removal plan.  (Was that a cruel joke Funk?  The streets looked just the same as ever, which is to say “untouched.”)  My first snag hit when I remembered we’d stopped our mail while on vacation, and therefore I had no January bus pass.  Not a huge issue, but we are literally so broke I didn’t have the $3.00 it takes to get downtown and back on the Metro.  That’s broke.  We scavenged around the couch cushions and came up with an ample number of quarters though.  I caught my 6:30 ride and was cruising merrily along, but didn’t get too far and the bus got stuck.  Hmmm, didn’t see that one coming.  I mean he got stuck good too.  Sideways in the road, up in some poor guy’s yard, the whole nine yards.  Several other riders seemed a bit put out, but I thought it was rather entertaining.  Kind of like a carnival ride.  He was banging off the curbs, fishtailing everywhere, and smoking the tires like he’d just won the Brickyard 400.  It was never really close though, there was no way he was getting up the hill.  Full fifty minutes later, he finally got backed up across Main street to a spot where he could get started, and just cut that part of the route out.  We made it about three more miles and he gets stuck again.  Unfortunately I had my headphones in and didn’t hear what he said, because I bet it was worth hearing.  At any rate, he just shut off the bus and got out.  So, everybody else followed suit, and got on the next bus to come along.  All told, an hour and half ride to work.  Which is much better than an hour and a half ride home.  Today, I afforded myself the rare luxury of driving the car to work.  Not that I was worried about the bus getting stuck again, but our two weeks of mail didn’t show up yesterday and I still ain’t got three bucks.  Anybody got a quarter?