My head hurts.

So yesterday I had two cysts removed from my head, one below my eye and one up on my scalp, and the one up top must have been a doozy because my head feels like someone is alternating between hitting my head with an iron brand and driving a spike in after it.

When I was a kid, whenever I would go to the doctor or something like that my mom would usually buy me something. As I got older this something inevitably turned out to be tapes and then CDs. After my little outpatient "procedure" yesterday I decided to head to the Tower Records in the Loop and pick up the new Travis CD as a treat to myself. This was made all the more appealing by its advertised sales price of $9.99. Yahoo!

I get to Tower and there's no parking so I pull up in front of a hydrant, throw on the flashers and run in. I grab my disc and am then held up in line by some clueless couple trying to return a DVD of Wolfen. Apparently it's been discontinued and Tower can't accept it -- and hasn't sold it in some time -- but these folks just didn't get it and kept asking, "So why can't we return it again?" Anyway, I finally make my transaction and run back outside.

Only now my car is gone.

On top of this, apparently there are no frickin' payphones downtown anymore ever since the phone company decided they would try to charge businesses for hosting the phones on top of the percentage they already take. So I had to run to the downtown DePaul campus just to call the cops to find out if my car had just been towed or just been stolen.

Towed.

I'm in Tower five minutes and that's all the time they needed. They must have been hiding the truck behind a light post just waiting for me. Oh well, it was my fault so I couldn't get too pissed.

So I trek on home to pick up my title and run into Photogal, who then nicely offered to drive me to the pound and save me another fifteen bucks in cab fare. The pound downtown is on Lower Wacker -- which is one of my favorite hidden roads in the city since it's like a weird underground city down there -- so we got there with relatively little problem. Then I went inside and got all excited because there was only one person waiting in front of me and, miraculously, all the agents were aiding everyone else with car retrieval. Then I started listening to the conversations.

"But I wasn't parked illegally. You're going to make me pay to get my car out?"

"I'm the driver. No I'm not the owner. What's notarized mean?"

"I need my title too? But that's at home."

"Why would you do something like that? You can't really expect me to pay?"

Okay people, here's a clue. When your car is towed it doesn't matter if you're wrong, right, angry, persuasive or anything else. The bottom line is that your car is in the pound behind a wall of paperwork so you have no recourse but to pay to get it out and sue or fight the violation later. When you are at the pound though, just PAY YOUR FUCKING MONEY AND LEAVE! Oh yeah, call ahead to make sure you have all the right paperwork too.

So then it's my turn and all of a sudden everyone decides to go on break except for the old dude who is having a fine time chatting up the angry young lady yuppie in front of me. Chat chat chatting away. So I start tapping my foot, then my keys start beating out a rhythm on the countertop until finally I may as well be playing air drums for all the flailing and impatient writing I'm displaying.

Until finally the conversation ends, the old guy processes my paperwork. I then pay for and collect my car...only to find a $100 ticket under my windshield for parking in a tow zone. Nice.

Does it end there? Oh no.

I got up late this morning and was rather slow to get my groove on due to that red hot poker hitting my scalp so I didn't realize today was the street cleaning day where you had to move your car to the other side of the street by 9am. I got out there at 10:15 and was greeted by two more tickets; one for parking on the wrong side of the street and one for not having a city sticker. Really nice.

So one could say my day isn't going too well. Or one could say that after this wash of luck I'm destined to have a great rest of the week since, karmically speaking, I'm pretty due. Don't you agree?