Two-fold-idiotism idioms on sale

Almost 25 years of having a driving license and then getting two parking tickets in one week. For the first time in your life. Amazing! I feel like an idiot.

Last Saturday I was visiting Tampere with my family. We knew there was a sushi restaurant in the city centre. I let the others off at the restaurant and continued to find me a parking place.

I found one very closeby. I went to the parking meter and started putting money there. It said that at 2,80 € you could stay for an hour there. Quite expensive but I put 3 euro coins there. The machine threw up the coins every time! If 2,80 were a maximum, it could have given me 20 cents back, or swallow the whole of 3€, but no; the coins ran through the machine as if they had been forbidden currency or something.

Then I put in my mastercard because it said that it was a valid means of payment. It only prompted: "Take the card off." No PIN query, nothing. I still pushed the 'print out' button and it started printing. But the time in the note was present time.

This morning I sent a reclamation to the city of Tampere. I have already paid the bill I got, but still. There's not much hope of getting my money back and setting my record straight, meaning my increasing criminal record, LOL! Well I'm not actually laughing, but you might be.

I have been using parking houses lately in the city, so I had no idea what's going on. It came to me only afterwards that maybe I should have pressed that green button several times to get more minutes for parking. But the printing started immediately, so how could I have done that?

I feel like an idiot. Just give me a third ticket and my driving license becomes one endangered species. This is giving more shades to my spectrum of state of mind. In a day (read: week) or two I'll get over it. A piece of good news wouldn't harm me severely at this point though...