City paving

About two months ago, the City of Durham posted signs in the yards all along our street that read: "Notice: Street paving will occur on the dates of August 9 through August 23.  Please remove vehicles from the street during this time."

Hubby, myself, and all the other neighbors waited anxiously for August 9th to arrive to see the road work in action.  Our street was in pretty poor condition, but mostly due to teenagers writing vulgarities along its surface.

Finally August 9th arrived and the city workers punched the time clock at about 1:30 pm to begin the road work.  They were gone before I got home that evening at 5:15 pm.  Pretty short day's work, huh?  I can't technically explain the work they did, but it appeared as if they raked along the perimeter of the street and left vertical grooves in the pavement.  I was excited that they had begun work on the day they promised, and I couldn't wait to see the finished product in the coming days.

The following day, no further work was done.  Nor the next day.  Nor the next day. 

The deadline to finish the street paving - according to the sign in our yard - was quickly approaching and I didn't sense any movement to get this project finished.  August 23rd came and went, and still no paving was being done.  They had missed their window of opportunity.  I, along with my fellow neighbors, was now allowed to resume parking on my street.

I left for work on Wednesday - the 24th - and returned 8 hours later to see (and smell) a freshly paved street.  So in reality, it took the city at most 11 hours to complete a project for which they allotted 15 days.