Reston Buyers Guide: What To Do With The $2 An Hour You Won't Have To Pay To Park At RTC Until January, Maybe, Or Whenever

So the notion of paid parking is going so well at Reston Town Center that the crisis management team concerned property owners have delayed it until January, after the holiday season, so as to "educate" us uninformed, non-elite knuckle-dragging Restonians exactly what a "smart cellular telephone" is, and why using one won't steal our souls—just our personally identifiable information, maybe, who knows, that's a lot of words to read for a Friday afternoon.

We could ponder just what prompted the change in plans (cough cough roughly 8,000 signatures to a fancy online petition) or read the only piece kinda sorta defending paid parking in the history of English literature. (Chaucer's immortal When that Aprille with his shoures soot/My illegally parked horst got the boot" doesn't count, as it's in Middle English).

Or we could figure out what to do with that extra $2 that's burning a hole in our pockets! Fortunately, Restonian is On Your Side(tm), ready to help. A few modest suggestions:

• Buy 1/396th of a share of stock in RTC tenant Google from the newest cool RTC retailer where all the kids are spending their lunch money.
  
  
• Spend 15 minutes at the nearest cybercafe (assuming they still exist) writing rave reviews of the ParkRTC app under the pen name "Don'tWorkForBoston NoSireeNotMe"
  
  
• Retain a "crisis management firm" for approximately 22 seconds.
  
  
• Realize that "punt" isn't bad advice for 2 lousy bucks.
  
  
• Buy a one-way Metro ticket from Wiehle to Spring Hill. Walk back in half the time.
  
  
• Trade it in for a $2 bill--the only truly elite currency except the $1,000 bill.
  
  
• Finally learn to read so you can prepare to "educate yourself" about the glorious benefits of paid parking and an app that will tell you when your shopping spree might be interrupted by rain
  
  
• Purchase a soon-to-be-collector's-item piece of concrete rubble from a legitimate architectural masterpiece
  
  
• Buy a cup of coffee anywhere except RTC mainstay Starbucks
  
  
• Save up for the $7 round trip to Tysons Corner to buy random midscale consumer goods there, the end.