Winter Wonderland

We had our first snowfall in DC the other night. Now, this obviously is not my first winter here, but it is my first winter with a car. I knew there would be some differences, but wasn't particularly worried about it.

So yesterday when I came out to drive to work at my usual time, I stopped and thought, "Crap, there's a lot of snow on my car." And then I thought, "Hmm...I wonder how I'm going to get it off." Because, you see, in just sort of anticipating the fact that it would be cold and snowy and such, it never actually occurred to me to buy stuff like ice scrapers or brushes or whatever other accessories one might need to clean snow or ice off a car. In Texas, when there is snow or ice or really just light snow flurries, EVERYTHING shuts down and people run for their lives to get the essentials from the grocery store because it could be a WHOLE DAY before you get to move around again. And really, crazy as it seems, this is how it should be. When the weather is that gross, I think we should all be able to stay in our warm pajamas and fuzzy slippers and watch daytime TLC or whatever Christmas shows are on the family channel. We should not have to pile into galoshes and heavy coats and dig our cars out and slide along to a day of non-essential work that could be accomplished another time.

So the end of my first attempt at digging out my car: I got to work twenty minutes later than normal (not anticipating, once again, the extra time it would take to do the digging) and I shredded up this magazine thing that had been on the floorboard of my car for who knows how long. It doubled very nicely as a shovel of sorts.