Starting Out Simple: Writing from beneath a mountain of snow.

Well, not really, but pretty darn close. Almost as soon as we got our car up and running again, we (and almost the entire country, from the looks of it) were hit with a monster blizzard that left our area buried under 19 inches of snow. I like snow. I like playing in snow and looking at snow from inside my apartment. I do not, however, like driving in snow at night. Which is exactly what I had to do to get to and from work on Tuesday night during the worst of the blizzard.

I had to close that night at work, and it was really slow because no one wants to be stuck at the mall during a snowstorm. Because it was so slow, they let us out as soon as the store closed, instead of making us stay an extra 15 minutes to close our registers. The drive home was fine until I got to the first (and smaller) of the two hill I have to climb to get home. My tiny Honda Civic is built for fuel economy, not power, and it hates going up hills even when the road is completely dry. Adding six inches of snow makes it almost impossible to get up even the tiniest hill. There was an SUV right on my tail, which made it even more unnerving. James had said something about putting the car into 2 instead of drive when climbing hills for more power, so I tried it when I got to a stop sign. The engine revved, the wheels spun, and I was stuck. With the SUV still too close for comfort, I put it back in drive and got moving. All that was standing between me and home was a giant hill, a mountain, compared the the first hill. As I started up the incline, my car began sliding all over the road. I had to turn the steering wheel really hard to keep from plowing into the woods on either side. I normally keep both my hands firmly on the wheel, but at one point, about halfway up I grabbed on to the door with my left hand and began praying to any deity that might be listening. Somehow I made it to the top very slowly, even though judging from the position of my steering wheel, I should have driven right into a tree.

When I got to the parking lot, I realized that I would probably need to dig out my space, so dug enough so that I thought I would be able to park my car. I noticed this guy on the other side of the lot having trouble and offered him my shovel. I got back into my car to park, but it wouldn't budge. The guy who I had tried to help came over and started digging me out. After about 10 minutes of me trying to park my car, I went to get James, and when I got back, I found that the guy had gotten into my car and parked it. I was kind of embarrassed that I couldn't even park my own car, but also really grateful to the random guy. Especially since it looked like he was trying to go somewhere.

Yesterday, James drove me to work. It had stopped snowing, and the roads were mostly clear. There were still very few customers, so they let us go a little early again.

I had the day off today, and my only responsibilities were to pay the rent and mail some DVDs back to Netflix, which I did. I took some pictures on the way back to show just how much snow we got.