Monday, January 19, 2009

Snow is the Best Insulation

Now, there are many people in the Northern latitudes who will tell others that snow is a good insulator. Many people (feckless people from the tropics, mostly) will laugh at this.

I beg to differ.

P's car has been huddled under a blanket of snow for five or six weeks now - I can't really remember. I should have been baby-ing it before I left and I should have paid it attention as soon as I got back, but I didn't. I had other things to do. I had important things to do, like knit and read and watch movies and hide in my warm house when the windchills dipped to dangerously low levels.

He's coming back this week.

This is what it looked like when I went out to the alley this afternoon:
Now many people may wonder, why dig out his car for him? Why not let him do it himself? I answer: What is he going to do if his car is not available? He'll be looking to drive mine. This is a bad week to loan out my car. I have Knitters' Guild and Book Club and Very Important Activities this week for which I will need my car.

I was more than a little worried that it wouldn't start. My first try, in fact, it made no noise at all. Nothing. Nada. Then I remembered a little quirky thing about this car: You have to have the clutch engaged for it to start. I put my foot on the clutch, turned the key, and voila! Car running.

Nice car. Sweet little Saturn. It now looks like this:

The whole scene reminded me of a phone call I had, many years ago, when I was working for the evil airline, and I had a Saturn executive on the line. He was very nice. I wish I knew his name, so that I could send him a note and tell him that our little '92 Saturn started up right away in Minnesota in January after a long period of neglect.

In the meantime, chili was cooking with peppers that were on special at the grocery store. They were so pretty in the pan, I just had to take their picture:

Boy-child and I dropped Girl-child off at the dorm today (wow - no wonder she wants to go back to school, it was a regular screaming love fest when the elevator door opened, her buddies were so glad to see her). After that, we went to the library to get some info on the fall of Carthage and the Punic Wars (no, I'm not kidding). He has a history project to do.

In the lobby there was an F-bomb:
This is the close up:

Art with a sense of humor.

How fantastic is that?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The f-bomb is hilarious -- I sent it to #2 son. Yay for cars that start when they are supposed to!

Suzique said...

Such a lucky guy to have you clean up his car for him!

Good for you for taking the F-bomb pic. I have no idea why I haven't done so yet. the USB port on it kind of freaks me out.

Those are the cutest peppers I've ever seen.