Thursday, January 31, 2008

Not The Worst Day of My Life...

But certainly the worst in several years, that's for sure.

I telecommute four days a week. Thursdays I have a meeting with my boss and the rest of his group. I tried to drive out in my wife's AWD Equinox. I got down the driveway okay, but on Sunburst Road, I ran out of traction--and slid back into a snowbank. I was thoroughly stuck. Some of this might be the tires, mostly, I think, it is because AWD is not a substitute for four wheel drive. When there is almost no traction on any tire, AWD seems to make very poor decisions about where to put the power.

So my wife insists that we get the Equinox out of our subdivision, and look for a replacement with full-time 4WD. After a lot of unpleasant discoveries (even the Subarus aren't truly full-time 4WD), we ended up trading in the Equinox on a 2007 Chevy Trailblazer with 11,000 miles. This was expensive, at least partly because we still owe more on the Equinox than it is worth--it has 60,000 miles on it.

Before we signed the papers, we drove the Trailblazer up to our house. It was certainly far superior to the Equinox--climbed the driveway without a single concern. I did high center on the snowdrifts in the front yard, but managed to rock it off, and head back to the dealer.

So three hours later, we are back to the house--and there is another foot or more of snow everywhere. We could not climb the driveway. Even the snowthrower couldn't negotiate the driveway--just too deep. And it is getting worse.

So I have wasted the entire day, gotten no work done (so I'll be working Saturday). I've spent a pile of money, I'm cold, sore, and mentally exhausted.

Al Gore, could you bring your hot air about global warming to Idaho? Oh yes, I see that Boise State had a conference on the subject yesterday and today--and all evening classes were canceled because of the ferocity of the snowstorm we're having.

UPDATE: I understand that BSU did have to cancel the second part of their global warming conference because of the snowstorm.

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