My new winter coat, an L.L. Bean Baxter State Parka, is pretty damned awesome but for one thing: The feathers! Everywhere feathers! Every time I take it off I'm picking tiny feathers off of myself for the rest of the day. Sometimes the bastards work their way through my shirt or sweater and poke at me and itch me. Damn these feathers! I can't exchange it to see if I might get luckier with another one (very few of the reviewers mentioned feather problems) because it's sold out now, so I put up with it, because it's great otherwise and it's hella warm. Just today I was out in the snow and 22-degree cold for hours (okay, minutes, but quite a few of them) clearing the snow off my car with just a long-sleeve t-shirt under my coat, and I was cozy as could be. Alas, none of my boots are of equal quality, so my toes kept me well aware of the cold.
The snow is plentiful today, enough so that I took a snow day and worked from home. (What? There were hazardous driving conditions!) I don't know why, but I'm kind of finding myself hating the snow a little bit less this winter. Except when it's time to, you know, leave the house. It has to be shoveled, and cleared off the car, and despite the shoveling I always end up trudging through some snow and my boots don't really work for tucking pants/jeans in so the bottom of my pants/jeans get all snowy and cold and damp, and the snow plows push these walls of snow alongside all the parked cars so you have to trudge through that (I was in it up to my knees earlier today!), and despite the plowing the lane markings become difficult to see and the roads seem narrower because of the snow along the edges so you've got people making their own weird lanes or acting like there's only one where there should be two and two would still fit if people could just grow a brain.
But it is pretty. Except for the gross black snirt (snow+dirt) that accumulates along the roads and in the parking lots. That's fugly.
The other thing that makes me hate winter a little bit less is our car. It's our second winter with the Santa Fe, and I am continually pleased with how much better it is having 4-wheel-drive (and higher ground clearance). Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't have to drive carefully or am immune to the potential slip-and-slide. But I can drive over snow, you guys! With the Taurus, we were forever having to dig it out of parking spots, or dig to be able to get into parking spots. With the Santa Fe, I haven't had a single problem yet. The aforementioned walls of dense snow that the snow plows create no longer stress me out - on bad days it might take a little bit of coaxing, but I haven't once had to help it with a shovel (let alone get multiple guys to push the damn thing as happened with the Taurus). Huzzah!
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