How cool am I?

Yesterday, it was -9 and breezy most of the day. That's right. Negative cold. So cold, there can't be clouds in the sky. So cold, that even though it is sunny and blue skied, your fingers freeze instantly if you touch the snow. I tried to use my windshield spray and it froze instantly coming out of the nozzle.

During my class yesterday, the department secretary came running in. She was so frantic, I thought someone was having a heart attack. "The starlings are above the cars. You have to take a break and move the car!" I didn't have time for a break, and this seemed a little over the top. But sure enough, when I left my office at dusk, the car was brown with bird shit. The inside of the windows were covered in ice, and the outsides were covered in shit. Lovely. I waited for them to thaw so I could drive straight to the car wash. Ten minutes later, ice free, revealed I could not actually see through the refuse. I had to get out and scrape it! So gross. The car wash was the best fourteen dollars I have ever spent.

Today is -1. It feels warm by comparison. Brisk, but manageable. I ran errands. I didn't wear my gloves outside (I wasn't walking far). Doable.

The errand I ran today was to buy a new "ponytail" for my drier, so I could actually attack the pile of clothes slowly filling my new bedroom. It is a complicated process, involving positive and negative wires, neutral and ground wires. Kind of like a bomb. The Home Depot guys were stumped as I explained these wires to them. They only understood plug. "Look at the plug and find the one that matches," they said. No, I said. You have to also know what to do with the extra cables, or you will get shocked. They looked at each other. "Go home, and get a piece of paper and draw the shape of the plug, because you only have to match the plugs." I picked up what I needed and left them there. I wonder if they will be scanning the news to see if I burned the town down?

I went into the basement for the first time since last week (when I heard a noise, went to investigate, and promptly fell on the ice), tool box and ponytail in hand. Ten minutes later, the drier was running. How cool is that?