Chilly Willy

Well, winter finally arrived last week and took a dump all over the Metro area.

Of course, I have to have something to whine about, so let me just mention that my van is in dire need of a blend door actuator. Recognize that part? A simple Google search led me to that part. Apparently, that's a little cigarette packed shape box behind the radio of my model minivan. It controls the heat.

The heat.

More importantly, one can not defrost their windows when that cigarette pack sized bastard throws a gear.

Having suffered through a nearly traumatic drive to work through thousands of pounds of white shit falling from the sky last week, I ran out and bought a new blend door actuator yesterday. Unfortunately, my severe lack of self confidence in any kind of car maintenance that isn't changing oil or brake pads prevented me from installing it myself and I placed a call to a friend that is supposed to be coming over this morning to oversee the install, hopefully making sure that I don't accidentally wire the airbag to the windshield wiper controls and break my own skull the next time I try and clear my windshield.

The drive in to work last night wasn't terrible. The temperature was in the 30s, and aside from being a little chilly, it wasn't all that bad. The windshield stayed clear after I scraped it, and everything went well. I even got there early.

This morning, a whole new ball game. It's 15 degrees out. Both the windshield and the inside of the windshield were totally frozen over. Out comes the new scraper.

For all about 4 minutes. Then the son of a bitch shattered. I grabbed the biggest part of the nearly brand new shards of plastic and started scraping, checking over my shoulder for the inevitable appearance of The Chicken Cow. I scraped a viewing slot and headed home. I only had to stop a few times to scrape the window, but I made it.

Unfortunately, I had to take a wicked piss when I got home. There's holy-shit-it's-cold shrinkage, and then there's holy-shit-my-hands-are-frozen-while-grasping-at-my-sub-par-wang shrinkage.

My hands are numb, but I'm home. Defrosting under the Christmas lights.