Winter has finally decided to arrive. Unfortunately. I could have handled the cold without the snow, but when you live in this climate:

It’s not often that you don’t have snow. Okay, this picture was taken a few years ago at my parents’. No, we don’t have that much right now, which is actually unusual. This picture was taken at the end of November 2008. We didn’t have any snow for Christmas this year, either. The bad part about that, however, is that it means that the lake hasn’t iced over and therefore we’re still getting lake effect snow. Ick!

Tonight when I walked out of work there was about 3″ of snow on my car. I started up the car (I still have to call and make an appointment to get my remote starter installed!), and then set about cleaning it off. I’m very picky about how I clean the snow off of my car. I want very little left on the car, if at all possible. I try to make sure that I’m as visible as possible from all angles, and also I don’t like to shower the person behind me with a blizzard of snow. Why? Because that’s one of my pet peeves! People who have cars where they can easily reach the top with the snow brush, but they are too lazy to actually brush it off. Inevitably, I am the one stuck behind that person and I can’t see despite the fact that it’s not snowing out in front of their car. Just behind it. GRRR.

I’ve also seen vehicles where they don’t brush off their lights. Hello! How in the world is the beam of light supposed to penetrate the 3″ of snow that is covering them? Guess what? If your headlights aren’t showing through the snow then there’s a good chance that I won’t be able to see you. The same goes with your tail lamps. If you don’t brush the snow off then I can’t see your brake lights. It doesn’t take that much longer to do a quick swipe over your lights. A few seconds, maybe. It will do both you and me a lot of good if you could find the spare time to do this. It would mean that I won’t rear-end you, and you won’t have to listen to me curse you out. It’s a win-win for both of us!