Too close for comfort

We have been enjoying a positively balmy couple of weeks.  We had a solid week of sunshine (during which I got to appreciate the moon roof in the Sunfire a few last times -- the only way the new car could be *more* perfect would have been a moon roof, but I digress).  The past week has been a little more overcast, but we were still experiencing temperatures around 9C. 

Needless to say, when the SNOWFALL WARNING showed up on my weather widget at 3:30 Tuesday, I laughed.  We all laughed.  Snow?  Seriously?  HA!  Even as I dressed yesterday morning, I laughed as I listened to the radio morning show hosts issue their dire warnings of doom and gloom: it was *still* 7C at 7am.  It wasn't gonna freaking snow.

*heavy sigh*

When I left the parking garage, I gazed in wonder at the grey sky, heavy with pissed off-looking clouds -- I actually stopped long enough to hop out of the new car in order to grab the snow brush from the (still-not-cleaned-out) old car.  I still wasn't entirely sold on the idea of pending snow, even with weather reports of heavy snow and -2C temps in the town half an hour east of where I work.

By the time I got to work (about 30km/20 minutes from home), there were teeny, tiny flakes falling from the sky.  Huh.

By the time I was ready to go home, about a foot of snow had fallen.  The gale-force winds had provided LOVELY drifts all over the damned place.  Even though I'd had the foresight to grab the snow brush, I was ill-equipped for snow clearing: I had no hat, gloves, or scarf, and I was wearing my work (read: dress/thin) pants with relatively flat shoes.  My wipers were frozen to the windshield. 

By the time I had the car sufficiently cleared off (read: enough to see out the windows -- normally I'm NOT one of those drivers who clear a 6"x6" space in their windshield through which to see, but it was so god damned cold that I just didn't care about removing the snow from the roof to prevent blow-back for the drivers behind me), my fingers were the colour of lobsters and completely numb.  Well, until they began to thaw.  Then they hurt like a mofo.

I verrrrrrry, verrrrrrry slowly and carefully made my way through the (slick as snot) parking lot.  When I came to the road, I slooooowly began my left hand turn, only to find myself heading straight across the road and into the ditch, coming to stop a mere 10' from a telephone pole.

In my brand new, only driven it for two days, car. 

I didn't know whether to cry, puke, pee my pants or what.  All I could think was, "Fuck!  I jinxed myself!"  See, earlier that day, Chebbar called me on his way home from work and cautioned me to drive carefully.  We joked about how it was a good thing we had bought replacement insurance on the car.

Yeah.

I couldn't gain any traction going forward and started to panic, but calmed myself down enough to put it into reverse, back up a few feet, and try again.  Success!  Gah.

(This morning I found out that the guy that left while I was clearing off the car made the same trip across the road: seems I hit HIS tracks.)