When I parked at the airport on Tuesday, amidst a raging ice storm, my one thought was to take the first parking place I could find in the lot and get onto the van to the terminal. That spot happened to be covered in snow, which I ignored at the time. On returning this evening, in my work shoes, the snow slopped over the top and onto my stockinged feet, causing the first, fairly mild, round of consternation. It was then, with freezing, damp feet, that I realized that my windshield was covered in about an inch of very solid ice. I turned on the defroster, which would prove to be spectacularly ineffective, and attacked the ice with a scraper I had in the back. The first part to break off was the brush. The next was a chunk of the the plastic scraper blade. And finally, the blade snapped off from the incredibly flimsy metal stalk it was attached to. By this time I had already used up my stock of extra-special profanities and had to move on to a list of newly minted ones.

My trip to frozen hell was not complete yet because the cashier booth in the lot I was parked in was empty and I had to cross a busy highway to get to the other booth that was staffed. All this while trying to peer through a hole in the ice that was approximately 3 square inches in size. The guy at the booth didn't want to admit that he hadn't given me my credit card back, but I finally managed to convince him it was IN HIS OTHER HAND. At this point I realized the defroster was not clearing more than a tiny strip at the bottom of the windshield and I had to take the scraper blade in my hand and try to chip away at the diamond-like ice. I'm still surprised that the windshield survived unscathed.

Music: there was a song on the radio on the way home containing the line "I'm a little negative, I'm a little cynical, I'm a little critical, I'm a little negative too," which precisely described my mood after the ice adventure.