Oh, winter.

As if it wasn't bad enough that I was getting The Wanderlust the other day already, yesterday I spent five hours (count 'em - five hours) of a perfectly good Saturday stuck in my car in a ditch with no cell phone waiting for a tow truck. More than once there was swearing and cursing the state of Wisconsin and snow in general. Why do I live here?

(Note: The above picture does not illustrate where I was stuck. Where I was stuck was more... how do you say? Ah yes - in the middle of nowhere.)

My suggestion to you - do not, under any circumstances, attempt to Y-turn on a country road in the snow if you are not absolutely certain where the shoulder ends. Chances are the road is quite a lot narrower than you suppose and your car with the ridiculously wide turning radius won't be able to make it around without getting stuck in the snow and leave you feeling like an idiot who hasn't lived here her entire life. Here endeth the suggestion.

Snowing yet again. I recently purchased a digital converter box (more on that later) and now have some extra channels. The channel that shows nothing but local weather tells me that there are 17" of snow on the ground already. Enough already, winter! Seriously!

Now, about this digital converter box business. Aside from the obvious awesome things (the picture is better, I get a channel that seems to show nothing but reruns of The A-Team and Little House on the Prairie, and the box looks kind of like a cylon when on standby), I don't think I like it. I have yet another remote and depending on if I'm watching TV or a DVD I have to use a different one to change the volume. Despite being told otherwise by the "expert" at Best Buy, I can not hook up both a DVD player and a VCR to my older TV which requires an RF modulator - I do not like being lied to. It still cost $20 after my friendly government coupon. Most irritating of all - the box "converts" all shows with a normal, full-screen aspect ratio to tiny boxes in the middle of the screen with black borders on every side, thus shrinking the picture to about half the size it should be. I have to sit about two feet away from the TV to see anything. Yes, I eventually figured out how to change it, but I don't want to hit the "zoom" button multiple times every time I change a channel to figure out whether I have the picture at the right size. This is a pain in the place one sits.

This smells, to me, like The Government trying to stimulate the economy by getting everyone with a perfectly good older television and no cable to buy a fancy new television. NO, GOVERNMENT. I will deal with your stupid crap because I can't afford a new television. I can't even afford cable - why would I buy a new TV?

Oh, the rage.

In order to hold off the rage, here is a list of awesome things:

1) The Steelers (my AFC team of choice - sorry? No, I'm not.)
2) Neil Patrick Harris on Saturday Night Live
3) I'm re-reading all my "Little House" books. Not only do they go remarkably quickly, I still like them.
4) Getting out of the ditch
5) Batman socks in the $1 section at Target - made for children, fit geeky grown women.
6) Audrey Hepburn
7) Battlestar Galactica on Hulu... though the content of the show is not always exactly as I would like.
8) I'm attempting to take a picture everyday of 2009, showing here.
9) The A-Team
10) The converter box on standby.


Pretty awesome.