California, coming home

Here I am in California for the holidays. I'm here at my Dad's house in LA, waiting for Becky to come pick me up so we can have a day out and about. I don't think the two of us have spent time together in LA since college. Can that be right?

Hmm. Well, the sun is shining here and it's almost 65 degrees and I am just soaking in the sunshine. It's a stark contrast from the snowy wasteland I came from. I know I've been complaining about the snow and the cold, which is just a little wrong. I mean, what did I expect? It's Boston, for crying out loud. Who thinks it's going to be warm in winter in Boston? But the thing is, it's still quite startling for me.

Two Thursdays ago we had this huge storm where I was in Shrewsbury for a meeting and it took me 6 hours to get home. Now normally it takes me a little over an hour. Just for some perspective, I only had a quarter of a tank of gas (I tried to get more but my gas tank was frozen shut and I couldn't get it open) and it lasted me the whole 6 hours. That's how slow I was going. It was awful. I was nervous the entire time about driving on snow and ice, people were fishtailing in front of me and I was needing to pee for 4 of those 6 hours. I'm still traumatized. People are saying we got as much snow this fall as we got all last winter. WTF?

So now I'm in LA and for the holidays all I asked for from the parents were snow tires. They're expensive, and it's going to be such a relief when I'm driving all over the Commonwealth. I also asked Aaron to help me buy a coat. Maybe between the tires and the coat I'll find something else to complain about.