That's cold enough where you can't make it from the car to the front door without the hairs in your nose freezing together... not a very pleasant mental picture and not a very pleasant feeling either. It's Christmas eve in Michigan and I just got back to my Mom's with my brother and sister for the night. We should have been back an hour ago, but the red-car I've been driving has had a tendency the last two weeks to not start when it's cold outside... and negative four degrees is very, very cold outside. So we tried charging the battery for 40 minutes: nothing. Then we tried jumping it: almost, but in the end; nothing. Then we just figured we would push it out of the way and take Nick's truck: the brakes were frozen solid and even with Nick and my Dad pushing the car [which was sitting on a sloped driveway] it wouldn't budge more than three feet.

But that wasn't the worst of my car troubles this week. While visiting Amanda's grandparents up north [in the "thumb" area], I managed to crack-the-hell out of Amanda's Mom's windshield. How does one have such bad luck? I can't exactly tell you, but we we're all going to have breakfast at a restaurant called "Lefty's", so I go to warm-up the red-car and it just won't start, her grandparents live right on the lake and the wind is just ripping. After ten minutes the battery wasn't even trying anymore so I went back inside and told Amanda I needed to use her mom's car to jump the red-one. Now this is where it got strange, her mom's car and the red-car were parked parallel to each other, side by side, each facing the same direction, but the wind kept slamming the hood shut on the red-car, so I walked over and opened her mom's car's hood and lifted it eye-level when all of a sudden it lifted out of my hands. I looked up just in time to see the wind throw the hood back like a giant-sail, I heard a loud pop and soon realized a spider-web of cracked glass had shot out from the right corner of the windshield. It was a little on the embarrassing side.

Last night it snowed, it wasn't the first time it's done so while I've been here, but it is the first time it's stuck, after coming down all night there was enough to go sledding. I told myself I had to go at least once while I was here... and for the record; getting a huge spray of snow down the front of your shirt feels a lot worse then I remembered. Anyways, it's getting late now, and I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow. By the sounds of it, Amanda and I will be sitting at the airport all day long, a part of me can't wait to get back to the sunshine and palm trees but the past two weeks have flown by, like they always do when your on vacation, and I'm sad to have to say goodbye. I just wish everyone I knew lived in LA... it's warm... all yearlong... what more could someone ask for? Oh well.

Merry Christmas everyone.