Winter warm through most of Friday and Saturday – in the 50s at times – and then freezing rain came on Saturday night, followed by normal January temps again plus ice. Not major ice, just enough to leave thin sheets underfoot here and there, which I coated with sand. Why isn’t sand more popular for dealing with icy patches? It doesn’t melt the ice, but it neutralizes the slip danger, which is what matters.

But I couldn’t deal with the ice sheet on the Sienna with sand. Lilly wanted to practice some driving on Sunday, so I made her chip parts of the ice off the windows with me. If you’re going to have a car in the North, and a two-car garage organized by Fibber McGee so that only one car goes in there, you’ll have to de-ice your car windows sometimes.

I wonder how long Fibber McGee’s closet will be a widely understood reference. Or has it already passed into obscurity, and I didn’t get the memo? It’s easy to ignore that kind of change. I do it all the time. Then again, you can’t ever know what’s going to die out in the age of YouTube. (This is cheating, since it isn’t the radio show, but it’s still worth a link.)