Last night the snow started falling around 4:15. I decided to head home early and beat the rush... but I was too late. Everyone else had the same idea and I couldn't even get out of the parking garage. All four floors were a giant traffic jam.
So I headed back into my office and waited until 7. It was still a mess, but by this time many people had just abandoned their cars on the road so there was less traffic to deal with. My 30 minute commute took me about an hour and a half, but I made it with relatively little trouble.
I wish I had a camera with me to show the carnage of parked vehicles at the bottom of every hill. The layer of water on the roads froze first and then we got about 8 inches of snow on top. The hill that I live on coming off of Highway 202 is windy and very steep. I waited at the bottom for about 10 minutes as cars ahead of me failed miserably. They'd get part way up, start spinning their tires, stomp on the brakes, and then slide down the hill and careen into the nearest guard rail or car. Once they had all given up, I put the Subaru in gear and flew up the hill with no problems. I left the makeshift parking lot of sports cars, BMW's, trucks, and SUVs behind me and laughed the whole way up the hill.
I you're tired of hearing about my car's snow performance, but I'm continually in awe of it. As long as I need a ski vehicle, I will never drive anything other than a Subaru. I was skeptical when I bought it, but I'm a complete believer now.
[UPDATE] Added the photo.
Saddam is dead. On the whole, I think that's an improvement for civilization. He was a madman who killed way too many people.
But.
I flip on Letterman, Leno, and morning talk shows and I hear joke after joke about the hanging. Mention the hanging and the crowd cheers it's approval. Doesn't that seem wrong to anyone else? Think of how you felt when you saw the pictures of Al Qaeda cheering the destruction of the towers and the deaths of 3000 people. Weren't they evil, angry, immoral people when they did that? How is cheering the death of Saddam any different? If you turn the tables, we're behaving just as poorly as they did.
So yes, I personally think that we're better off without Saddam, but you're not going to find me cracking jokes about it.