New Ride

We bought a car! A second car, so I can drive to different schools for work rather than only working within a walking/biking radius. We actually bought it the night before our red eye flight to St.George back in January. That may seem like a hasty decision, but when the price is right and is in spectacular condition for an old Camry, there was no time to waste. We had been looking for a second car for a few weeks by that point, and naturally I had test-driven 1 car for every 6 or 7 that Ryan had. (He's a trooper.) I think my favorite that he test-drove was the one with a broken trunk latch and a broken passenger side door. Ah, good times. I think the only ridiculous aspect of our new car is the 45 minutes we took getting one of the back seat belt buckles re-threaded up through the bottom of the back seat itself. I'm actually starting to enjoy driving now. Honestly, there are few things more satisfying than being able to purchase large quantities of toilet paper at one time now because I'm no longer taking home groceries on a bike!!! Oh, right, besides the whole driving to work thing. :) Also, it should be noted that I made significant progress driving the stick shift right before we bought this lovely automatic.

Isn't she pretty?

On that note, I must say that I really do enjoy subbing, when I get the chance of it. However, we've had snow and ice storms once a week for a month now, which means school has been cancelled at least twice a week every time. This in turn means that I'm barely get to work once a week. I'm in the process of starting to sub at a second local school district so I can hopefully work more than twice a week. I know that most of the country has also had frequent snow storms lately, and in fact most of those storms hugely dwarf what we've gotten in Oklahoma. That's what makes jokes like this so funny:

 

Ryan and I have been laughing so much at how everything shuts down here so often with less than 3 inches of snow. And yes, we are generously considering Oklahoma as part of the South. After growing up at the foot of the Rockies, Ryan has found this especially ridiculous. But we've both realized what really is at the heart of Oklahoma's issue with snow: a complete lack of snow plows. I'm convinced that there must be about four snow plows in the state of Oklahoma. The other issue is that we have yet to have snow without an ice storm immediately before or after it. The ice was so bad this weekend that church was cancelled on Sunday. Ryan has never heard of such a crazy phenomenon, and I tried to explain that that would occasionally happen growing up in Virginia too. Our walk in the snow that afternoon was another new experience for him; the ice layer on top was so loud and crunchy that we had raise our voices a bit to hear each other. 

Snow and ice covered the river

A few days ago, Ryan subbed at a dodge-ball league that a few of his co-workers play in. Sadly, he ended up twisting his ankle in one of the games. It is just a sprain though, which is lucky. And with all the winter weather, he's got lots of time to let it rest at home. The swelling is starting to go down, so all should be good again soon. All our love from the snow-fearing South.