After my Saturday night birthday debacle, my entire body needed to recover. Sunday was spent doing nothing productive, and it rocked. But Monday brought the prospect of bad weather, and I decided to complete the second half of my journey to Gwinner. The trip from Bowman to Gwinner went mostly wonderful. It was snowing when I left, and the roads weren't amazing, but weren't horrible, either. The driving life was good, until I got to Mandan.
I'm a good, blinker-using driver. It makes me quite angry when people don't use their blinkers, no matter the circumstances, but especially when there are pedestrians involved. I always use mine. Until, when just outside of Mandan, I passed someone on the interstate. Before I re-entered the right lane, I, like the good, blinker-using citizen that I am, turned on my blinker.
Bad idea. The blinker blinked, but the blinker knob fell right off.
So there I was, still passing people (to the left) with my blinker on (to the right). I'm sure people thought I was crazy, and I was so so so embarrassed. I finally exited the interstate and made a left-hand turn, which turned the blinker off, but my knob is still out of commission.
Next, I stopped in Jamestown to visit my lil' sis. After having dinner, I went to put gas in my car and to wash my windshield. With the snow and meltiness on the roads, people had been spraying nasty onto my windshield almost the whole way from Bismarck to Jamestown. Unfortunately, my windshield wiper fluid pump is broken (do you see a trend with my car here?), so it had to stay dirty during my travels. I was looking forward it to cleaning it with those lovely squeegees that all gas stations have.
I had forgotten about the cold in ND. None of the gas stations had windshield cleaner in the gas bays because it gets too cold and freezes, so I had to wash my windshield with a dry paper towel.
I was honestly surprised about how excited I was when I saw the bright lights of Gwinner through my newly-cleaned windshield. I couldn't quite understand it. My excitement has waned since, for a number of reasons that shall be discussed in later blogs.
Since I've been home, exactly what I had feared would happen has happened. See, my parents have jobs and therefore money, and therefore keep food in the cupboards. Plus, it's Christmas, so there is a large variety of sweets and other such nonsense readily available. Aside from that, my friends from high school were only home for a few days, so I quickly ran out of things to entertain me. In short, I've done a lot of sitting around at home, bored. And alcohol is just far too prevalent.
But I'm home, with family, experiencing a full-out ND blizzard. Both of the interstates are closed from one end of the state to the other. No travel is advised. The wind is howling, the snow is drifting, and people are stuck in their houses IN TOWN. Many families have been split up for this Christmas, and are scrambling to make plans with whoever can get together, while mine is here, playing cards, watching basketball, and (mostly) enjoying each other's company.
Oh, ND...
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