frozen and deflated

It was very very cold this morning. Right now, it's only very cold. The sun's out and that tends to make a difference. When we left the house this morning, it was minus 33 with the windchill. Of course, about a half a block from the house, we realize that one of our tires is flat. Not a nice way to start the week, is it?

Backing out of the driveway, I thought something was weird, the car wouldn't accelerate but I figured that it wasn't completely warm. When it still wouldn't go on the street, we both knew something wasn't right. Fortunately, we were right across the street from a church and I was able to get into the parking lot, and off the street. Mark got the donut out of the trunk and changed the tire while I sat in the car trying to get CAA on the phone. 17 minutes later, I was still on hold and he had it fixed so we turned around and headed back to the house. About half way home, we realized that the other front tire was flat. I was able to pull up in front of our neighbor's house and leave it there. I was almost frozen. Stupidly, I had just pulled on some wool socks and sandals so my toes were really cold. I will never, ever ever, take Mark to work again without proper shoes on.

I waited until after 8 to call CAA and didn't have much trouble getting through to them. I was told it would take 3 hours for a tow truck to get to us (we wanted to get towed to our local Speedy -- just around the corner). The truck arrived in 25 minutes! Talk about service huh?? We have to pick the car up in a little while. We needed to replace the two tires, to the tune of approx. $400. On the bright side, it could have been much worse. The tires were about at the end of their natural lives and the cold caused them to soften. This could have happened to us on the highway, if we had gone out of town on Saturday like we'd planned. I'm really relieved that it didn't happen that way.

One thing that made me smile today: The window installers were supposed to be here today, putting in our new, first story windows. Fortunately, they cancelled due to the cold. I just cannot imagine having the house wide open in this cold today. They'll be here tomorrow though and I can't wait. Drafty windows be gone!!