Monday I'm going downtown to interview with an agency that places college grads as entry-level paralegals. This could be an interesting opportunity, or it could turn out to be really useless. We'll see.

Mom is coming home tonight from seven weeks in South Carolina; at least she won't be subtly taunting us with her temperature reports from Dixie.

In recent days the weather had started to look up here. I've been getting very sick of snow, and almost as sick of freezing cold, and that's certainly fed my recent L.A.-philia. But it had been looking up, and I was starting to think that I was done digging my car out from under huge piles of snow. Then last night my dad told me we were expecting 2-4 inches overnight last night; OK, that's a pain, but I wasn't too concerned. Then I woke up and looked outside and no snow had accummulated. I was pumped. I went through my morning routine, showered, and came downstairs to meet Dad, who had just walked out to get the paper (a 75-150 foot walk).

Dad informed me that I should start my car about 15 minutes early. I thought this was weird, so I asked why. It turns out my car, like everything else, was covered in an inch and a half of ice. The driveway? Sheet of ice. The front stoop? Sheet of ice. Did 15 minutes of running with the heater turned up to maximum make a difference? Of course not. I spent another 15 hacking away at the windshield and the windows. Winter has officially broken my will. I surrender.

Suffice it to say, my need to leave before next winter is now even that much more intense....