Cancellations. My synagogue transferred its morning service to Zoom. OLLI canceled its early morning sessions, allowing two hours for maintenance staff to prepare the parking areas and building. When I retrieved the newspaper from the end on the driveway, the surface did not seem overly slippery but a coating of ice covered both cars. My front and rear windshield heaters will defrost that. The side windows do not have as secure a way of melting this.
With the right equipment, my wife and I made our vehicles safely mobile within a few minutes. When she lowered her passenger window, the glass descended while the sheet of ice remained stationary. Then he tapped out the ice, leaving her with a visible surface. I tried that too, successful on one of four side windows. The electric defroster of the rear windshield melts ice a lot faster than the warm air blown over the front windshield. While waiting for that, I took the scraper to the other three side windows. All had a thin sheet of water separating the glass from the ice. I only need to make a few cracks, then scrape and brush. By then, the rear window had a similar melting at the interface of glass and ice. It scraped right off.
My front windshield required more patience. The warm air begins at the base, by the dashboard. Then it ascends. Usually I wait for the melting to allow the windshield wipers to perform the removal. This time, I tried the scraper. If created rectangles and other polygons of ice, partially thawed. By pushing upwards towards the car's roof, I could get these to shatter at the top of the windshield, then drift downward. The wipers handled the shattered segments but did poorly with the remaining polygons. It did not take more than a few minutes for those to melt, so I will soon be on my way to today's remaining class, though the roads remain a question mark. The car's thermometer registered a temperature slightly above freezing as does my home computer report of regional weather. Except for a bridge en route, I anticipate the road surface will not create major skidding. I have my choice of bridge. The one more traveled, which is not the one I usually take to get to OLLI, may be the safer option.c
The delayed opening created some ambivalence. Of my courses, the one canceled seemed my most expendable. The class, live and remote, watches a video, and then discusses the topic. That's a good way to pool everyone's ignorance, as the three moderators have expertise with very few subjects that the expert on the screen outlines. Usually, though, there is somebody in the class, more often a person in live attendance, who has professional experience with the day's topic.
And what might I have been doing instead? This being a treadmill respite morning, I hoped to allocate this unexpected block of time for creative activity. The motivation was not there. I am taking this week off from FB, Reddit, and Twitter so that time sink did not impede working on my twelve semi-annual projects. The need to make the car mobile did. Had the class been operational, I still would not have accomplished much at home leaving at the earlier time. So I did what I do with treadmill time, not quite a half hour, that does not have me exercising? Washed dishes, had a more substantial breakfast. It's not my semi-annual projects, but it requires little concentration.
Despite the delayed schedule for the morning, my daily pursuits will simply reset. A new class in OLLI's late morning slot. Focused projects when I get home.
Ice just becomes a minor snafu with little real consequence.
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