Snow

last night was the first time, in about a year and a half that i had seen the ground completely covered with snow. It was pretty cool. I had been inside all evening dealing blackjack, which i'm getting better at but still need to practice adding 7's, they're hard!, but when i left the casino at 2:30am everything was peaceful. The snow was still falling, it wasn't too cold out, and the world had a whitish-orange glow to it through a combination of the downtown street lights and the waning full moon.

Today i had to take my car in to get new winter tires put on. Last night i got to experience both extremes of winter, my likes and dislikes. The first snowfall, the ground covered with fresh snow blanketing everything in white is one of the beautiful sights to me. However, driving in wet,snowy conditions, with all the sludge, brown snow, black ice and residue from cars in not particularly picturesque. i had been shopping around earlier that day for decent deals on winter tires because i knew that the ones i had on my car currently, i still don't officially know if they are all season or summer tires, would not be very safe for winter driving conditions.
driving home from the casino last night made that inkling very clear.

The road to our house is windy, has a few inclines and at one point does a complete U-turn. As i turned on to this road i had to slow down considerably because it hadn't been plowed yet and everything was very slippery. every time i braked the car seemed to skid because it had next to no traction in those conditions. so i slowed down as i entered a decline and slowed down even more as i hit the U-turn. as the road started to incline the car proceeded to lose traction and for the majority of the drive up the hill the wheels were spinning out because it couldn't find any grip. i ended up having to tap the gas just to keep it at 20km/hr and to give the tires some time to find some sort of grip.

luckily i made it home is one piece, i did have the advantage of driving home late at night so that there weren't other cars getting mad and passing me as i tried to make my way up the hill. that could have made things a lot worse.

but i digress...as i was waiting for the new tires to be installed, which (grandma) you'd like to hear i got an amazing deal on some higher end tires, i was having a look at the vineyards and orchards in the surrounding area and having that thin layer of snow fall blanketing them made everything look that much more breath-taking.