What a Day!

Sunday was quite the day for me. We had some nasty weather saturday and sunday...strong wind, freezing rain, snow, you name it. At night the wind was gusting over 100 km/hr. So I slept with the window open. At 4 a.m. the wind was so loud I woke up and thought to myself..."self, how often do you have 100 km/hour winds?". So I went for a walk. It was pretty awesome. The huge trees across the street from my house were rocking back and forth so violently that if I had climbed them, I think they could have launched me right into Reinfeld.
And so it began.
The plan for college and career that evening was to go to the Dueck's place in Altona. But the roads were extremely icy. I could have skated to church in the morning. But, not being one to give up easily, and prone to any sort of adventure, I figured I'd at least drive part of the way to Altona in the afternoon, to check out the roads. Turns out the highways were fine. Coming home I saw a decent sunset. Went home and grabbed my camera gear and found a neat shot with some flags in the foreground. I parked my car and set up my tripod on top of the car. The top of my car was covered in ice though, and the wind was still probably 70 km/hr, which made it rather difficult to get a shot off without the tripod sliding off of the car.
Well, people started showing up at my place at 6:20...we only needed to take two vehicles to Altona. Liane was the first one here, and she asked if we were taking my car, because her dad didn't want her to take the Jimmy. No problem...I was planning on taking my car anyway. So we're ready to go...I've got all the emergency stuff in the trunk in case we hit the ditch. But I really don't foresee any problems...we'd just take it slow if the roads get bad. So we take off from the driveway...I'm driving slow 'cause my driveway and the road are icy, and I didn't want to hit the ditch (I live on a gravel road in town, so there's no curb to hit, it's just into the ditch) when all of a sudden CRUNCH! I remember yelling out WHAT? I still couldn't figure out what I could have possibly hit, so I got out, and there was Liane's parents Jimmy. I had assumed her dad had dropped her off, and because there are no street lights in the slums, I hadn't seen it parked in the ditch. Talk about ruining a great day. And it was almost kind of ironic, 'cause a few months ago Liane had backed into my car when I was parked in the ditch at Heinrich's place...although she never hit it hard enough to do any damage. I did. And the problem is I don't speak a whole lot of German. Not sure how I'm going to apologize to her parents, or tell them I'll pay for it. I just feel like such an idiot. And a twenty-something male driver never gets the benefit of the doubt. Liane was very understanding, but I'm sure it'll take a long time to live this one down.
Well, we had a blast at the Dueck's place, although my evening was somewhat tainted by the reality that waited for me back home. Kind of a lousy start to what promises to be an awesome week. Monday night is Dustin's band concert, tuesday night is a Christmas party @ Celebration Night, thursday night we're going carolling, and friday night is the adult dessert banquet @ church. The sooner I can get this behind me (no pun intended :) the better.
Talk to you later,