So, trying to drive up Farfara Way seemed fairly low key last night until I hit a patch of black ice, spun my wheels, and then slid, inexorably, 30 feet down the steepest part of the slope with neither brakes nor steering wheel producing the slightest change in my backwards plunge. Slid, you understand, slowly and terrifyingly back over the very same slope that the Barge had handled with nary a qualm just ten seconds earlier. I came to a slow stop 1/3 of the way up the drive, said, "Oh HELL no," and abandoned the car there.

And this is also what it feels like to be a Tar Heel fan right now.

A distressed coach, but a fascinating pedagogical model

I should say that I'm more willing to abandon the car on the drive than I am to abandon the Heels, ever.

A mere portion of the driveway at Farfara

So I took out the toboggan that we now always keep in the trunk (this is all still part of my larger college basketball metaphor, you understand), loaded it up with my computer, my purse, my textbooks, and our CSA farm box, and began slowly, Lucky-like, dragging it up the icy hill. Happily, we keep a flashlight in the car. Unhappily, it was dead. So up I slogged in the light of the cold, cold moon.

This was all well and good until I reach the top third of the Way some minutes later. Here, the snow had completely thawed, making sledge-dragging an exercise in more than usual futility. I sighed, heaved the bags and boxes into my arms, and flung the toboggan into the nearest ditch. Onward the trudge.