Late and short tonight, for I have fared through perils and straits that have left me a shadow of my Former’s elf. (I don’t know what that means, but it’s a pun, which counts as humor in some quarters.)

I told you recently about my trip to my tax preparer’s new location, and my problems finding the place in the trackless wilderness of Maple Grove, Minnesota. Tonight I went to pick up the forms (and incidentally to pay for them), and I found the place just fine. Tonight, the problem was the weather.

We got about an inch of snow today. That’s not a big deal, especially for hardy arctic types like we’ve all become by now. But the snow fell at just that temperature, right around freezing, where it does the most effective possible job of turning the road surfaces to Teflon.

I was about half way there when I admitted to myself that it would have been better to wait till tomorrow night. But by then I was (to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Macbeth), in snow stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.

So I made the full trip, carefully making allowances for the limitations of my car (which are many), and I got home safe and sound.

So how shall I think about this? Shall I consider myself a brilliant driver, because I made it home without a fender-bender? Or shall I consider myself an idiot for making the trip at all on a night like this?

Yeah, like I have a choice about that.