Oh, And Two Other Things About My Car In Cold Weather ...

First of all, whenever it's been cold -- and by that I mean really cold -- I have a hell of a hard time adjusting the settings to defrost and then to warm up the car.  In the old car everything was electronic at can be had at the push of a button.  Need to raise the temperature?  Push the button.  Need to go from internal air to external?  Push the button.  Have to defrost the window?  Push the button.

But even though my current car is 22 years younger than my old car, that old car was a midsize luxury and this new one is a subcompact, and there still are differences from that old car that this new car does not have.  One of those differences is that my new car, the subcompact, doesn't use electronic buttons for their HVAC panel but dials.  And dials stick in cold weather.  Realized that the first real cold morning when I wanted to warm up the car while I scraped the frost off my windows.  I tried to pull the temperature dial to 50/50 (is that what you're supposed to do when trying to defrost the window -- put it directly at normal temp?) from warm and it took all my might to do it.  It was ridiculous!  And now it's a constant, daily struggle whenever I have to go from defrosting my windshield to warming myself up in the car.

Oh yeah, that brings up another pet peeve of mine: I have to go from defrosting my windshield to warming myself up in the car throughout my drive to and from work.  I start out driving with enough clear windshield to get myself going in the morning.  But once I can see completely through the front of my car, I'm so cold that I want to set the car back on warming myself up.  I do that (once I muster enough strength to move the dials from tepid to warm, defrost to venting through the face, and strength "1" to strength "2"), but then the warm air inside condenses and fogs up my windshield.  So I have to dial down the strength of the air, turn it back to cool and set back to defrost mode so I can see out my car ... at which point I deign to try and warm myself up again, and so on and so forth.  It's a vicious damn cycle I'm going through with my car right now, and at least with this annoyance, I can't wait for winter to be over.