So late last/Tuesday night I went out to dump pizza boxes somewhere.  We stopped trash service, so I have to find public places to throw my trash away.

I used the minivan to drive because it needed to be turned on.  But I saw that it was cold enough for frost to build up on the windshield, so I had to get out and use the ice scraper.  Maybe that's a blessing in disguise, I thought, because that would give an extra minute for the engine to warm up, and since it'll be a short ride to find a garbage can big enough to dump two pizza boxes (at least I hoped, but I found a spot close by), the minivan should be as hot as can be.

I moved from scraping the driver's side of the windshield to the passenger's side.  When I got done, I noticed that smoke was billowing out of the tailpipe.  That makes sense to me; the temperature is hovering around freezing and the car hasn't been turned on in a few days, so dark smoke coming out of the tailpipe isn't anything to freak out over.

But then I noticed that similar exhaust was coming out of the passenger side of the van.  Like underneath, like there's a hole in the muffler.  Holy shit, I've never seen that before.  And dammit, I got freaked out that the minivan, for some reason, wasn't going to make even the short ride to a garbage can and back.

I made it just fine, but now I have to look if there's a hole in the muffler, which is the simplest explanation for what I saw.  Regardless of what's going on, I feel the urgent need to fix it.  And I have no friggin' clue how much the repair will set me back, let alone what needs fixing.  But seeing exhaust smoke come out of the side of the minivan -- yeah, something's wrong.