Winter in MN: What Not to Do

Greetings, dear readers! Is everyone having a lovely Monday? Is it raining and freezing cold where you live? Well, it is here. On that note, can anyone guess what this is a photo of:

Hint: When I parked my car at work this morning, it was misting lightly. It did let up at some point during the day, but it never really got up above freezing. Then it snowed for a while. The sun never came out. Need another hint? Here's another photo with my library card for scale:

Some of you may be saying to yourselves, gee whatever that is looks familiar but I can't quite place it. 

Get it yet?

Still struggling? 

Give up?

Here's yet another hint: It perfectly matches Chad. That should help a lot.

Ok, last chance...

Here you go:

Yep, that is indeed the door handle off the front driver's side door of my car. 

It was so wet and cold all day today that my doors had frozen shut when I left work this evening. Apparently I pulled just slightly too hard on the handle and pop, it came right off in my hand.  Fortunately, the locks were not frozen, so I could still unlock the rest of the doors. I much more carefully tried the rest of them. Front passenger: no go. Back passenger: no go. Finally, finally, the back driver's side door opened and I clambered through and forced the front driver's side door open from the inside. Ugh.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning at the Toyota dealership to get this fixed. No joke, the service guy laughed at me a little when I told him what the problem was. I think I probably deserved that. Hopefully this isn't one of those seemingly small car maintenance things that costs a bunch of money to fix. I don't need that before I've even started my Christmas shopping. Note to self: be more careful trying to open car doors when it's possible they may be frozen shut.