What a Life!

Yesterday morning, the plan was to go to town and run some errands, including a visit to the grocery store since we were out of milk. (I hadn’t done my usual Friday grocery shopping last weekend since we were going to Iowa and all.)
I got everyone in the car and turned the key to start it: it cranked a little but didn’t start. All further attempts only resulted in a clicking noise. So…

I called Steve and told him about it. When we bought the car, the mechanic that looked it over for us (prior to our purchase) said the battery was 80%. Steve and I decided the battery probably was done-for.

I called the two mechanics in town – one wanted $99 for the battery and installation and the other wanted $86 for the battery and $25 for installation or just $25 for the installation if we went and got a battery ourselves and brought it to him.

I called five different places to price batteries. All but one had these batteries with an 84 month warranty that they wanted anywhere from $75 to $89 for. What do you want an 84 month warranty for on a battery anyway? They only last about five years or so…and who’s to know if we’ll still either live here or have the car when the battery goes kaput? Even if we do still have the car and the receipt for the battery, do I really want to go to all the trouble of taking it back to them and then getting them to give me a new one and pay for its installation? I mean, given our history with cars, we’ll probably still own the car, and I am one who would keep the receipt and be able to find it when the time came. But still…

I did find one with only a 5 year warranty for a mere $49.99. So after Steve left work for the day, he went and got one of those batteries (and a gallon of milk).

As soon as he got home and changed, we headed out to the garage. In order for the jumper cables to be able to reach from his truck over to the car, the car needed to be backed out of the garage. The plan was that he would push the car, and I would sit in the driver’s seat and use the brakes to stop it and such. But before we did that, I decided to try and start it just to show him what it did. The hood was up and he was leaning over the engine, watching. I turned the key…and it started up perfectly! I swear!

We let it run for a few minutes, and then Steve put the new battery in the trunk and I drove it down to the mechanic. Steve told me to try and start it once more a few seconds after I turned it off to see if it was just some fluke. Nope, it started up perfectly again. [Eyeroll]

The mechanic called this morning, and I told him what happened. He said sometimes just the act of trying to start it will stimulate the battery enough that it will recharge itself enough to start later like that. I think we’re still replacing the battery, though. I don’t want to get stuck somewhere in town with two boys and a car with a dead battery. Since we’ve gone to all the trouble of getting another battery and taking it to the mechanic, we might as well go ahead and finish what we started.

Now onto a completely different topic (sort of an addendum to yesterday’s post)…

Why I need a job: so I can take pictures like this on the way to work in the morning… I never leave the house early enough to get pictures like that even though when we drive to church every week, we go down a road where there is all sorts of great scenery I would love to photograph. It’s always late in the morning, though, and I have the entire family in tow. I don’t know how much patience they would have with my stopping here and there to take pictures. Perhaps I need to schedule a photo shoot just myself…

Why I could be happy living in Montana: so I could take pictures like this (check out her entire photo stream – amazing!)… Steve has mentioned on more than one occasion that he would like to live in Montana (there seem to be lots of job opportunities there in his field, for some reason). I have always drug my feet, thinking, How far would it be to the nearest Starbucks? Wait! I just went over to the Starbucks website and there are sixteen Starbucks locations in Montana. Hmm…