Dig if you will, a picture: Scott and I leaving the theater last night. We’re in my car. The car starts up just fine, runs fine, but all the way home there’s a weird high-pitched noise coming through the radio, even when I turn the volume down. Sounds like something in the electrical system doing something it’s not supposed to.

We get home, and when I open my door the dome light flickers and gets dim, and the automatic doodad that makes the shoulder belt cruise along the door frame hitches and goes really slow. Totally weird.

Fast foward to this morning. We’re headed out, and we take the key to my car and the key to Scott’s, just in case. Sure enough, I try to start my car and it’s completely dead. Not even a grr-rrr-rrr sound of it trying to start — turn the key, and there’s just eerie silence. I figure it’s the battery, since the stuff was going a wee bit haywire the previous night. Anyhoo, we hop into Scott’s car and head out on our errands (yay IKEA! And yay Southcenter Sizzler!).

We get back and decide to jump-start my car from Scott’s, so I can drive down to the Les Schwab to get a new battery. We do the jump, he pulls his car away, and … my car dies. We jump it again, I rev it some, and Scott has the brilliant idea to follow me, just in case. Sure enough, we get about a mile from home and it dies again. Scott parks, pushes my car to a safe place, and we call AAA. Fortunately we haven’t used any of our available tows or services, so we can get a tow truck for free. They say it’ll be an hour or two, but the tow truck actually arrives in about 50 minutes.

I got a look at some real fun chauvinism — at one point I was a few feet away from the tow truck driver, telling him something … and he turned and walked away from me without even acknowledging me, instead shouting across a running engine to Scott. What an assbiscuit. Mr. Tow Truck tells us about AAA’s battery service, which is awesome — you just pay for the battery, and not any of the labor charges involved in removal of the old one and installation of the new one. So we have the car towed back home, and Mr. Tow Truck calls for the battery guy. It’ll be another 45 minutes, so we head up to the apartment.

So the battery guy shows up. Heavy accent, which I have trouble understanding. I’m still not sure of some of the things he said. Bottom line, he had the size battery we needed (35-60, for those interested) but wanted to try to get a more powerful one in there (38-72). That one ended up not fitting, so I got the 35-60 in the end. As soon as it was in and installed, the car started up beautifully.

I went to the show tonight in the car, even though it was scooter weather, to try out the new battery. I got to reset the clock (wheee!) and tomorrow I’ll reset my radio station presets (double wheee!). The weird thing is, the car seemed to drive noticeably more quiet, and also a lot smoother. I don’t know why the battery would affect those things.