Hmmm...

Just after Christmas, as I mentioned, the Jeep's battery died when I spent a couple days inside minding my own business and Rama thought she should have her brake lights on.

Okay, that setback has been handled (but not its cause), and things have been just fine since then. The people up near where I live, when told about it, all tell me that it's probably rats chewing away the insulation and causing some electrical wires to short out.

Grrrr.

I'm treating this the same way I do most things, which is to say poorly and with all the immaturity I can muster. It's a 50-50 mix between hoping the problem will fix itself and simply hoping it doesn't happen again.

And some people wonder why I'm single.

But I digress. Like I said, things have been peachy for the past week or so, or had been until last night. I'd taken Vinko to the dog park and had nearly a perfect time there, but after stopping at some stores and beginning the trip back to the cabin, the last time I fired Rama up she started up just fine but with a few worrying additional warning sounds.

The first one I noticed and chose to ignore was the idiot light letting me know that the air bag system had a fault. Engine warning lights I usually take seriously, but air bag faults? An engine warning might keep Rama from driving, but the only time the air bag not working might cause a problem is if I have a serious accident and, to be honest, I'm not sure I'd want to survive something like that, anyway. Not only is it bound to be expensive, but it would mean dealing with the insurance company again and would likely leave me with personal injuries.

But — wait! — there's more! I soon learned that not only had the air bag warning light come on, but the fan for the heater/air conditioner no long worked. There are four settings for it, but the only one that worked was "off."

I could feel some hot air falling out of the vents, but not enough to keep either Vinko or I toasty warm for the ride home.

Again, I could live with that, but two things going wrong moved this from possibly just a happenstance up to coincidence, and I started really thinking about those rats.

A short time later, of course, the turn indicator also decided to quit on me, and I fell into a deep despair for the remainder of the ride home. I'd almost certainly now have to crawl under Rama and look at her personal parts, and I wasn't looking forward to doing that. It would interfere with my TV watching and hanging out on the internet.

A few hours after getting up this morning, I went out to see if the problems had blown away with the winds that brought in more cold air, and I'm happy to tell you that, in fact, they had.

Oh, yeah, I'll still have to put on my car working outfit, arm myself with electrical tape, and look around, but the important thing is I don't have to do it right this minute. I can, I hope, wait at least until it's warmer.