4 AM, Christina offered me cheese in bed. I was like, “Are you crazy”?
The battery died in our 1999 Jetta. It used to die when we hadn’t used it over the weekend, but this week it died just overnight. When I woke up this morning I realized that with the baby coming soon, having Christina drop me off at work and take the car home wouldn’t be a good idea. I need to be able to get home A.S.A.P. if she goes into labor!
Later on, I worked on baby laundry and my song list. Our neice Moriah spent the night and has been helping Christina around the house. I made raspberry mochas. We ate breakfast and I said something stupid and got in trouble.
Worked on the song list for Sunday, picked four hymns and then remembered we’re only doing two because it’s a New Member’s Sunday. I charged the car battery all morning with the battery charger I borrowed from a coworker. In the afternoon, I took it to Les Shwab, and they confirmed, it was a bad battery! Got a new one put it for about the same it would have cost to buy it at Kragen. And it’s a heavy-duty one too. I’m amazed at what a difference it makes! The fuel injection and power steering actually work! The car actually responds when I step on the gas!
Then we went Christmas shopping. After we got home, the TV blew up. Again! I thought about taking advantage of Best Buy’s deal-of-the-day and opening up a new credit account. After all, they’re turning off the analog signal this weekend in the North State, so Christina’s old TV won’t work anymore as a backup. So I thought we could try a TV repair shop, but they’re only open 10-5 on weekdays, and there’s a $50 fee just to look at it. I found something in the troubleshooting section of the owner’s manual for our TV that said if the TV doesn’t work, it could be because of static electricity or lightning. It says, unplug the TV for 1 to 2 minutes and then it should work again. Of course, the outlets in the living room aren’t well-grounded, so unplugging it and then plugging it back in doesn’t help at all, since the static electricity doesn’t get discharged.
Providentially, I had an extension cord in the car that I was borrowing from Kevyn at work (to go with the battery charger), and I plugged into the outlets in the bathroom, which allowed the electricity to discharge. The first sign I had that something was going right was that Christina didn’t hear the high-pitched buzzing that usually occurs when you turn on the TV when it’s broken (I can’t hear it because the frequency is out of my hearing range… too many years in rock-n-roll). After turning it back off and then on again, the display turned on! So I think next time this happens, I’ll be able to deal with it, as long as I get a well-grounded extension cord.
It was good cheese.