Flood, Mud, and dead batteries!

My little town has had quite enough!

We had rain, then mudslide through town, then the power went out on Christmas Eve. Power didn’t come back on until Saturday. That’s actually better than we thought it was going to be, the initial estimate was that we weren’t going to see power until Dec 30th.

Friday night, I slept in my sleeping bag on the couch. That allowed me to close off all the house and conserve limited heat from the fireplace. Even so, when I woke up it was cold enough that I could see my breath.

This experience has taught me more about dealing with disasters. One primary thing I learned was, while I may romanticize about simpler times and life. I’m not willing to give up electricity!

I was using solar power to keep my phone, and only my phone charged to about 20%. It was at this point that news broke on the national stage that my town was in the midst of everything except a plague of locusts. That meant my family members started calling.

I’m sure that I offended some of them with my curt responses. But sometimes members of my family simply don’t listen. When I say, “I can’t talk for long I’m running on almost no power to my phone,” I really mean it!

Not that my needs, desires, or wants being ignored is a surprise. Many of the family still treat me like I’m 16. I’m sure their view is something like, “He’s a child, what could he know…” Except that I’m well over 60 years old and have lived more of my life without them, than I did with them.

Then after the initial problems were resolved. I got in my car to go to the grocery store after having everything thaw out, and begin to spoil. I was greeted with a message on my car that said: Battery depleted Start Engine.

Odd, sure enough it started. I took the long way around to the grocery store. I had to so that I could avoid the washed out roads. When I got to the store, I got another message: Some Electrical accessories have been disabled.

This was  the car’s way of telling me that the battery was shot. Oh great!

Another expense that I really don’t need. These days the battery my beast requires is expensive. Plus it needs to be replaced by a qualified mechanic. They apparently have to reset all kinds of sensors and other portions of the computer just to replace a battery.

What happened to going to Auto Zone and plunking a new battery in your vehicle in the parking lot??? Okay, I do miss some of the simpler ways of doing things.

So here I sit at the deanship awaiting my car and the inevitable bill. On the plus side, I put the car on a trickle charger last night so this morning it started and brought me reliably to the dealer.

While typing this, I got a message saying that everything mechanically looked good and that the battery had been replaced. The mechanic is taking it out for a test drive.

So it doesn’t look like too much of my day is likely to be chewed up.

My bank account on the other hand may be a different story.