Getting the Jump On Things

My new car played some tricks on me yesterday. When I went to drive it somewhere, it refused to start, and wierd things were happening. It told me to check my traction control when we were still sitting in the garage, the radio kept popping on all by itself, and it kept playing around with its CD changer even when the key was turned off. You could hear it spinning and whirring and trying to rearrange tracks. It lost all the radio settings and the time setting, but kept the milage and trip odometer stuff. Then it started, but as soon as I'd driven it somewhere and turned it off, it refused to start again. Of course it did, you silly chick, its battery was dead! Right? Yeah, I'll admit at first I thought the problem was with the computer, not the battery, but after the Huz mentioned it when he came to get me I realized that he was probably right. And so thought the service guy at Ford today when we dropped it off to them for repair. It spent last night in a public parking lot, but fortunately it was under a street light, so it was about as safe as it could be given the circumstances. But I was not happy. Not happy at all.

It pretty much has to be the battery. When the engine is running, everything behaves normally--runs like a dream. But getting it started...nope. Not happening. This nice guy in the parking lot came over and asked me whether he'd just heard my car not start, said he had cables in his truck, and offered to give me a jump. I told him thanks, but that my husband was on his way, and that he'd jump me instead.

Yeah, you're probably thinking what I'm thinking. Probably. By the way, did you know that on jumper cables there's a positive and negative clamp and that if you put the wrong clamp on the wrong part of the battery (and sometimes if you jump it with the host vehicle's engine running) you can actually blow up your battery or wreck your car's charger? The Huz explained that he was glad the other guy hadn't given me a jump because he might have done it wrong. Heh.