Today hasn't been a particularly great day...Since I discovered my car's battery was shot on Monday, there wasn't a lot of point in doing anything about getting it sorted out until today just in case I'd needed to go and get a new battery. But because Ma has having her hair done this morning that left me without a car to go and do shopping in.
So I walked over to the Village in the rain with my one bag and my umbrella and bought broccoli, mushrooms, milk, iced coffee and the paper, then came home again. I also bought a box of blank CDs because Ma wanted me to copy some CDs for her and I only had blank DVDs.
At least I thought I only had DVDs... after I got back from the supermarket I walked into the bathroom and then back out again and realised that I had a brand new spindle of 50 blank CDs. The appropriate phrase is "for fucks sake".
After Ma got here, I called the RAA to get them to come and at least start the car so I could take it somewhere. Took about 40 minutes for him to get here, and he didn't think the battery needed replacing, just charging up again (isn't that the point of a battery, that it has power and you use that power up and then it doesn't have power any more?)... but what I needed to do was take it for a run for about half an hour to get it to the point where it would hold a charge.
So Ma jumped in the car with me and we literally drove around for about 40 minutes... there was no plan and no destination other than to take the car in a complete loop, so I just drove. In the rain.
When we got back there was a moment of trepidation about turning off the engine... but I did... and then turned it on again just to be sure. Hopefully it turns back on again tomorrow...
Anyway, that done we headed down to Arndale to the movies thanks to free tickets from my Cinebuzz card.
Afterwards we stopped into Arndale really briefly to pick up a couple of things and then came back here to have toasted sandwiches while I copied the CDs for Ma.
Then as soon as Ma left I was adjusting my glasses and the left arm just came off... it's not the screw, the arm just came off the little tab thing. At the moment I fixed it with masking tape but it's going to require a trip to OPSM to see if they can do anything... either that it's going to require a new pair of glasses.
I'm just hoping that the rest of the weekend is fuckup free.
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1 comment:
Sorry to hear it's been such a shit day.
In answer to your mostly rhetorical question about the battery - yes, it does get charged up when your car runs, but you need to be driving for about an hour a day to keep it topped up. Frequent short trips will drain more of the battery (when the starter motor kicks over) than can be generated for charging the car during the remaining operation period. If you tend to drive only short trips, you may need to charge your battery every two months, particularly if it's older. Furthermore, it's best if you do things like turn off air conditioners, radios, gps systems, etc when the car is starting as they draw further on the battery meaning it will need more driving time to recover those loses.
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