Prius Love.

It is cold outside. Sure, I'm probably spoiled by the Bahamian "winter", but it's still cold!

Sadly, I'm having to spend my last days of break at work. Granted, it's quiet and I can actually get things done with no kids around (well, aside from taking a blogging break), but it's still sad to think that our winter break is almost over.

Jamie and I had a little adventure with my car this morning. We hadn't moved it since the Blizzard of 2009 and I knew that it probably wouldn't start. Aside from it being one of those hybrid-y cars, it has also been nearing the time when we will probably need to replace it's battery. Now, don't get me wrong, this car has been wonderful. Almost no mechanical problems with it -- in fact, aside from a flat tire or the time when I crashed it (it still drove fine, mind you), I can't think of any problems we have had with it. But, I had heard from other Prius owners, that around 5 years, the battery starts deteriorating rapidly. Sure enough, right after we hit the 5-year mark weird things began to happen. Actually, just the audio console ceased functioning.

I meant to take it to the dealer then, but life prevented me from getting out there and weeks passed. Then the snow storm and then the vacation...and needless to say, when we went to start it up after weeks of no use there was a really dead battery. Fortunately, it's not as hard to jumpstart a Prius as I thought it would be and we made to the dealer. Also fortunately, it is actually not all that expensive to get a new battery installed and recycle the old one -- even less than the cost of a nice dinner!

So at the end of the day, I still love my Prius. I especially love my Prius because it gives me an excuse to leave work today at a decent hour in order to pick it up! I was worried I would be here 'til obscenely late...