So, our mis-adventures started a week ago Saturday evening. Karl calls me and tells me that all his dash lights are turning on and off, and his radio is turning off and on and that he thinks his car is dying.

Sure enough, he calls me back and he's dead. Having just had an altenator of my own replaced, I was pretty sure his altenator went out.

So - I go down to where he is and we "hop-scotch" his car (by jump starting it, going as far as the charge would get us and repeating) all the way to a Firestone by the house.

I miss work on Monday and they put a new altenator into the car to the tune of about $600 (which has put a major dent in our Daytona plans, but we're still trying to work that out).

All's well and good, we drive out of there Monday with a car that's running.

Tuesday night at 11:45, Karl calls me and he's broken down again (mind you - I get up at 4 to go to work in the mornings). We do the same darn hop-scotching again, and it occurs to me that maybe the battery needed to be replaced, and we'd just purchased one in May from AutoZone. We pull his battery, run to AutoZone (which is open 24 hours) and trade batteries, and he's good to go. I got 3 hours sleep, but finally the car is fixed......or is it????

Friday night at the same time he calls me and he's broken down, in a not so great neighborhood (he went to visit a friend of his) and we might have to tow it. After we determined a tow was going to cost us $200, we decided against that, but he didn't want to leave it where it was, so we tried the hop-scotch method again, but this battery only took us 200 yards and would die.

We pull the battery AGAIN, Karl stays with his vehicle, I drive 20 miles to the AutoZone, they put it on the slow charger for an hour, and I take it back to him, we're able to get his car home.

Take it into Firestone Saturday morning, they look at it late Saturday and some more on Sunday and determine they got a faulty altenator, but it's going to take them until Tuesday to get a replacement and suggest we get a rental car. I lost it and went "no - why don't YOU get us a rental car? I'm tired and I'm cranky, and it would behoove you to make this right in any matter necessary!!!"

They're getting us a rental car today!