Eeek! A "light"!

What's THIS?!? An amber-colored light on already in my new car?!? Ellie, yer killin' me over here. *sigh* As I was pulling away from my sister's place today on my way home, I notice the 'tire pressure low' light on. Which is a little spooky since I was wondering earlier in the day if I should check out my tire pressures sometime soon. Anyhoo, I (of course) fear the worst - did I run over a nail? Is she 'pulling' at all? Am I leaning? Maybe a little? Or is that my imagination? Oh, the suspense!!! I decide I would go to a nearby SA and check it out...

Not much of a surprise, but air is not free anymore, like when we were kids pumping up our bike tires. Oh well, I fished out some quarters and stepped out, praying feverishly that I would not see a hideously deflated tire. I didn't, so that's good. Although my front right did look a smidge low (in my expert opinion), so I fired up the air-thingee and went to task. Did I mention it's really friggin' cold?!? And brave manly me decided this simple job didn't warrant wearing sissy outerwear like my readily-available-in-the-car gloves. After somehow managing to unscrew part of the air-thingee itself and nearly breaking it, I finally was able to add some air (I think). But the gauge on the air-thingee was worthless, and my own Wally World tire gauge wasn't inspiring any more confidence in determining if all those whooshing air sounds were me actually adding air, or just fumbling more out of the tire.

"Umm, yeah, that oughtta do it", I comforted myself, wondering if that dead, wooden quality my fingers had developed alarmingly quickly in the last few minutes would be permanent or otherwise debilitating. I decided that I'd get Ellie back in the garage and let her sit a few hours - at least if I needed to change a tire, it wouldn't then be out in the bitter cold. Despite my best efforts at maintaining positivity & thinking happy thoughts, the warning light remained on as I pulled away from SA. However, it mercifully then did extinguish just as I was pulling into my driveway. "Whew!", I thought, "See, I do ROCK!" As I congratulated myself on my deft mechanical aptitude, it pessimistically occurred to me that maybe a mouse just chewed through a wire or something like that. Ugh. That unhelpful committee in my head drives me nuts sometimes.

Well, it's been a few hours, and the tires all still look OK (thanks for that, Buddy Jesus!). We'll see what the light does tomorrow morning; heck, I'll be ready ;)
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Now playing: primus - jerry was a race car driver