O death, where is thy sting?

[Tessie McMillan <tessmc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for the subject line, I was trying to come up with nifty phrases 
that related to dead batteries.

I installed a new battery in Olive Oil today. I bought a kill switch with 
the battery, but was not able to figure out a good way to install it, 
since there did not seem to be much room.
 
Those of you who have a Series 3 spider still with the trunk upholstery 
intact, how could you imagine installing the kill switch? It is supposed 
to go on the negative terminal, but if I do this, it would be extremely 
difficult to use -- sort of pointless, since I'd have to perform the 
equivalent of disconnecting the negative lead just to get at the kill 
switch &:-).  Since this new battery is a dry cell, I also tried mounting 
the battery sideways, but then it did not fit on the battery shelf and was 
unstable.

For now I'm minus a kill switch. Here's another question, though. The new 
battery has 1050 amps for starting; my previous battery had 500 or so. 
When I first started the car with the new battery, the car turned over so 
fast, it was almost before I returned the key from the starting position. 
None of that 'si si si si si si' stuff; the starter just said "si si BOOM" 
and the car was running. In getting Olive cleaned up, moving her, checking 
the oil, etc., I started her about four times total, and each time it 
was very fast, very surprising. Then I took the car out for a long drive, 
parked, went for a walk along the beach, and had dinner. When I came back 
to the car and started it, she had gone back to her normal "si si si si 
si BOOM" style of starting. Should I be worried about this? 

Tess
confidential to Bruce: apropos of the dragons and tailgaiting in 
general: after 9/11, I noticed a general increase in hostility and 
aggressiveness towards me when I was driving the Spider. This became 
pretty pronounced after the 'war' in Iraq. At first I attributed it to a 
general intolerance of foreigners/foreign things in general, and then I 
realized it was a specific kind of vehicle, and a specific kind of 
behavior. I was getting a lot of trucks deliberately cutting me off. It 
would be far too easy -- and perhaps unwise -- to advance an opinion that 
some very recent political events have sent the message that it's okay to 
use violence when you don't like someone else's appearance or words.... 
No, that would be too easy. It could be the recession, the high 
unemployment, Boeing's exodus, Mercury in retrograde, or any number of 
things causing people to act out while driving. I just know that I don't 
get purposely cut off when I'm driving the gray Audi Quattro sedan; just 
when I'm driving the cream colored Spider convertible. 
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