Maybe Stephen King was the previous owner

Since my last set of car repairs, in June, my eight-year-old car has developed some eccentric behaviors. There seems to be something not quite right with the electrical system.

From a safety perspective, I seem to be doing okay. Headlights? Check. Turn signals? Check. Break lights? Check.

But one night two weeks ago I was driving down the road and I noticed a strange reflection on the flipped up visor. Two spots of light. I couldn't figure out where the reflection was coming from. I got a little panicky. It looked a little like this:


Scary, right?

Well, not so much with the alien head but definitely with the two glowy spots. Still disturbing, yes?

Turns out it wasn't a reflection at all. The lights in the vanity mirror were showing through the visor. Of course, the lights in the vanity mirror shouldn't have been on. *cue creepy music* The mirror was closed and the visor was flipped up. But they were on. Just on the driver's visor. The passenger visor, with it's own vanity mirror, was non-glowy.

I discovered that I could not find a way to shut off the driver-side, vanity-mirror lights no matter what I did, short of turning the motor off. So I made the decision that they would have to burn themselves out. I wasn't going searching for a fuse that was labeled: "creepy-driver-side-only-vanity-mirror-lights-that-won't-shut-off" and I couldn't see spending big bucks to have a mechanic figure it out.

Plus, they bathe me in a cool, eerie glow which I've decided to find enhancing.*

This weekend, I discovered a new quirk. When I turn the steering wheel to the right, the radio advances from one pre-set station to the next. Sometimes, it hops through several pre-sets.

Um, I wasn't really into that song anyway. You go ahead, Car, and listen to whatever you want.

I can just hear the mechanics gathering around the phone to laugh at me should I decide to call these things in... "Wait, can you repeat that?" *sound of guys trying to muffle their giggling* "You've got a glowy visor and a self-determining radio? Hawhawhaw..."



* Luckily, I'm a "Winter" and this works with my palette.