ye olde crapfest

on the return from my most recent (1100 mile) jaunt up to rode hiland, i noticed a light on my console, not in the usual "red flag" area near the oil light and the check engine light... more like, next to the temperature guage and clock. the light said "ECT PWR." i don't know dick about cars, but i do know about ghostbusters, so i immediately took that to mean "ECTO POWER" had been activated! i was worried-- i didn't know if ECTO POWER was a good thing or a bad thing, i mean, some of the ghosts in ghostbusters weren't totally bad. ECTO has a very mixed connotation for me, and i was driving, so i needed to concentrate on other things. so i had zack do some detective work, and he discovered a rather large button on the console, bigger than both the defrost buttons put together that read "ECT PWR, ON/OFF." i turned it off, just to be safe, and then forgot about it.

until the other day. one morning this week, i accidentally turned it on whilst fumbling with my mittened hands to turn the heat up. i left it on, just to see what the deal was. i couldn't tell that there was any deal. got to work, and actually remembered to google "96 toyota avalon ECT PWR," and wouldn't you know, it doesn't mean ECTO after all (though i will continue to refer to it as such). i still don't really know what the ECT means, but the button, when pushed, is, according to those "in the know" on the superweb, supposed to give me "more acceleration."

riiiiiiight.

so, the next few weeks will be the ECTO POWER trials, in which i do numerous and various tests on the accelerational qualities of ol' mandrake. hopefully, ECTO does not drain the vehicle of valuable fluids like, for example, gas, cuz that shit costs a lot of money, and i'm not paying top dollar just to be able to go faster than my v6 engine can already go.

so, if anyone wants to tag along tomorrow on a 400 mile journey to the armpit of ohio for a wedding and some serious ECTO testing, lemme know! it ought to be totally... um... fun. yes. fun.