I was awake. It was Friday. I was not, however, all the way awake.

This is not unusual. Many days it takes a while to get into. Sometimes I can be completely awake and ready to go. My brain is thinking way too fast for the morning, but you can't do anything about that either. It's pretty much one way or the other.

On Friday, I'd slept in an extra fifteen minutes to offset the four hours or so in the night when my brain wouldn't shut up enough for me to really sleep. So as I drove away from my house, I wasn't really thinking about much at all. I was, actually, just trying to stay focused enough to drive carefully.

Just before hitting Zuni, my car ran over a bump. One of those lips in the road created by resurfacing and then the slow hand of time moves the asphalt into a lip between the asphalt and the concrete around the intersection. I'd run over it before.

But this time it did something to my car. My stereo went out. Not just the CD skipping--it blanked out. Gone. No response.

I drove most of the way to work in eerie silence.

A month or so ago I had to get the driver's side window fixed in my car. The window had been showing signs of the motor dying. It was having trouble going up and down. The Friday before Labor Day it died. It died while the window was down. It died with the window down at the beginning of a long weekend. It died with the window down at the beginning of a long weekend that had rain in the forecast.

I'd gotten the window fixed about a week later. Letting the window rest for a night allowed it to have enough power to finally roll back up (just before the big rainstorm), so I drove around without a working driver's side window for a week or so.

The electronics in my car are a concern to me. Everything is controlled by the electrical system in the car. Locks, windows, car seats, mirrors, alarm, everything. When the stereo went out driving over that bump, I also lost my electronic car locks, alarm and part of my dashboard lights (just warning lights, really, but I guess the absence of them was a warning in itself).

The window cost me $400 to fix. The part wasn't just the motor, you have buy the whole thing, switches and everything (I had this same problem fixing the spark plug connectors--you have to buy a whole set of connectors, not just one), which pushed the price up. So when all of this went out (most of which I discovered when I got to work and tried to lock my car), I envisioned a wholesale failure of a good chunk of my electronic system. At least the car still started.

My worst case scenario was around a grand to replace countless sensors, computer chips and wiring. Best case was around a hundred bucks in labor to tear out the dashboard and make sure all of the wires were still working and connected--this usually also means hooking up to the "machine" that runs electrical tests. I'd had this done on my old car, and it's never a cheap enterprise.

Since it was Friday and I didn't have anything pressing going on at work, my boss let me leave at lunch to get this hassle taken care of.

I went straight to my mechanics and explained what happened. Then I walked home and watched baseball.

A few hours later, my roommate and I had just ordered Thai take-out when I got the phone call. It's ready, come pick it up. What was wrong? A blown fuse.

Instantly buoyed by the thought that it wouldn't be over a hundred bucks, I put some shoes on, walked back to the auto shop and got the greatest news I could have on Friday: my mechanic wasn't going to charge me.

So, in reality, I got an afternoon off work. I watched a little bit of the baseball playoffs and my car, which hadn't been my best friend lately, got fixed for free.

It almost makes me think I should run over bumps in the road more often.

Matt Worley had a great meal of Thai food and then sat through a boring debate. Sometimes politics are a distant fifth to good food, baseball, understanding bosses and friendly mechanics.