This could have been a bad day. If not for the fact that suddenly (and finally) it’s March 2 and there’s baseball on the radio, this could have been a very bad day. In fact, this was a pretty bad day, even with baseball on the radio, but let’s say it could have been a worse day without it.

When I took my car in for its “major” service in January, they couldn’t find the reason it had been occasionally refusing to start. They claimed to have made an adjustment, but they didn’t promise it wouldn’t happen again. They sort of hinted they thought it might not happen again, but I had doubts as to their sincerity. Still, it didn’t happen again until today. So they were right, for almost two months. I have to give them that.

The thing is, it only doesn’t start once a day, usually. When I was trying to leave for my errands this morning, the engine would not turn over. It gave me that familiar hum that told me it was a starter problem, the very same starter problem the dealer couldn’t find in January. I knew what to do. (No, not cry. But that did occur to me.) I left the car alone for an hour (“You sit and think about what you’ve done.”) Then I tried it again.

This time it didn’t start right away when I tried it after an hour. That worried me more than the fact that it didn’t start the first time this morning. But it did start the second time, the second time. Did I run off on my errands? No. I had lost confidence, so I drove the car around several blocks and, without stopping anywhere, brought it back and parked it in the garage.

Then, another hour after that pointless excursion, I tried it again. Since it started right away, I decided to chance running my errands. I knew I had several stops to make, but I wasn’t really worried. A little worried, yes, until it started after I went into the post office. After that, at the Big Box Store and at the Office Place, I didn’t even think twice. Well, twice maybe. But no more than that.

This made today very stressful. There appears to be nothing more I can do, short of trading the car in for something more reliable. Since I can’t afford to do that now, and since I’ve always-always been able to start the car every time but once on any day it wouldn’t start once, I’ll just have to try to accustom myself to its whims and fancies. I don’t like it, but I don’t see an alternative.

But it wasn’t as bad a day as it could have been. After all, there was baseball on the radio, and the Giants’ announcers, Jon Miller and Dave Fleming, were in near-midseason form. The crowd in the ballpark somewhere in Arizona did its part, cheering when there was something to cheer for, so I guess they were ready, too. The sound of baseball on the radio is the perfect accompaniment to a day doing mindless data entry. It makes a bad day into a slightly better one.