Last year, I gave in to the family, admitted that we live in the woods, on top of a mountain, and we have a persistent need to haul large volumes of stuff from there to here and back again. We bought a pickup truck. Problem is, we live in the woods, on top of a mountain, and the environment is very much interpenetrating our infrastructure. Because we drive the truck infrequently (that is, we don’t drive it every day), some rats decided the top of the engine block would make a great nesting spot. As well as filling every cranny with acorns, they chewed through one of the leads coming off the battery, which led to the truck’s computer (God bless it’s little silicon heart) to think that the battery wasn’t charging.
After a few adventures and phone calls, I finally found a place that would sell me a chunk of 16 gauge stranded wire (not Radio Shack, not Fry’s, not the hardware store, but the auto parts store — which probably says more about me and my expectations than it does about the state of electrical supplies and their availability) and I spliced the severed wire back into service. Wrapping it all up with electrical tape, which in our household is used principally to adjust the pitch of bagpipe chanters. So, for the first time in a few years, I’ve used electrical tape in an electrical context. That’s new!