I broke the Prius

Ok, not permanently.

The Prius is that new space age car we bought in May for Tom's commuting pleasure. It has lots of coolio bells and whistles that our other vehicles only dream about. Such as - daylight running lights. Which is a fancy term for headlights that are always on. Now, while it's true that the Odyssey can mimick daylight running lights if I simply turn on the headlights while I'm driving during the daytime, with the Prius, you simply leave the headlights on all the time. Yes, even when you park and walk away. Which is how I broke the car.

See, the little technical detail with the Prius headlights is that they automatically turn off when the driver opens his door and gets out of the car. Nifty, huh? And this works great, what happened yesterday afternoon happens.

Karianne drove Susan, Megan, and me to Walmart. I'll spare you the gory details. When we got home, Karianne got out of the Prius (driver's side). I, sitting in the front passenger seat, noticed that some windows had been left rolled partially down. So, I reached over, pushed the power button, rolled up the windows, and then powered off the car. Then I got out of the passenger side door and went into the house.

Problem was, when I turned the Prius back on to close the windows, I also turned the headlights back on. And opening the passenger side door does NOT turn off the headlights. Result - the headlights stayed on from 5:30pm to 8:20 pm when I returned home from visiting teaching and noticed the lights on.

So now the battery is depeleted to the point that it won't start. And that is how I broke the Prius.