(That word looks really Weird to me... is it a word?)

I bought some rechargable Batteries.

It's been years since I've had any, I'm not sure why other than I don't really use a lot of batteries?  And I know technology has improved a lot but I guess I didn't love the old ones I had, I dunno.

The reason I got these is kind of weird but I'll tell you anyway ta da!

Years ago (maybe 2013?) I used some VISA points to buy a set of walkie talkies (or whatever we're supposed to call them... "two way portable radio"??)  I think I got them for travelling to Burning Man the first time in case I was in a caravan, following other vehicles.  Maybe I got them for some other reason but this is what I'm going with.

I didn't end up driving myself down that year, so they didn't get used, but we did use them in 2015 when we had two cars travelling home.  I think the batteries died at the end of our trip though but hey.

So when Jason and I were planning last month's camping trip he mentioned he'd like to do some back road travelling or 4x4ing (I don't really know when one becomes the other) and that he wished we had a way to communicate if I needed to go up ahead to scout the "road" and while I knew this wasn't something I knew how do to LIKE AT ALL, my brain at least did remember that I had these walkie talkies.  I figured the internal Battery would have smushed out by now but I pulled them out of the closet anyway and charged them up.  Ta da!  They worked!

Except when Jason and I did get to a spot where it would have been helpful to see what was up ahead and I pulled out the walkie talkies, one of them had no charge left.  So... my guess had been right.  The battery pack was dead-ish.

When I got home, I pulled them apart to see what kind of battery pack it was and it turned out it was just three AA rechargeables "sealed" together.  I hadn't expected that because to charge these things you plugged them directly into the wall so I figured it was a solid, weird battery in there.

But then my brain thought "well I guess I should get new rechargeable batteries then"  which is kind of a weird thought because batteries are batteries and I could very easily just use regular AAs.  I knew if I was going to get them, the plug in charger would become obsolete (not wise to mix charging functions on stuff... electricity is both scary and picky!) so I took them in for recycling when I went to buy the new ones.

Which I did.  For reasons I'm still not entirely understanding.

I have a pretty intense habit of putting in a battery, then throwing it out responsibly when it runs out of charge.  Going (back?) to recyclables was going to be weird.

Jason suggested I charge them and then run them down and charge them again.  I googled and it seems you no longer need to do this, but it did say that it takes a few charges to really get them up to snuff, so... I got out my camping lantern last night and put some of the batteries in it and left it on.  It felt weird.  

By the morning, the lantern was pretty wimpy and I felt somehow guilty but I changed out the batteries, put the first set back in to charge and started running down the next bunch.  It feels like a really weird thing to be doing and hopefully this wasn't a dumb investment but hey... here goes, eh?