Woke up this morning, unlocked the doors, put my laptop bag in the car, sat in my less-than-a-week-old Avant, ahhhhh. I put the key in the ignition, lights turned on, dash lit up, start-up diagnostic told me "OK," (Hey, thank's pal!). I turn the key to the 3rd position, no-start and I get a rapid click. Every click that sounds also stutters the display of the dash. After a few "*****" and "*****" thrown about, I hop in my old 1985 Chevy Caprice Classic, and drive my broken shell-of-a-soul to class.

Naturally, during the entire course of my class, I do searches on the forums to find similar issues. HUZZAH! Some other poor shlub had the same issues.

I come home, jump the Avant from the Caprice, and she starts right up! During this process, I note that the battery is a wal-mart brand (Everstart.). It was running at 525 cold crank amps. Seemed a little low to me. I had to replace this thing on the fly, so I went to Autozone and went with a Duralast Platinum 800 cold crank amps battery. It's not an OEM replacement, but it should definitely work loads better than the one that was in there.
I just got the car from a less-than-reputable dealer. But since I was looking specifically for a B6 Avant, and he had it for the right price, I went with it. If I only have to replace a battery and a smog pump, I'll be on the winning side in my book.

Morale of the story: A 26 year old Chevy Caprice saved my Avant from its Slumber. Props given. Kudos old pal.