So there actually is a little chime that goes off when the fuel tank gets pretty close to empty. I had been bemusedly watching the trip odometer tell me that I'd gone over six hundred miles on a tank of gas—I swear I was actually watching the road at the same time—when the chime and the gas tank warning light lighting up interrupted the Robin Williams standup routine about the invention of golf. I was laughing not quite hard enough to completely lose control of the car, but pretty close, and the chime kind of brought be back to the reality that I was piloting several thousand pounds of metal and my nephew really rather quickly down a road, and so in a sense my tendency to burn the whole tank down to fumes before refilling it was fortuitous, and the chime-accompanied illumination of the idiot light rather well timed.
I did, of course, still have several dozen miles remaining according to the Range indicator on the trip computer, so I stretched it out until this morning; dropped the kids off at camp; and got myself to a pump. 10 miles left, it claimed, not terribly loudly. The concrete around the pump was totally covered in spilled diesel fuel, and the smell seeped into my flip flops to the point that I was a little concerned the rest of the day about tracking diesel wherever I walked. No obvious stains so far.
The kids are starting to complain about how the car smells, which is baffling since there's basically nothing in it. Maybe a mouse has died inside or something. It's almost cool enough that I can just air the car out for a few months (while driving) and maybe that will take care of things. Not a terrible smell, but it's neither a new car smell nor nothing; nor in between. Olfactory research will continue, and I'll keep the space apprised.