Thanks all for the help! Taking off the cables, giving the terminals/cable connectors a good scrubbing with a steel brush, then tightening back on did the trick. I found the positive cable connection at the battery wasn’t nearly as tight as the negative, so that may have been the cause. In any case the loss of power is gone but...my 3rd brake light now stays on when the lights are on and after driving for a long time(more than 1.5 hrs), the car continues to run even after the key is removed(shuts off after maybe 20 secs)! How weird is that! Any thoughts on either of those new issues?

Ps: too my battery in for testing and it passed with flying colors, so that’s not the cause....

-max