start, die;start, die;start, go

[red_gsx]

quick background first. so far the car had seen only sunny weather in hawaii and end of summer in maryland. now its in buffalo ny.
lately my car has been a pain to start in the morning. when i get up for school at 8 in the morning and start my car, it turns on and then a second later the rpms drop and its dead. it'll do this two or three times and then it will turn on normally. i've been meaning to look in to this for a while but what happened today really got me off my ass. i drove to a friends house, parked the car, went upstairs for no more than 3 minutes. when i came back to leave the car would turn on and immideatly die off. instead of struggling for a second to stay on it just said f*ck it. i tried 4 times and same result. then i waited 30 seconds and it started just fine. the temp gauge was at halfway, another note mine never goes higher than halfway is that normal? and one the weather subject, my mpg has dropped to 17.5 a gallon now from the 22 i had in hawaii. is this an up north thing too? long post but i tried to describe the problem as best i could

 

[92awddsm]

My guess would be a faulty coolant temp sensor. If you have a logger, see what the coolant temp shows when the car is cold and then fully warmed up. If it is 50+* warmer than what air temp is when car is cold, thats probably the problem.