Keeping the battery charged by running the engine without driving

Additional supplemental information. The old advice was to disconnect the battery during storage. With modern computerized cars this is bad advice, see this link. I also vote for the battery tender.

And, if this car will be sitting undriven for 4 months, you might want to add a bottle of fuel stabilizer to your gas tank, and drive it a bit to get the stabilizer all the way to the engine before parking it. I have read that current gasoline blends containing ethanol deteriorate faster than gasoline without ethanol.