Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010 Key Change I lost my keys but good a few weeks ago. This happens sometimes. I lose my cell phone more often, but it has this handy feature where I can dial its number and it'll signal where it is, which is 90% of what I use my phone for. My keys have no such feature. I've heard about those thingies you can attach so you can whistle for them, but the only time anybody ever thinks about those is when their keys are missing and you couldn't attach it to the ring anyway. I knew they were somewhere on the property, because I had let myself into the house with them the night before. How far could they have gotten? I also knew that M. Edium hadn't hidden them, because while he sometimes hides my watch or my phone for fun, he doesn't lie about it when asked. Not convincingly, at least. I looked in all the first-tier places: the kitchen, the entryway the study, the pockets of the clothes I'd worn the day before. Then came the second-tier places: the floors under the tables, hanging from the locks outside the doors, the pockets of the clothes I'd worn two and three days before. I had to drive M. Edium to school with Trash's keys before I got to the third-tier places like the driveway, M. Edium's bed (trust but verify), and the freezer, but they came up empty too. I could function without my keys in the short term, but I was going to have to either find them or replace them in the next couple of days. Or, as I knew it was going to end up being, both. You see, M. Giant's Law still rears its ugly head around here once in a while. I try to keep my key chain slimmed down, so here's a quick rundown of what's on it: • A little electronic doohickey that generates a new password for my employer's remote network every thirty-six seconds. Since I don't get kicked out of the network every thirty-six seconds, more than half of those passwords go to waste. • The key and remotes for my car and Trash's, both Saturns. I tell them apart by how mine has the words "lock" and "unlock" on buttons that, on Trash's, have little pictures of locks. I keep meaning to look at her owner's manual to see if it's written the same way. • Key to our front door. • Key to our back door. • Key to our side door, which we only use when we're moving something very large in or out of the basement and which we only ever unlock from the inside anyway and now that I'm looking at it I'm not even sure that's what that key is for. • Key to a file cabinet I never lock and only carry around because it's tiny and otherwise I'll lose it and accidentally lock the file cabinet. • Mini membership card for CVS ExtraCare that I got two years ago, which is odd because I haven't been inside a CVS in four years. The little electronic doohickey could wait a few days, because I got a temporary static password that I could use. I borrowed Trash's keys to my car, because despite my admonitions she refuses to carry them around anyway. One of us is almost always home, so getting in and out just required a little planning ahead. But when my car got dropped off for repairs and I had to borrow Trash's -- and her keys -- it was time to invoke M. Giant's Law. After all, the keys had been gone for two days by this point. So I went to the neighborhood hardware store and got copies made of 25% of Trash's keys (she carries hers in a purse and doesn't abide by my size limitations, so I have no idea what the other 75% of the shit on her janitor-sized slagheap of a keyring is and I suspect neither does she). Soon I had my new versions of everything but the remote and key to Trash's car, the doohickey, and the stuff I wasn't worried about. But my keys still hadn't turned up. The next day, I was still living with my substitute keyring, just about resolved to the fact that it would be my permanent one, but just in case, I drove halfway across town to get a replacement key for Trash's car, at a cost of four bucks. I still didn't know what I was going to do about replacing the remote to Trash's car now that Saturn is just a planet again, and my temporary password was about to expire. And my keys were missing, even though I'd not only tossed and looked under all the furniture, I dissected it. I was starting to think I'd need to request a new doohickey from IT, buy a new file cabinet, and rejoin that CVS loyalty program I've never used. Then that afternoon I was taking M. Edium somewhere. I picked up his sweatshirt off the end of the couch where it had been draped, and there were my keys. "How could you have missed them there all this time?" Trash wondered. She didn't get it. "They weren't there all this time," I explained. I’m just glad they're back. Because there was one other key on there I didn't mention, and I probably would have needed to call a locksmith to get it replaced. The thing it locks is new, expensive, and not especially portable. posted by M. Giant 8:49 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:Oh, do tell...
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