Time for a trip to the hardware store, it seems. To make copies of my house keys, so I can give a set to the neighbor or hide one or something.
Out of the house I bounded this afternoon, all set to go to the UPS place to send off a package. (Christmas presents? Hah! Far too early for that. A birthday present. And no, it's probably not for you.) Got the package? Check. Got the Netflix envelope to drop off at the Post office? Check. Got my wallet? Check. Okay, we're ready to roll! Slam the door behind me, make sure it's good and locked, and away we go!
Got my keys?
Hmmm. This trip could be both much longer and much shorter than I had anticipated.
The choice seemed to be between calling a locksmith to open the door and finding a more direct method through a window or something. Which is likely to be cheaper? Okay, forget the locksmith.
Wander around the house to see whether I've inadvertently left a window open, unlikely as that might seem in the middle of winter. No such luck.
So I picked a basement window to be sacrificed. I found something to try to pry out all the putty around the window, in hopes of somehow being able to ease the window out of the frame without breaking it. Twenty minutes and a cracked-but-not-broken window later, I gave up on that scheme: putty that's dried into place over fifty years just wasn't going to be easily persuaded to give up its grip.
(Twenty minutes was long enough for me, too. I was afraid that the neighbors across my back-yard fence might wonder what was going on over there, with all that banging against the window and that shifty-looking person skulking around the back of the house. Any longer, and they might call 911 - and I really didn't want to be the day's entertainment for Richmond's Finest.)
The window was no match to the business end of a wrench, however.
So tomorrow's list includes a visit to the hardware store, for a set of spare keys. And, oh yes, a new window pane. And putty.
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