November 14th, 2006:

So we did something that was stupid stupid stupid… and cost us a pretty penny to boot (and we’re still not done.)
Saturday we spent most of a beautiful day outside painting shelves. I have a set of four book cases from the bookstore days. We painted three of them a long time ago with the idea of putting them in the living room, and thus getting some storage in the living room. Of course, we didn’t paint the shelves right away. So we spent the afternoon painting them. Well, to be truthful, Stephanie did most of the painting. I did all of the heavy lifting. But we only got one side of the shelves painted before the weather turned rainy and we had to bring everything back into the garage.

We had tickets to the theatre at night (The Umbilical Brothers, an Australian comedy duo that is performing at the New Victory for the next week or so) So, we took showers and got cleaned up and got ready to go. We were going to treat ourselves to an early dinner at Saigon Grill (one of Stephanie’s favorites at 90th and Amsterdam) and then go to the theatre.

And this, dear readers, is where the story starts to go horribly wrong. In the course of changing pants etc, I leave my keys upstairs. Stephanie gives me the key to her car (which I don’t have on my key anyway, since the administrator from our temple has temporarily borrowed my key so that she can take Stephanie’s car on a mission of mercy.) But for some unknown reason, Stephanie does NOT give me the rest of the keys. She takes her key OFF her ring. I assume that I have my keys with me, and I assume that she has given me her keys. At this point, we turn on the alarm and exit the house, locking the door behind us using the push button lock. When I go to lock the deadbolt, I realize that Stephanie has taken the key off her ring. I reach for my keys in my jacket, and then my pants pockets, and realize that somehow, my keys are inside. We are locked out of the house.

This sets off my buttons– I’m hungry, we were supposed to have a perfect date night, and now everything is all screwed up. After walking around the house trying to open various windows (hoping that the screens would give out without much problems (no dice) and calling our friend who has the only other key (not home) we do the only thing that we can do– we call a locksmith. It is supposed to take 20 minutes for the locksmith to get there (plus $55 to just show up, and then the labor) But what are we going to do? We need to get into our house.

We’re both starving, so I run out to the Pizza Barn to get some quick food (I did have my wallet with me) I get back, and there is still no locksmith. At this point, our friend calls with the key. But at this point, it seems too far away to go get it (she lives in Sleepy Hollow– 25 minutes up, 25 minutes back) We eat our food in the car (it’s getting a little cold) and then I see somebody walking around and it is our guy. He gets to work, and it takes him a while to break through the lock. After a bunch of false starts, it turned out that even that stupid little lock was hard to open without breaking the entire door frame. He finally had to drill through the center lock in order to open it.

He finished right at 6 pm, and our show started at 7. We rushed down to the West Side, parked a block from the subway, subwayed to 42nd street, and managed to get into the show before it started.

This whole excursion cost us a cool 100 balloons, plus our well-planned date night, and we still have to get our locks fixed. Our bottom lock doesn’t work (the top one works no problem, and we are going to bring in a different locksmith to key all of our locks (as we’ve been meaning to do for a while) Who knows how much THAT will cost.

As for the show, there were pieces of it that were pretty funny, but the show itself didn’t quite hang together. It was a “Best of” show, (called The Worst of) and because the pieces were from all different shows, they didn’t quite gel. There was lots of funny stuff, but the show I’d seen by them previously was more compelling and more virtuosic. Still the audience loved them, and kids REALLY dug the show.

And now we’ve got to come up with a better contingent plan– how are we going to stop ourselves from being locked out again (other than NEVER EVER TAKING YOUR KEYS OFF THE RING STEPHANIE!) We’re talking about hiding a real estate lock box outside somewhere. Does anybody else have any other suggestions?