Foiled by my own stupidity

Last night on the way home from work, I stopped at the station and had a look around the shops and bought a couple of things, ostensibly in aid of Christmas shopping, although at least two items were for myself. (This is why my Chrstmas shopping is so expensive - I rarely shop, so when i go to buy presents for other people, for every new, shiny thing I buy for someone else, there are at least two new shiny things I end up buying for myself... I've only just started to suspect that this is the goal of every retail outlet, and probably always has been since the dawn of the market economy...alright, so I'm a bit slow to catch on, probably as I've only had disposable income to speak of for about five minutes...)

So I arrived home at 7:30 pm to discover I didn't have my key. I had a good book - a couple of good books, actually, since I'd just been shopping - some soda water, some crackers, but no key. My partner was not due home till at least 9:30 and, of course had his phone switched off at the crucial moment. So I called my sister who lives about 10 minutes walk away to see if she had any keys to my house. She had just moved house two weeks ago, and she turned up with a take away container full of keys. My long-suffering sister tells me "As you know we're still unpacking & I can't find half of my own stuff, but you can try some of these."

Between me, my sister and her partner, we must have lived in about 50 houses in the last 20 years and I swear, she had defunct keys to at least a third of them in that take away container.

We tried all of them. None of them was a key to my house

-because I just don't leave spare sets with anyone anymore - even with close relatives who could be of assistance...

After 15 minutes of trying keys, my sister mentioned that her dinner guests had actually arrived & asked if I'd like to wait at her house till my partner came home. Feeling acutely misanthropic & grieving for my lost time ALONE WITH MY THOUGHTS, I accompanied her back to her house & complained all the way there, ending with "I just want to go home" as we approached a table full of her friends, who I know only a little bit.

Graciously, they explained, laughing, that I was stuck with them for at least two hours. I felt like a heel.

Knowing there were the makings of a good fish dinner at home, I decided to forego the Thai takeaway they were having, but did eat more potato chips than is advisable under international health & safety laws. The resulting salt high was particularly unpleasant.

While there, I at least got to give my sister's partner an early birthday present - some reading glasses with lights on them for reading in bed when the person next to you wants to sleep. He put them on at the dinner table & had us all in stitches. What a card.

Eventually, my partner arrived home to an empty house, got none of my messages, but decided to ring me, and came and picked me up.

It was 10:30 when I finally got inside my house, cranky, tired & wierdly high on salt.

Too late to cook the fish dinner, but never too late for pizza!

Waiting for the pizza to arrive, we searched everywhere for my keys. Not finding them in any of the usual places, I emptied out my bag.

AND THERE THEY WERE.

I am an idiot.

And then i ate the pizza.

I was so angry that I didn't notice that the prawns did not taste quite right, until the one I had to spit out.

So today went like this: get up, toilet, tea, toilet, shower, toilet, go to work, toilet, work, toilet, work, toilet, staff morning tea for a birthday, toilet, work, toilet, toilet, meeting, toilet, lunch, toilet, work, toilet, cuppa, toilet, work, toilet, train, toilet, supermarket, toilet, walk home, get rained on, toilet, get out of wet clothes, toilet, sit down.

I'm fine, really, not even irritable anymore. The rain helps.

Library Technicians' Conference

This week I am in sunny Adelaide at the ALIA Library Technician's Conference. So far it is going really well. I have realised that not everyone has done the kind of web 2.0 project like 23 things that I was fortunate enough to do at my work. I have been telling others what a good experience it was, and also hearing good ideas from many other people too.

New song on Myspace

My lovely partner & I have recorded our first song as Sea of Memes. You can hear it here
What with the study and the working and the things to watch on tv that may never be shown again, it's taken a while, but we've made a start. I'm lucky to have such a great musician to work with, and plan to write more before the winter is over.