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psyche (sī'kē) n. 1. That which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings. 2. The seat of the faculty of reason.

syllogism (sĭl'ō-jĭz'əm) n. 1. Reasoning from the general to the specific. 2. A subtle or specious piece of reasoning.

psyllogism (sī'lō-jĭz'əm) person: A twenty-something college graduate, software engineer, and geek extraordinaire. I am recently married and trying to manage life, friends, family, a job, and an (un)healthy gaming hobby.

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Locked out

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:20:27 GMT

I haven't written a proper LJ entry in a while, but I thought I'd want to memorialize this for posterity.

On Friday night, a group of us -- me,

anailia,

lapetitelune,

mindofinsanity,

xxratedredgexx, and two other friends without LJ: Georgia & Nick -- went to the Midnight Madness event in Ellicott City. Everyone met at our house, and we gathered into two cars to attend the festivities -- our car, and Georiga & Nick's car.

We shopped around Ellicott city until about 10pm or so, when

lapetitelune,

mindofinsanity, and

xxratedredgexx pleaded tiredness. The rest of us not wanting to give up the night yet, decided on a course of action. The three who wanted to leave would drive my and

anailia's car back to our house, while Georgia & Nick would drive the rest of us back when we were done.

anailia asked me if I had my keys to the house, and since I never leave the house without my keys I concurred. Oops. With my reassurance, she told

lapetitelune to leave the keys on our dining room table and lock up when they were done.

After midnight and after some imbibing of alcohol (except by Nick, who graciously agreed to be our designated driver), the four of us came back to our house to hang out a bit longer. I stepped out of the car, and that's when I realized that I had left my keys in the house this time. We checked the doors to see if by chance

lapetitelune had left any of the doors unlocked but nope. We were locked out of our house. By this time it was almost 1am.

Georgia & Nick, being the saints that they are, offered that

anailia and I could spend the night at their place and in the morning we could figure out what to do. So we did and it was fun :-). The next morning, I called

prototaph and

wikith thinking that we had left a spare key with them, but that was not so. So I had to call my parents who I knew we'd given spare keys to. After some deserved ribbing, my dad agreed to meet us halfway with the keys.

Georgia & Nick, continuing to be saints, agreed that Nick would be able to take us back to our place. We arrived, feeling relieved with the keys jangling in my pocket. I stepped up to the front door and inserted the key into the lock. Hmm, that's odd, it seems to go in but it doesn't seem to fit right. I tried to turn the key. It wouldn't budge. WTF?!?!?!?!

By the way, by this time it's snowing pretty hard and everything is wet and cold. ROad conditions are getting bad and we don't want Nick to have to wait too long or they might be to bad for him to get anywhere. But he volunteers to stay until we get in. I tried the second key on the key chain and it wouldn't even go into the lock. I turn to

anailia and reluctantly tell her if she can call a locksmith. Nick is able to look up the number on his iPhone; those damn things are very useful. I try the keys on the other two doors but no luck. Strangely, the same key that went into the front door lock also went into the back door lock but it still wouldn't turn. Our side door also has a storm door lock but neither of the keys fit that.

anailia comes back from her conversation with the locksmith and says that because of the snow and cold a lot of people's locks are breaking and the locksmith is too busy to come out today; maybe tomorrow. We know we have a hungry cat inside; we can see him at the glass door in the back pacing back and forth eagerly. We can't wait until tomorrow. The locksmith suggests a little WD-40 into the locks, since it might be the cold keeping the lock from turning. I get some out of my car (I have a spare key for my car tucked into my wallet, a trick I might now do for our house). This doesn't work, confirming that they key we gave my parents wasn't actually to the front door.

Nick knows a bit about lockpicking so we let him try on that back door.

anailia begins to devise a plan for breaking a window to let us in. I continue in vain to try the keys on the other doors. I KNOW that I tested out the keys before I gave them to my parents. But none of them work on the side storm door...

Our side storm door has a pretty simple lock, not so much for security as to keep it closed during a windstorm or such. Unfortunately, it does require a key to unlock, but when forcefully pulling on the handle I see that I could reach my fingers through underneath the storm door and pull more forcefully. I'm able to force the storm door open to get at the actual door inside. The second key works for this door and we're able to get inside. Success!

What an exhausting day. We owe a lot to Nick & Georgia, who helped us out a TON. Thanks a bunch.

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