Lock out below!

I’ll get to that. But let’s start from the beginning, shall we? It wasn’t a bad day for a Tuesday.

Shopping day at Royal. Christmas carols playing and some pretty impressive decorations.

But I’m still thinking of that other holiday…the one we Yanks call Thanksgiving. And I impulsively decided to prepare a feast at home this year.

I bought this frozen 11-pound bird for “only” fifty bucks

I also bought the fixin’s to make candied yams and my Aunt Pat’s recipe fruit salad. I’ll pick up some additional things next week after I’ve finalized the menu planning. It has been over a decade since I prepared a Thanksgiving dinner. Looking forward to it.

My box freezer died, so on the way back from Royal we stopped at the Savers appliance store. I decided a big side-by-side fridge/freezer was a better option than replacing the box-style freezer, and this big beauty was on sale:

Hopefully, that’s seven hundred bucks well spent.

I didn’t use to walk on Tuesdays, but every step counts in my quest to lose weight, so for the second week in a row, I strolled through the neighborhood.

Just a little over 3K, but better than nothing.
A warm walk under beautiful skies

We spent our Tuesday evening on Baloy Beach.

We weren’t far from the house when I realized I’d forgotten to bring my phone. Swan waited while I went back and fetched it. This event would become slightly more significant when we returned home after our night out.
Swan is happiest with her toes in the sand
A nice longish walk on the beach
And then we arrived at Kokomo’s

No other customers this time, and none of that cursed videoke crap.

We pulled up a seat at the bar and took in the view
Yep, the sun was going down in a blaze of glory
It never gets old for me.
It was a gin and soda night for me

So, the bar staff invited me to plug into the Bluetooth speaker and play whatever I liked from my Spotify app. The music was extra special last night! I caught myself singing along with some of my old favorites and noted the hypocrisy of my karaoke complaints. It’s okay when I do it!

Thank you for your service, have a lady drink
Good times!

When it was time for some grub, we took a beach walk back to Treasure Island. I was getting a little tired of ignoring my favorite dishes and settling on salad instead. So, I perused the menu and checked the ‘net for calorie content. I found one item I rarely eat, but it seemed like a bargain at 325 calories.

So I enjoyed me some chicken parmigiana. I gave the fries away.

During our Treasure Island visit, our neighbor Mike came by and joined us at the bar (he ate my fries). We attended the same high school, so we share the commonality of a Westminster, California upbringing. I invited him to join us for the Thanksgiving feast I’m plotting. When it was time to go home, we had a comfortable ride in his automobile.

Once inside the house, I set about making a batch of sugar-free pudding for my dessert. And that’s when Swan discovered the keys to the bedroom were missing and the door was locked.

I always lock the door when we leave the house as an added layer of security for my laptop and hidden-away cash reserves. I always leave the key in a cup on the kitchen counter. Swan emptied the cup, but there were no keys to be found.

I had unlocked the door when I returned for my phone and locked it again when I left. It didn’t make sense that I wouldn’t leave the keys in the usual place, but maybe in my rush, I left them in the room. Now what? We grabbed a hammer and screwdriver and thought about breaking the lock, but we didn’t really have a clue about how to proceed with doing that. Swan then said she would borrow the neighbor’s ladder and climb in through a bedroom window. Nope, that was way too risky for my thinking (and I’m way too big to crawl through a window to do it myself). So, we fetched my part-time helper’s boyfriend up from the basement. The new plan was for him to climb the ladder to the bedroom patio and then cut through the screen door to unlock it from the outside. Let’s do it!

That’s the view from the patio looking down to the ground. Not much margin for error.
The torn screen is evidence that our plan worked!

Once inside the newly unlocked bedroom, the keys were nowhere to be found. Had I put them in my pocket and then lost them somewhere on the beach? The mystery was solved when my helper Teri returned home. She had gone into the bedroom to finish cleaning after we had left and then taken the door keys with her by mistake. Thanks for that, Teri. Well, I now carry a bedroom key on my keychain, so an event like this will never reoccur.

And I also just realized that I have posted online a method for breaking into my house for the world to see. Oh, well, I’ll take my chances.

Progress continues…

In other news, today was the viewing of John Kim’s body before his burial tomorrow. I didn’t attend because I prefer to remember people as they were, not their dead bodies.

I didn’t know he was only fifty-eight. Way too young to go.

Today’s YouTube video tells the story of a guy who got caught with a married woman. I guess I’m in no position to judge. Swan has never been married. I think this guy goes too far in his criticism of dating married women. Many have been abandoned. I met one whose “husband” was working overseas and had started a new family there. But divorce is not legal in the Philippines, so she was stuck. Anyway, unless the spouse files a complaint, you can’t be charged with adultery. So, be aware and do what works for you.

Alright, how about these?

Like me trying to have a conversation with my driver…
I wonder if his job is blocking searches that have conservative viewpoints in the results?
If at first you don’t succeed, fry, fry again.

Nothing specific in my plans for tonight, but it is likely to involve bars and alcohol. We shall see.

1 thought on “Lock out below!

  1. Just a little over 3K, but better than nothing.

    Thanks to that little crossover bit right at the beginning/end of the walk, I have no idea which direction you walked in. Was the first turn a left turn or a right turn? That’s all I need to know.

    re: key situation

    I live an entirely keyless life these days, but I remember being in the States and having occasional senior moments involving car keys, house keys, etc. I was once asked by some church friends to house-sit while they were away, and when I came back from an evening walk with their (very nice) black Labrador, I somehow managed to lock myself out of their house. I stood stupidly in their patio while I cast about for a solution, the dog looking patiently at me. I finally looked through the house’s window into the kitchen and saw the keys just lying on the table. Thank goodness the kitchen window turned out to be unlocked. It was too small for me to crawl through, but using some items I saw on the patio, I constructed a makeshift fishing rod and managed to snag the keys, allowing me to open the door. The dog must’ve thought that this was the weirdest walk it had ever been on.

    Again, condolences about John. A friend of mine, when his grandma died, told me he thought viewings were barbaric. I’ve been to three viewings in total, and I’d have to agree. There’s no real way to pretty up a corpse. It’s cold and hard and unnatural-looking, and it’s not the person. The person is gone. The Jews and Muslims (and some Hindus) have the right idea: get the burial over with within 24 hours. Or cremate ASAP. That’s what we did with Mom; it’s also what I want for myself. I had a friend in college who said she wanted to be cremated, mixed into a can of paint, then painted into her favorite room. We all looked at her funny. What happens when the family moves out?

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