Locked in. D'oh!

Last night was my regular trip into the city, to collect my weekly comics stash, but it was also a gathering of the Sydney Webloggers' Meetup Group. I was only able to stay briefly as, making a progressive dinner, it was off to Pancakes at the Rocks by 8pm to farewell our new Danish friend, Jonas, who joined our Star Trek Meetup Group while he was on a study scholarship to Sydney. He's heading off to the USA on the next leg of his study tour. Lucky guy.

I came home on a late-night country train, desperately trying not to fall asleep, lest I end up in Katoomba or Lithgow. I was pretty tired by the time I reached my front door (my housemate went off on vacation that morning) and I had a sudden realisation that losing my keys would be a Really Bad Idea. I was holding the school library keys in one hand while I unlocked the front screen door and then the main door. As I entered my house, I could feel the keys in my hand as I turned the locking clip of the wire door from the inside... and shut the main door. But the deadlock was still locked, meaning that my only copy of the house keys were now locked on the other side, and between the two doors.

Turning to face Jack, my dog, who was wearing his I-need-to-do-wee-wee, real bad face, I had to console him that we were now both trapped inside the house - and it was 11.30 pm. I realised it was too late to ring a neighbour, and even if I could escape through a window, how could I retrieve my door keys from behind the security grill of the screen door? I mean, security grills are made to be secure, unless you are holding the key.

It's probably not sensible to describe in exacting detail just how I managed to retrieve the keys - all by myself, and with no injuries - at 11.45pm, but at least I can now hire myself out as a successful cat burglar. It was a good feeling, I can assure you. I even fooled Jack, who went ballistic when he heard someone rattling the front door in desperation.

With only 15 minutes left to blog by midnight, I decided letting the dog out into the back yard, and having a strong drink, were higher priorities than blogging my latest goof-up. I should confess, it's not the first time I've locked my keys out of reach in this exact way. (This was time #2.) But at least that other time, my housemate was only about an hour away from arriving home from work with his keys.

I have lots of new books, comics and magazines to review, and I haven't really even gotten around to doing a report on my recent vacation. (I'm also having fun browsing all the bookshops I find, cherrypicking titles from the 2007 Shortlist, of the Children's Book Council of Australia Awards, which will be announced next Book Week. Thanks to the previous teacher-librarian, we already had most of the picture book titles.) So much to blog about and so little time.