Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

We had a locksmith here this morning to replace the lock (cylinder) on the apartment door.

This is because, around lunchtime yesterday, the door to our apartment opened. The upstairs neighbor, not really paying attention, had gotten off the elevator at our floor, walked to this corner of the building, put the key in the lock of what he thought was his apartment, and turned it.

Obviously, this isn't supposed to happen. I've tried to unlock the wrong door before; sometimes the key will go in, but it doesn't turn. Yes, there are a finite number of lock cylinder designs, but apartments 31 and 51 in the same building shouldn't have the same one, because people are more likely to try to walk into the apartment right downstairs than some other random house on the same street.

Before he left, we asked the neighbor to verify that his key really did work in our lock (i.e., that cattitude hadn't forgotten to lock up an hour before that). Then we called building management, who said the locksmith would be here between 9 and 10 this morning. He got here about 9:15, after first changing the cylinder on the upstairs apartment. He then went back upstairs, saying he wanted to make sure we now had unrelated cylinders, returned and gave us the new keys, taking the old cylinder and keys with him.

As locksmith adventure go, this is pretty tame: nothing was lost or damaged, nobody was locked out, and it cost us nothing (though I'll be spending a couple of dollars at a hardware store to make adrian_turtle a new key).

We just hung a full-sized 2011 wall calendar in the kitchen, replacing the 2010 calendar that had been lurking there, showing its December page, for the last four months.

The calendar only went up today because it only got here today. This is not the vendor's fault. I ordered this calendar online last week, from calendars.com, which was having a sale on the remaining 2011 calendars. The stock is somewhat thin by now, but we only needed one calendar. So I got a calendar with pictures of U.S. national park scenery. (I have had a miniature wall calendar hanging on my desk since the first week in January.) And if we haven't gotten a 2012 calendar in a store by mid-December, I will go online and get both a wall calendar and a mini for my desk so they'll be here by early January and I don't spend four months looking at the same picture of red leaves.

More comments saved, this time from LJ and Making Light (crossposting to DW): ( appetite, home. shoes and gender, education, giving and accepting help )

I'm home with cattitude and julian_tiger and glad to be so: the problem with having family and friends scattered around several countries is that they're inconveniently far from each other. I unpacked, and confirmed that my incredibly compact all-purpose cardigan is still in Montreal; I suspect it's either on a chair in the long room, or in denim bag. papersky, rysmiel, please keep an eye out for it. I also discovered that I had inadvertently packed the card they gave fivemack for the winter holidays; I may send it back there, or on to Britain if I can find Tom's address quickly.

Today's agenda is physical therapy, playing with Julian, maybe some local errands, and a bit of housecleaning to the extent that my right arm (not the shoulder, this time) is amenable. I will probably also read back some in LJ--I was giving it a very minimal skim while in Montreal--but if there's anything you specifically need me to see/know/respond to, email or other non-broadcast methods would be sensible.

We don't have a transit strike. According to one story I read, we are in fact promised that there won't be one at least until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Nonetheless, my boss was concerned that there might be a strike, leaving us "stranded" at work.

She'd be more stranded than I--I could get home, though with annoyance, by commuter rail, and she's in a part of Brooklyn not served by same. (Queens and the Bronx get commuter rail because it goes through them on the way to the suburbs.) So she called around 7:30, leaving a message (I was in the shower) not to come in. There have been times on this project where she handed me three days' worth of work; at the moment, I'm getting things in hour-or-less chunks, so have nothing to do if she's not there.

I could have used today's pay, but I can also use the rest. Thus far, I've gone out with Andy, taken the train as far as 181st Street, bought rye bread, and stopped off on the way home to pick up a package at the post office, and some groceries at the local supermarket. Eggs, frozen peas, that sort of thing.

And julian_tiger, having kneaded me thoroughly, is now lying on my lap, all curly.