I suppose I should try and keep up appearances around here by blogging occasionally – so that when you check in monthly at least there is a little new material. I really haven’t had either much time or much energy to post of late. Teaching is extraordinarily hard and mentally taxing work.

Humorous story that I should blog about: the landlady debacle. Our landlady lives above us and she is something of a character. This January she decided to spend her settlement from a lawsuit against the manufacturer of Fen-Phen by getting new windows. We had to send our pets away and move a fish tank to accommodate the reconstruction.

This weekend we received a phone call from a panicked Kathy, that’s her name, because she had managed to lock herself out on the second floor balcony. Apparently the new balcony door, installed at the same time the windows were, has both a deadbolt and a lock in the handle – like many bathroom doors do. She went outside with the phone and closed the door behind her aware of the deadbolt, but unaware of the other lock.

I got on the phone and told her I could break into her apartment in a few minutes if she didn’t mind a little damage. We share the basement and have two separate doors into out apartments from the basement stairwell. These doors have simple sliding latch bolts and after a few shoulder hits and a kick or two I managed to bust her bolt. It was odd to me that the metal gave way before the wood did.

Afterward, Kathy was singing my praises as her rescuer, while my mother-in-law has now begun referring to me as “my son-in-law the cat burglar”. Kathy does have three cats, so I guess it applies, though I haven’t really burgled so much as startled them.