It's something anybody can do, but also something I've done more than anyone I know -- locking my keys in my car. My fragile and delicate mind can't handle more than two things at a time. In this case, I had to disconnect my iPod from the radio, grab my bag off the passenger seat, and take the keys out of the ignition. I got two of them right. The last, I forgot. Two out of three ain't bad, but in this case it was freaking horrible.

Especially when the temperature outside is about negative one-hundred. First I tried doing the obvious thing: using the eff word. It didn't work, even when I used it out loud. I tried in vain to get back into the car somehow. Then I tried getting into the house without a key. No luck. I called the landlord, but he apparantly conks out sometime during Eyewitness News at 10, so there was no answer.

This left one option: to walk to Burrito Union and wait for my girlfriend, who wasn't due home for another two hours.

There's something odd about going to a bar when you don't want to. I mean, I'll drink good beer whenever, and Burrito Union serves Fitger's beer which is among the best. But generally, I prefer to drink at home while playing records or watching VH1 Classic. I don't always want to hang out by myself at the corner pub listening to Tim Nelson jerk off all over his guitar while some Granola freestyles about MySpace. Not that the hippie-hop isn't good -- it is. But I planned on wearing flannel pants by now and holding a warm internet on my lap.

Instead I'm paging through the Reader Weekly wondering how they can exist by selling ads only to themselves, while alternately jotting down this post on a stray piece of junk mail.

I can't help but think about what might have happened if I hadn't had anyone to let me in. What do stupid people without girlfriends do when they lock themselves out in sub-zero temperatures? Get a hotel room? Die?

I'm glad I don't know.

Knock wood.