Had a bit of a day...

So yesterday, as I am driving home from work I let my mind wander and think about what I could blog about when I got home, nothing really inspiring happened earlier in the day other than the fact that I thought running the Boston marathon someday would be a cool experience...ultimately not a blog worthy subject though. That's okay because within the next 15 minutes I'd have quite a story on my hands.

So as I pull up to the house, I park my car leave it running so that I can unclip my house keys from my key chain and go around the back of the house and into the garage to open up the garage door and pull my car in. However as I reach for my keys, I notice there are no keys there to reach for. At this point the fear sets in. That feeling is the worst, it's sort of comparable to waiting for your luggage to come around on the carousel and watching everyone else get their bags and smile at you as they pass you as if to try and comfort you because you don't have yours yet, and then watching the carousel come to a halt with your bag no where to be seen.

Anyways, what had happened was that the day before when I returned home I executed the same procedure, however when I went into the house I never re-attached the keys to my car keychain. And then yesterday morning when I left I didn't lock the door from the house to the garage (inside) so I never needed to use the house keys. I just closed the garage door.

Now most of you who know me know that I am happily married, and are probably thinking that this really is no big deal, just contact your wife and get her keys. Well that is pretty genious thinking on your part, however the problem with that is my wife happens to be in Manitoba visiting with her parents. Luckily, I had brought my wife's cell phone with me, so I call my parents who live about 800Km away. I tell my dad the situation and he says that rather than breaking a window, to call a locksmith. So he gets on the internet and finds some locksmiths in the area and calls me back with their contact info. The closest one that I could find was about 44km's away. I give him a call and he says he can be out at my place within the hour. A little longer that I would have hoped, but i'm not going to press the issue as it was nice of him to come out in the first place..

While waiting for him to show up I kept going to the back of the house every 10 minutes or so to check on dog Emily and so that through the glass window I could tell her that she's being good. Really though, I don't know if I was doing her any good, probably just stressed her out more than anything. At the same time the cat decides that he's hungry because it's getting to be about that time. He's a bigger cat, and although very good (i.e. doesn't wreck furniture, doesn't get up on tables or counters), hell will freeze over before he misses a meal. So he comes over to the sliding door and glares at me because I'm not opening the door to come in and wait on him hand and foot. So he starts letting out some pretty good meows and starts to paw the glass. For a split second I was hoping he might actually prove to be usefull and hop up on the counter and unlock the sliding door for me, but then I remembered that he's pretty useless so I dropped that thought like a bad habit.

Finally around 6:15 the locksmith shows up (with his wife and dog in the back of the van). He was a bit older maybe pushing 60. Anyways he tries to pick two locks and neither of them would budge. One of his tools actually makes a bit of noise, so I was curious as to whether or not the neighbors would come over...but that never happened, that might actually be my fault though for never introducing myself to the neighbors, I can be anti-social like that some times..

After about 45 minutes of him trying to pick it, he finally decides he has no choice but to drill the lock. At this point I could really care less about that, because for the 2 hours I had been there even though the car was running and I only had my running shoes on and had been walking in snow that was at times about a foot to 2 feet high and it was pushing -20C outside with the wind chill. So my socks were soaked and frostbite wasn't far off. After he broke the bit on his first attempt drilling, he finally gets it and I get into my house. This is where my paranoia begins to set in. Quick tangent, I am generally a pretty good worry wart when it comes to security. I never like having a cable repairman or anyone come into my house because I always worry that they are casing the place. So he replaces the back lock that he drilled off with a "new" lock and then tells me that we should swap out the other locks on the house so that I only need one set of keys because the "new" lock just came out of the box and that way I know I'm the only one who has a set of keys. Well I wasn't having these shenanigans at all. I never saw the "new" lock come out of the box, and somehow thought that maybe he had an extra key to this new lock that he wasn't telling me about. So after about 7.5 minutes of this back and forth he finally concedes and starts drafting up the bill. He finally comes back with it, and it's all written down on this pad of paper, no actual bill with no actual letter head. This only fuels my paranoia.

It cost me $222.55 for everything...88km (there and back) at $1.5km, 39.95 for the new lock, $30 (down from $50) for his actual work, and then applicable taxes. So I write him a cheque, and then begin asking if he has an address that I could use for reference. He finally gives me a business card which appears legit, but doesn't really instill any sort of confidence in me.

The bottom line was that this mistake was a big costly one. One that I hope never happens again.

The good thing out of all of this is that by the time I had finally gotten into the house, Emily had been in her cage for 12 hours....she didn't mess at all. I was thoroughly impressed with that. Not even a year old yet and she really stuck it out.

So the way I see it is that locks are ultimately just placebo's, if someone really wanted into my house they'd get in anyways....hopefully if they do they atleast take the cat with them.

P.S. a song I'm really into lately is Kanye West's Streetlights.

Losing Focus

So yesterday was Monday, and as usual on Monday's I have hockey with the league for work. Lately I have been finding that I no longer have my head screwed on right while playing. Obviously I love playing, but when it's actually competitive, I find that I lose focus quite easily. Case in point...yesterday's game.

First off, when ever a game gets out of control on the scoreboard (i.e. one team is dominating the other) it's pretty tough for the losing team to get back into it. With about 20 minutes left in the game we were down 5-1... Somehow we managed to bring the game back to within one with 1:15 remaining on the clock. At this point we decided we should pull the goalie for the remainder as momentum was on our side with 3 unanswered goals. Anyways we went down into their zone, someone gave me a sweet drop pass, and I took the puck and took a wrist shot on net through traffic which the goalie got in the way of and kicked out the other side. As I went around the back of the net there was a bit of a scramble in front and I noticed one of their players cross check one of our guys in the back. This is where my focus train came completely off of the tracks.

Upon noticing this I decide to get into a shoving match with who I thought was the culprit, and then basically it was quickly broken up, however the ref was on to me. This comedian comes skating over and tells me that "this isn't minor hockey anymore, it's men's hockey".

At the time the comment caught me off guard, and I did not really say anything, which was probably the right way to go about things. But the smart ass in me wanted to say "really stripes? what was your first clue that this wasn't minor hockey?". Even though there was still another 10 seconds or so on the clock, I decided to let myself cool off and had someone go out for me. But during that skate back to the bench I came to the realization that I wasn't playing my game. First off I'm like 5'6 148lbs, so who do I think I am trying to be the tough guy? Secondly, I realized that I rattle easily...this is what needs to change.

I need to find a way to only focus on hockey when I am playing. It's as if I don't know how to fully concentrate all of my energy into my game. When I am running I lose myself in my run, and don't concentrate so much on my pace or my breathing, I focus on other things. It works for me because I can push myself faster and harder and not worry about becoming fatigued. With hockey, if I let my mind wander like that, I am sure I'd get laid out pretty quickly.

Anyways, that's it...that's the way I see it today...I need to concentrate on MY game, not on that of everyone else.