She said yes!

On Tuesday night I was doing laundry, and one of my worst fears came true. The door to the laundry room is self-locking, and I was always afraid that I would leave the key on one of the machines and then walk out. Normally I would check my pocket to make sure I had it, and every time up until but not including last night I did. Sure enough, the one time I forget to check is the one time that I forget to put it in my pocket. Of course, I didn't realize that I had done this until I was about to go back to the laundry room, when I finally decided to check my pocket and the key wasn't there. I frantically searched all over the apartment, and eventually concluded that it wasn't there.

I decided to ask the only other people on my floor if I could borrow their laundry key to see if I actually did leave mine in the laundry room. As I walked up to their apartment I could hear them chatting away, with the TV on in the background. I knocked on the door, and the chatting stopped within a few seconds. I thought perhaps they had stopped talking so that one of them could come answer the door. After about a minute, though, I was pretty sure that nobody was coming, so I left. The tile floors cause quite a bit of reverberation and make it hard to walk away quietly, even for a sneaky guy like myself. Even with the TV on, they would have heard me. I hadn't even walked past the next apartment, and already they were back to talking.

Isn't this the sort of thing that you only see on TV sitcoms? The mother-in-law with tragically annoying character flaw shows up and everyone inside wants to avoid her, so they quickly hush up, sit still, and turn off the lights, in order to make it appear that nobody is home. On TV, this usually works, though pretty much anybody watching knows that if this happened in real life, then, no matter how quickly they do all these things, the mother-in-law would already know that someone is home, and it would be too late. But I guess, in real life, that doesn't stop people from trying.

So (how) did I get my laundry back?

I had taken out the garbage earlier that night, and thought that maybe I had accidentally dropped the keys in there, so I decided to check the garbage. This proved to be fruitful. I checked the garbage, and sure enough, my keys weren't in there. However, on my way back in, somebody else was taking out her garbage. Having just moved in, and never having met me before, she smiled at me as she passed me by. Seeing as she already appeared to be more friendly than the people who I have seen at least once a week, and even held the door for on occasion, I asked her if I could borrow her laundry key.

...

Sure enough, the key was right there on top of the laundry machine.

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Other things lost or almost lost this week:

• My bank card. I used it to take money out at the bank on Friday. That's the last time I remember having it. I needed it on Tuesday, but couldn't find it. I cancelled it later that night, and no damage was done to my account.
• My camera. I was at the post office on Wednesday with my camera. After I had mailed what I needed to mail, I walked away and heard someone say "Did someone forget their camera?" I still kept walking away, until one of the post office staff got my attention and asked me if it was mine.
• My credit card. Last night I was at the Toucan. At the end of the night, I paid for my meal with my credit card. Someone offered me a ride home, so I got up to leave. Someone else at the table reminded me that the waiter hadn't come back with my credit card yet.

Not a good week.