It Gets Better

Steven had to go to Houston Friday night for a Conroe team get-together and then work on Saturday at the Houston office. He asked if I wanted to go. I decided not to since I would just be sitting in the hotel room Friday night and I detest driving in Houston so I'd probably just sit at the office with him Saturday.

When I got up Friday morning and called Steven, he had some distressing news.

On his way to work that morning, he was passing a car in the left lane of I-45. As soon as he got around the car, there was a piece of tire rubber that he could not avoid. He didn't lose control of the bike but it jostled him around pretty good. When he got the bike lined back out, he noticed the metal plate right below the keys was up. He put it down and discovered that his keys were missing (the keys come out easily even when the bike is running).

He was just past FM 2989 so he turned around and went back to the scene of the "crime" to look for the keys. No can do...

Of course, he'd lost his spare key in the trailer when he lived in Austin and never found it and never bothered to have another key made.

A locksmith is going to be a couple hundred of dollars and he can't get to it until next week. The bike shop can maybe get another key, depends on whether they can read some number on the ignition. If not, they have to replace the entire ignition (several hundred dollars). The bike shop is moving and can't get to it until Wednesday. That means Steven will be taking the truck every for a few days. So in addition to the cost of getting another key, we've got a couple of tanks of gas to deal with.

It's just money, right?

I was scheduled to work in the kitchen at church for the Kairos prison ministry until 3:00. I left there, packed a bag and headed to Conroe to pick up Steven and head to Houston.

He goes to his dinner, I watch TV and stitch and all is well.

Steven's calling me at 10:30 to make sure I'm up and ready to go by 12:00 when we have to check out of the hotel. He calls and tells me to open the hotel door. It's only 9:30.

He can't get logged on to a computer in the Houston office and there are no tech people working to help him. We decide to go to Conroe and he'll work there.

We get to Conroe and the custodial office has locked his office door. His key is on the side of I-45 somewhere. He'd left the door open Friday night because he didn't have a key (he has a key card to get into the building).

So much for working on Saturday...

So as to not waste the trip, I go to the resale shop (bought nothing), Card and Party Factory (bought nothing), Dollar Tree (bought nothing) and the teacher supply store (bought stuff!). When we got to Huntsville, we went to Home Depot to get cinder blocks for my compost heap.

Tile is on sale.

We now have tile for the bathroom floor, the tub surround and a bathroom light fixture.

We don't have any cinder blocks.

They were out of cinder blocks.

They won't be in until Thursday.

What kind of home improvement store runs out of cinder blocks?

When we get to 2989, we exit and look for keys. Steven says he heard a jingle when he exited there.

No luck.

A couple stops and asks if they can help. They live just down the feeder road and have a metal detector. They don't know how to use it and neither do we. We figure it out but it's not very sensitive to keys (we tried it on the truck keys). Off we go to the off ramp again. No keys.

We go back to where the rubber is. Steven uses the metal detector and I use my eagle eyes. They almost never fail me. Today they did. I walked all the way to the bridge and back on the other side of the interstate and the only thing I found that was of any use was a single dollar bill.

Do you have any idea how very exciting it is to walk down I-45 with big trucks whizzing past at 70+ mph? It's not really.

We gave up, came home and decided that it's just money and what the heck...