Here's a good way to start a day: Stay up all night. As the work day begins, realize you have a conference call at 11am. Leave the house at 9:30 in order to get coffee, so you can be coherent on the call. Forget house keys until outside the first door. Miss conference call.

Fortunately, I had my Palm on me, so I sent mail to my boss notifying him that I had been a tremendous idiot. Then I called the building manager about twenty times, the building manager across the street, the real estate management company that employs them both, and Queen Anne blockbuster video (by accident). All of them were either unavailable or unable to help me. The message on my building manager's machine made it sound like he wouldn't be in till Tuesday. I did not relish the idea of spending the night outside.

Not wanting to waste an entire day, I went about the business of replacing my lost cell. Walking through downtown I felt like a glacier; slow, inevitable, and unswerving. Normally people would be crashing into me, but I think the zombie-like mask on my head convinced them I really wasn't very good at steering and they should probably get out of the way. After wasting the time of the Verizon saleslady (because I can not use the cool new starTAC with AT&T) I picked up a TDMA StarTAC at the fairly longhair-hostile AT&T store in Pacific Place.

After placing many, many more calls to the building manager's office and house, I decided he wasn't going to be in today. I also decided I was going to get into my house. I went to Bartell drugs and bought a pair of kitchen shears and, after carefully checking the consistency of pretty much every flat plastic thing in the store (and convincing myself not to steal a store display made of the perfect material), a plastic check binder. I walked back to my front door and dialed every name in the Aegis 7000 access control directory. Finally, I got a neighbor. Even though I've never met any of my neighbors, it was fairly simple to convince him to buzz me into the garage. When I got to my door, I realized that a tight-fitting magnetic rubber seal had been installed around it to prevent the old credit card trick from working. Indeed, it would have been impossible. Fortunately, the binder I cut my tool out of was much more flexible than a CC along its vertical axis, but due to the ridges running along it, was still rigid enough to trip the steel bolt out of its socket. When the locked door popped open on my first attempt, after all the frustration of trying to get back in the house the normal way, I felt like god damned MacGuyver beating the bad guys with raw oatmeal and a can of pringles. Yes!! Life rarely contains such singular victories.

And it's green, too!