Miscellaneous Megafauna, Paper Clip Lock Picks & Impending Doom

My day began fairly normally- not particularly eventful. I blew through another portion of a project I have due very shortly, and the professor and TF for that class took a few of us out to eat dinner. I returned to my office by 11, set on finishing the project in its entirety. Right after making use of the facilities- you see, I'd partaken in a beer or two to personally celebrate my hard work.

The student office has a key pad we use to get in. Every now and then, the thing malfunctions, so we tend to keep a set of keys on us for back up. It'd functioned without any hitch all day, so I took this to mean that I was in the clear.

When I came back, I found myself locked out in the hall. The keys were on my desk. with my cell phone. and ID. and everything else that might be useful. So things progressed from there in an exponential stream of rapidly deteriorating sanity.

1) punching in the code over and over again hoping it would work (you see, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result)
2) trying to remove the key pad to mess with the wires (first with my finger nails, then with thumb tacks I found in a near by message board)
3) pulling out some of the wires through one of the lights (I obviously wasn't the first one to try this, the light was already loose)

When none of these things worked, I weighed my options by wandering around the rest of the floor. See, most of the offices were locked as well, as was the entrance to the main reception area (and the couches). We have a student lounge, but the chairs aren't ideal for stretching out in- even if you push a few together. I did, however, find a croquette set in the student lounge- no, I didn't use the mallets to break through the door. I picked up the wire hoops instead. unfortunately, they weren't skinny enough to be of use to me- but the box of paper clips I found shortly thereafter next to the copy machine looked promising. I'm sure you can see where this is going. While I was fairly certain that I could kick the door open, I was even more certain that the department wouldn't like it- even if the breaking and entering happened at my own office. I settled on trying to pick the lock.

Since my department studies people, I could easily argue that I was doing what humans post Neanderthals are known to do- coming up with innovative new tools. Homo sapiens theoretically out competed Homo neanderthalis in just this way. They came up with new kinds of tools, and were constantly making changes to suit their needs. In so doing, they more efficiently exploited their environment and other environments not previously available for colonization (too cold, etc... but with things like bone tools, aka needles, they could sew together the animal hides that Hominins had worn until then by slinging around themselves to make form fitting clothing that could thus be worn to keep them warm when traveling into cold regions). The more successful Homo sapiens (us, btw) could reproduce more successfully, increasing their populations, and out competing Homo neanderthalis- okay, I'm going to leave it at that. The take home message here is that I was innovatively solving my problems.

Roughly one hour and 8 paper clips later, I decided this wasn't working out and resigned myself to spending the night in the hallway. I resorted to what most slightly sleep deprived students with "free time" on their hands, getting ready for prelims would do- I took a practice exam. Since, as I mentioned, everything I owned that was remotely useful was on the wrong side of the locked door- I lacked pen and paper. So, I took the exam out loud.

When the security guard found me an hour later sitting on the floor next to a pile of destroyed paper clips talking out loud to no one in particular about the extinction of megafauna in North America, he made a point of asking me for my student ID. He was nice enough not to draw attention to the mangled strands of metal, though he clearly saw them given the priceless expression on his face and obvious stare. Did I mention that in addition to my keys, phone and ID, neither were my shoes on my person? That's right, they were in my office, under my desk. I looked and sounded like a legitimately crazy person.

So while I had every intention of actually going home tonight, I'm back on my friend's couch as she is ever so kind as to lend me its use (as I may or may not have mentioned, I've taken up residence for the past week on my friend's couch, as she is much closer to school than I am). Once the security guard nervously let me back in the lab, I sent my friend a message bringing her up to date on this crap, and she sympathetically invited me to come back over and crash on her couch. However, when I got there, her cell phone wasn't getting reception, and since she resides in a dorm, my key card wasn't having any of it- so I had to find a way to get in touch with her so I could stop standing out in the 14 degree weather. The logical choice: snowballs. I assailed her window with them. Luckily, I picked the ones that belonged to her. Because throwing snowballs at the wrong window, unlike everything else that happened with my night, would have been awkward.

Oh well, by this time, all my visions of being even more productive this evening had turned into delusions, so I've put the project on the back burner- until tomorrow.

Lyric of the Day: "So wait, for the stone, on your window, your window. Wait, by the car, and we'll go, we'll go- Valencia..."