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Back indoors - Drinking from the Fire Hose — LiveJournal
and trying not to drown

Mrs_Sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-06 22:58
Subject: Back indoors
Security: Public
Location:Home and on my corner of the couch
Mood:grateful
Music:Forensic Files on tv
Tags:rl
I'm inside my house. $55.00 poorer, but happy to be out of the rain.

Want to know how my keys got locked in the car? I think habit is the root cause. Normally, when I arrive home, I check that I'm on the driveway (and not parked on the neighbor's lawn), turn off the car, remove the keys from the ignition and immediately exit the car. Tonight what happened was that [info]jebra called me on my cell phone. I was four houses from home at the time and, since I don't talk on the phone when I'm driving, I let it ring. After I backed into our driveway and checked that I was really on the driveway, I turned off motor and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Then I wrestled my phone out of my bag and returned [info]jebra's call, not noticing that while digging for the phone I'd let go of the keys and that instead of falling into my pocket, they had slipped to the side and were now on the driver's seat.
Which I didn't notice until after I'd locked and closed the car door.

Habits. Bah.
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Jen
User: greenlady2
Date: 2009-06-07 04:36 (UTC)
Subject: Oh, no. You poor thing...
... I'm always scared of locking myself out. That did happen to me a few times, years ago, and it wasn't fun, I can tell you. All those incidents were scary at the time, and funny in retrospect. But I'm glad you got inside without too much trouble.

Why won't the cops do the slim jim thing? :-)))
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Mrs_Sweetpeach
User: mrs_sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-09 19:56 (UTC)
Subject: Re: Oh, no. You poor thing...
One of my friends suggests its because they're afraid of being liable should the unlocking set off a side-impact airbag or do any other sort of damage to the workings of the door or its structural integrity. Personally, I'd have been happy to sign a waiver and not fork out $55. (And it isn't as though the tow-truck guy did anything particularly tricky -- not that he used a slim jim. He used something that looked like wide putty knife to pry the car door open far enough that he could stick in this long plastic wire (think wire coat hanger for the diameter) with a bit of a hook on the end. He pulled the door latch to the open position. The entire procedure took under five minutes, including calling in my credit card number and having me sign the receipt.
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beamjockey
User: beamjockey
Date: 2009-06-07 05:06 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
I simply carry two sets of keys to the house and car at all times. Haven't locked myself out in a long, long time. It's cheap insurance.

(Also helpful if my main keys get lost temporarily, or if I need to give a key to someone else.)
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min8ive
User: min8ive
Date: 2009-06-07 13:04 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
There was a cop with a slim jim in his hand heading for a woman standing next to her car at the grocery store in my neighborhood yesterday.

I keep my car key separate from my house key, which lives in my purse with a spare door-only key to the car. Assuming your car key needs a computer chip to start, you can get a door key made at any Home Depot-type place for ~$5. They'll look at you funny, and tell you it won't start the car, but having it in your wallet in this sort of situation would have been enough.
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Bob
User: bwittig
Date: 2009-06-07 13:35 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Most police forces will not do the slim jim thing because they are too busy AND many cars have airbags in the door. Theoretically they could trigger the airbag. (In reality they are just too busy and this is an excuse.)

Hide a magnetic key box under the car with a car door key.

This is one reason why I love keyless entry. I can only lock my doors from outside the car if the keys are in my hand.

Or maybe Jebra could hook up an electronic lock on the house that you could open by going to a web page or sending an email or posting a private LJ entry! (For a really unreasonable solution that is.) No, wait, with caller id your home phone recognizes your cell phone number and connects you to a unit that requests a PIN code. Enter the code and the alarms go off and the back door unlocks. YEAH, that's the ticket!

(Glad you made it inside!)
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Mrs_Sweetpeach
User: mrs_sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-08 15:41 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Being me (and having a brother who's a skilled mechanic), I wouldn't have gotten that upset if they'd broken something while doing the slim-jim thing. I'd just rack it up to my own bad luck and being too cheap to call a locksmith. But in this lawsuit-crazy age, I do sorta understand why the cops wouldn't want to do it.

As for the magnetic key box -- the entire time I was stuck outside I wondered if there already was one and I just didn't know about it.

Throwing a spare key to the car and the house in my backpack is probably the way to go. Although the interface to either my cell phone or the internet would be sweet. Teaching the cats to unlock the door would have almost worked. Then I could have gone inside, gotten warm, and then figured out my best bet for getting the car unlocked.
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mbcrui
User: mbcrui
Date: 2009-06-07 13:56 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Glad you're out of the rain. I carry the door keys on a separate keychain in my purse. However, it doesn't matter because I haven't locked the house (other than too keep the doors from blowing open) or the car (where I usually leave the car key in the ashtray) in 4 or 5 years.

Come to think of it, we seldom locked the house in Palatine, either... tho I usually remembered to lock the car.
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Mrs_Sweetpeach
User: mrs_sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-08 15:44 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Around here, we lock our doors. We've had stuff stolen from our cars when the doors were unlocked. As for the house, with the alarm system we sometimes don't bother to lock the door, figuring the alarm would be enough of a deterent once it began to blare. Saturday night we'd locked all the doors -- I checked.
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betagoddess: SentinelBlairIWhoa!
User: betagoddess
Date: 2009-06-07 15:59 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Keyword:SentinelBlairIWhoa!

$55!!! Yikes! You don't have AAA or something like that? What a pain.

Glad you're back inside now, though! =>}

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Mrs_Sweetpeach
User: mrs_sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-08 15:33 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Nope, we don't currently have an auto club membership. Ironically, there was an AAA membership application on my desk inside the house when I locked myself out. The form's still there.
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betagoddess: CKRYeah?
User: betagoddess
Date: 2009-06-08 15:47 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Keyword:CKRYeah?

We've had CAA membership for years. It's not free, but the few times we've been stranded with a flat or whatever, they've been there for us at no extra cost. It's kind of a relief to know they're there.

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(no subject) - (Anonymous)
Mrs_Sweetpeach
User: mrs_sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-08 15:28 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
LOL! No thanks, locking them in the car on my own driveway was enough excitement for me. :-)
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(no subject) - (Anonymous)
Mrs_Sweetpeach
User: mrs_sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-08 15:35 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
How'd you manage that? When I was in college my boyfriend lost his car keys for two weeks -- then found them inside a bag of potato chips. (That the keys were missing didn't slow him down any -- his ignition switch was broken and didn't actually require a key.
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(no subject) - (Anonymous)
Mrs_Sweetpeach
User: mrs_sweetpeach
Date: 2009-06-08 15:44 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
That would do it. :-)
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