Every year my company has a charity golf outing out at a course near Owings Mills. A large portion of the company takes off to play with their co-workers and frequent the beer cart. And every year I still don't golf, so Tom Fink from the Mechanical and Electrical department invites me to go skeet shooting.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the keys.

Somehow between 20:00 last night and 8:00 this morning, Suzy managed to lose her keys. She didn't leave the house or need them for everything. She's certain of this. She thinks the red recliner ate them.

So I'm already late for work from coming back from New Jersey the night before and crashing on the bed the minute I walk in the door. Suzy wakes up and is deliberating coming with me to the Light Rail station and spending some time wandering around the city. But we find out that the keys are missing and she wouldn't be able to get in her place even if she did leave.

I leave and get to work. After Jean's birthday celebration and early morning cake by our Department Secretary, things go single-track. Everybody's got their mind on the golf outing, or practicing to get ready for the outing, or if they brought all their clubs, or... Internet server site colocation. Well, that's what I've got my mind on, because that's what my boss has his mind on.

Soon he leaves to get his clubs and I go back to my service tickets and thinking about exploding skeets.

Suzy is stuck at home and operating Poisoned like a professional researcher. We chat, and I offer to come home for lunch. I chase down a sandwich with a Mountain Dew and before I know it its 12:30 and I'm packed and on my way back to the house. The keys, of course, are still hidden.

I dissect the chair and peer into its every corner with a MagLite as Suzy retraces her steps. She did do some fire spinning last night, I reason, so I begin to lay down a search and rescue pattern in the backyard through deliberate pacing.

Somewhere in the kitchen, her keys jangle.

The keys had been in the kitchen the whole time. Not on a surface or floor or corner, but in that place where normal people think to themselves, "Self, a set of keys would (and should) never be in this particular place." Needless to say, they were slightly cool to the touch. I will say no more.

After a bowl of Suzy's stir fry from the night before, I grab a pair of Exxon safety googles and my own keys and head up to Loch Raven Skeet and Trap Club off Dulaney Valley Road.

I meet up with Joe Schultz and a few minutes later Tom arrives. We are three KCI employees with three shotguns and enough ammo to fell a small herd. Of what, you ask? Doesn't matter. With teamwork, could be bull elephants.

But bull elephants aren't on the menu this fine afternoon. Tiny neon orange flying clay saucer plates are. Two games of 25 rounds each and maybe, possibly a dozen true shots and I'm left wondering if a game of skeet would be better played with reasonably sized dinner or serving-plate sized flying discs.

Honestly, once I got focus I was doing all right. A lot of it had to do with nervous tension which I think I could overcome in five or six rounds on my own. But being with friends and shooting a weapon you're unfamiliar with makes for a more difficult time.

We've been joking about the weather all this time because our games are $6 each and if it rains we can just all pack in for $18. Everybody at the golf tournament has paid a solid $55 (in groups of four) to play. In the event of lightning the course promises to pour beer down everyone's throats until the weather clears at the clubhouse, but if it starts and stays as promised (80%), that would be a lot of beer and not so much golf.

Around 5pm as I pull onto Perring Parkway, after two reasonably timed rounds, the sky opens on my car. The tournament is said to go well into the evening. I smile.

Suzy is hungry. I start the paragraph this way because after a welcoming kiss, this is how my arrival back to the house started. After some thought, we decided that since I wanted to change my cell phone provider and buy a new laptop battery, and she was hungry, we'd go to White Marsh. It just worked.

Every business or store in the White Marsh mall advertises an obscure (and different for each) address of the mall building. Some people call it 5200 Perry Hall, some 8000-something Honeygo Boulevard. The latter can't actually be found on automated mapping programs. It's bizarre, and repeatable, and has been happening ever since I started wanting to go to things at the mall.

It takes us 10 minutes to get to the mall and 15 minutes to discover (after a call to Ginger Petunia for the number) that T-Mobile Store is in the store. Next to the Hects. Remember this, it's important.

We pass at least 3 police cars circling the store. On our way into Ruby Tuesdays we pass a cop. On our way out to smoke, we pass a very friendly security guard who points to the "NO SMOKING HERE" sign with a smile. This comes back into play later too.

After a smoke we venture back into the mall. Emerging wide-eyed from the Food Court, as humanity never ceases to amaze me with the depths to which it can fall in large numbers, we turn the corner to see the glowing white letters of the T-Mobile store. A store so in demand there is an 8 person line almost out the door.

We considered not staying, but I'm glad we did because we got the most awesome clerk who talked me through all the prices and options and did not stare bug-eyed at my AT&T-provided cellular device when I asked her if I could activate it. She merely asked me if it was unlocked and when I said it was, pulled a SIM card out of the drawer and put it in. "Yep," she said as the T-Mobile name clicked into the phone banner.

Five minutes later we had selected a plan and were talking about a number transfer. I laughed and said I'd transfer it unless she could give me something cooler.

"Oh yeah, I can give you a WAY cooler number," she replied. I liked her already. This didn't hurt.

Sadly they had nothing in the 410 area code, but I did get a number in the 600 exchange of 443. No I'm not telling anyone what it is. With unlimited wireless internet, they can e-mail me because as long as my eyes are open during the day I will always be connected to the Internet from this point forward.

Suzy, meanwhile, is delighted that for the first time in four months I'm not talking about making it out to the T-Mobile store.

From White Marsh we headed out to our second mall of the night, Towson Town Center to bask in the warm white glow of the Apple Store. I needed to get a replacement laptop battery and Suzy was interested in equipping her iBook G4 with a Bluetooth module. We got to the store and flagged down a salesperson about both.

"Oh, I've got bad news about that," he said. "Apple has decided that the Bluetooth module is not available as an after-market part. If it didn't get installed in the factory it can't be installed." Apparently the module is tied on to an obscure (and hard to reach) part of the logic board by design and Apple made the choice to simply stock their shelves with $40 D-Link USB Bluetooth modules and leave it at that.

The salesperson did mention that the store employees were equally disappointed that they wouldn't be able to sell or install it on older laptops and apologized profusely. We left a few minutes later and $150 lighter with a new battery and a dongle.

No Comments | #3914

Unless noted, all content on epistolary.org is © Copyright 1999-2008 to Rob Carlson with all rights reserved. All information is verified when possible, cited as appropriate and applied in the real world at your own risk. Send all feedback to rob@vees.net.