Keys

This afternoon I decided to bring up a bunch of boxes to pack away my electronic kitchen stuff.  I had a stack of boxes 5 high with a flat of cans on the top.  I just dumped my keys in to that box when I got on the elevator, but the floor of the elevator was wet (they had just mopped) so I didn't want to put the boxes down.  Well, I tilted at just the wrong angle when pressing the button and the top box of cans and keys fell off.  Just my luck, my keys (house key, car key, mail key, storage room key) hit the gap just right and fell down the elevator shaft.  Ugh.  I was so frustrated with myself.  We've lived her nearly 4 year and I've never had a problem locking myself out of anywhere.  At least I had left the kids upstairs and Kherington was nice enough to let me into my apartment.

I called the elevator people and they told me it would cost 110 euros for them to come right then or 55 euros if I waited until the next day.  I opted for the next day.  Then I posted something about it on facebook and said something about not being able to get them.  That got me thinking that, hey, I'm pretty handy person.  So I googled it and read some ideas.  I had some super strong magnets that leftover from an unfinished RS activity years ago (just happened I had found them this last weekend so I knew exactly where they were).  I put those in a sun glass bag and tied it up in two spots so I wouldn't lose it.  It took me just two tries.  I just went to the bottom floor, put my huge flashlight pointing down so I could see it, used a yardstick to push the magnet past the metal siding it kept sticking to and on the second try I had my keys.  Took about 3 minutes once I was in the elevator.  I'm pretty awesome.  I had originally though I might as well have dropped 50 euros down the shaft, but as it turns out that's not true.  Magnets couldn't have picked that up :).