Last night I came home to my dad's place around 11pm and the front door was locked. The front door is never locked when I'm staying over. I don't have a key. Locked out. Normally, I'd ring the door bell and wake my dad up. He'd apologize and let me in. It's happened before. It will probably happen again, though I suspect I might be getting a key the next time I head down to LA. But this time my sister was also in the house and her 2 year old, Mateo, had been sick, had trouble sleeping and I didn't want to take the chance to wake him up.

So after not getting any response to my light knocking on the front door. i skulked around the house to see if the back door or any windows were open. Nope. I came back around front and knocked some more. Nothing. I called my dad's cell phone, but I could hear it just on the other side of the door ringing away in the kitchen. No one was going to hear that.

I gave up after about 30 minutes.

Since it was almost midnight, I called my friend John in Sydney to wish him a happy new year and commiserate with and understanding soul. Always good to catch up with old friends. While we were chatting, a coyote ran past me down the road and turned to look back up at me when got about 100 fet beyond where I was leaning against the brick mailbox. He was sizing me to determine if I was edible. Clearly I'd be separated from the heard and was a reasonable target. I decided I needed to get in the house.

My 11 year old brother Alex has a room that faces the street. So I started throwing little clumps of dirt against his window, hoping that he'd open the blinds, see me and come downstairs and let me in. That didn't work either. It just scared the shit out of him. He thought he was having a nightmare and went running into his parent's room (I found out later).

After about an hour of being outside, I finally said, screw this and called the house line and right as I did, I could hear someone coming downstairs to open the door. Lots of apologizes, blah blah blah. It was really no big deal. It turns out my sister had to get something for Mateo from the car and when she came back in she just locked the door. Sheer force of habit.