Well, the gang is loaded in the car, headed to the theater, & I realize that in the rush to leave my place, where I had finally progressed to the next chapter of Gaiden Black, I had locked myself out yet again.
Now, for those keeping score at home, that makes my 4th lockout since I moved in in June.
We head on to the flick, no sense ruining the fun...
The Dark Knight was just frickin amazing!
It was long, but so good every minute. Every time you thought that was it there was another fight scene.
The Joker was completely & totally an agent of chaos... Perfect.
So... Back home & to my cross-your-fingers & hope this works plan to reclaim my apartment...
So... I leave my window open... The side it opens onto is fenced in & this being Chicago, the building next door is also a fence jump in the way.
The first fence is an electronic gate, which will allow me access to the fence surrounding my window... There's a gap between the frame & gate that I might be able to ninja through... Then I notice a side gap between gate, side, & garage that looks easier...
After sliding through this... Picture: a 2 or 3 ft gap, but an overhang from the garage making you need to bend like an 's'... I clumsily drop to the yard & the first fence is jumped. Yay me, the ninja!
I've been playing a lot of Gaiden Black, which was inspiring, yet daunting, since I am, indeed, not a ninja outside of the game.
The next fence had no such helpful hand & foot holds... I had only the tree that put me at roughly the right height, but bent away from the fence at a easily climbed angle.
I tried quite a few different approaches... The mostly likely being to have my toe jammed into the top of the fence, my other pushing off of the tree, thus vaulting me over the fence & in front of my very own teasingly open window...
Sadly, the same imagination that pictured ninja Ryu vaulting it with a flip, also supplied me with variations on how I might fail...
I leapt over to slam hands first through the glass of my window...
...to smack roughly against the stone wall...
...to impale myself through leg, ass, back, or balls...
After hanging in varying poses of sweaty anticipation, psyching myself up for an increasingly more inescapable, & grisly consequence...
I grudgingly left the neighbor's yard by the front gate.
I felt defeated by my fear, yet suspecting that fear had saved my balls for another day.
I slept on my friend's spare bed & accepted my landlady's suggestions that I hang my keys around my neck with only a twinge of irritation.
Since I'm not a ninja, clearly, the noise they might make would be fine...