key change

[calimac]

Years ago, when I was living in an apartment with a small mailbox that was particularly exposed to the elements, I got myself a P.O. Box at a local post office. I've kept it ever since; it's convenient as a supplementary address that doesn't change, for correspondence that goes on at the scale of the great slow kings - like orders for my Le Guin bibliography - and some other miscellaneous circumstances. I have mail-order concert tickets sent there, because concert announcements and other music material are the only type of junk mail I want to scoop up as much of as possible, and not to risk losing track of when I move.

So the address doesn't change, but the location just did. I think I read a while ago that the PO is planning to replace the old building, but whether the move is temporary or not, the announcements went up on the door a couple months ago that the facility was moving. So, effective today, it's no longer on the edge of downtown with a parking lot, but in the middle with street parking. And no more opening the box by turning a little twirly dial in a combination I had to keep stepping outside to refresh my mind and remember. Now the old brass and glass-plate front has been replaced by soulless aluminum that you open with a key.

When I arrived today and saw this, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to get this key. I stood in the line at the counter prepared to be told, "What? You didn't get the message earlier? Too late now." Instead, as I waited, a clerk called out, "Anyone here just to pick up a box key?" One ID check later, it was mine.

My key chain now has:
1. My house key
2. Key to the back gate to our complex
3-4. The two keys to my mother's apartment building
5. Bicycle lock key
6. Key to the library I work at
7. PO box key
8-9. Two local library cards, the ones which come in key-chain-friendly 1 x 3 inch form with a hole in the end.

I don't keep the new-fangled large-security-head car keys on my key chain.

Comments

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

My keychain is in two parts -- a "Marley" as my mother called hers (though she had FAR more on hers than I have on mine). The car key is on one ring. Then there is a detachable second ring for all the other keys. Keeps everything together, and I can take all the house keys, etc. off it when using valet parking, or leaving the car with the mechanic.

Heh. "Marley"... yes, my mother had a dry sense of humor. The Dickens, you say.