Last night while herding cats back into our apartment, I noticed something strange – there were words carved into our front door. I immediately leapt into Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist Mode, wondering if the idiots upstairs had exacted revenge on our door by carving some (undoubtedly misspelled) bad words or insults into it. A closer inspection of the door told me this wasn’t the case – the words had been there for a very long time, and in fact had been lacquered and coloured over in an attempt to hide the words. The cover-up worked adequately enough, since we’ve lived there for six months and this was the first time I really clued into the fact there were words there and not just scratches. Now that I knew there was a message though, it was time to once again go all CSI up in my bidness.

My first go at deciphering the message was to take a piece of paper and rub a pencil on it to make the words stand out. Only problem: no pencil. Okay, let’s see if this method would work with a highlighter! Conclusion: nope, that doesn’t work. Do I have any crayons handy? I’d long since thrown all my crayons at Steve and didn’t have a single one handy. I did have pencil crayons, but they were all in storage and I was feeling lazy – it was almost midnight. What to do?

I eventually decided on manual translation. I stood at the front door staring at the words until I could make them out, and at long last I was able to figure out what it said.

The message was totally worth the effort, too. If I hadn’t spent 30 minutes of my life Nancy Drewing the words off the door, I would’ve never discovered the following Confucius-like verse:

Boo-Boo’s Place
OH YEAH and the
Loonie!

For some reason, I am less than satisfied.