My upstairs neighbor has an annoying little yipping dog.
She lets it out onto her balcony frequently (sometimes in the middle of the night), where it decides that it is Lord of All that It Surveys, and proceeds to let loose with its irritating little yip of a bark at anyone or anything that moves in the parking lot.
Bear in mind that this dog is not much larger than a football, making it ideally suited for punting, and so there is a very limited number of living creatures that would feel at all intimidated by its display of aggression.
In any case, Friday night when I came home the dog had, apparently, gotten loose, though it wasn’t bold enough to go much further than the base of the steps of my building. Evidently it’s not quite so bold when not perched atop its balcony, and rather than barking at me, it greeted me with a sheepishly wagging tale.
Suppressing the urge to drop-kick the thing now that I had an opportunity to do so, I ignored the dog and walked over to get my mail. The dog waited by the stairs, then started to accompany me up the stairs before finally running up past me and waiting for me at the top.
Once it had a height advantage the dog became bolder, so for the last part of my trek up to my apartment I was treated to its annoying yip.
I sighed, suppressed the kicking impulse again, and continued on toward my apartment door, ignoring the skittering little bastard’s barking.
It continued to bark at me as I juggled the load of my gym and lunch bags, keys, and mail, until finally my lunch bag slid down my arm and made a noise that scared it enough to run up the stairs to the next level, yipping all the way.
As I was finally getting my door open the dog’s owner finally noticed her dog’s distinctively annoying sound and came out to get it. She grabbed the dog and just as I was stepping into my apartment she said, “Sorry,” to which I responded, “Yeah,” with more than a trace of annoyance in my voice.
It’s not just the dog that annoys me about my upstairs neighbor; it’s the fact that whenever she moves around her apartment the whole damn building shakes.
I’ve never really seen her clearly, but from the glimpse I caught on Friday, she doesn’t look especially heavy, so I don’t understand why her movements are so ponderous.
Beyond how annoying it is to feel the earth move whenever she does, though, it makes me really miss the person who used to live upstairs quite a while back, an absolutely gorgeous young woman who hardly made any noise at all.
The only times I heard her moving around were when she was in her kitchen and her foyer, as neither area is carpeted and she apparently wore her pumps at all times.
Did I mention that she was gorgeous? I used to wonder what she looked like on those occasions when I would hear her and her pumps moving around in her apartment, or when I heard her coming down the stairs, but it took quite a while before I managed to get an actual look at her.
Normally I would get up in the morning, hear her heading down the stairs, walk over to my door and look out through the peephole to try to catch a glimpse of her, only to see the back of her head.
About all I could tell was that she had brown hair, dressed nice, and had a nice body.
One morning I got up and had to actually go somewhere and it occurred to me that if I hurried to get ready I could time my departure in such a way that I could get a look at her, and maybe even talk to her. I took a quick shower, got dressed, and waited by my door, listening to the sound of her heels clicking against the vinyl flooring and for the sound of her door closing.
Once I heard that I did my best to be nonchalant as I just “happpened” to step out at the exact same time she was coming down the stairs.
I was blown away by the sight of her. She was an absolute knockout.
She was also surprisingly friendly, greeting me with a cheerful “good morning” and telling me, as we parted ways in the parking lot, that she hoped I enjoyed my day.
After that I made other excuses to try to encounter her in the morning, but obviously that never led anywhere, and she has been gone for quite some time now, replaced by the human wrecking ball and her little rat dog.
Actually, I think there may have been someone else in the apartment between the hot chick and the wrecking ball, as a lot of the people in this complex seem to go for the six-month lease option. I don’t really understand why that is, though, as rent goes up a couple of hundred dollars a month if you only lease for six months.
But I suppose that most of them are able to afford it, and unlike me they aren’t condemned to a life of renting, and so they probably go that route because they’re just biding time until their houses get built or they close on a house purchase.
But whatever.
So tomorrow I head home for a week.
I’m already pretty much packed, and Brian will be bringing me to the airport, so by this time tomorrow I will have been back in Michigan for several hours.
I don’t know that it’ll be a relaxing vacation, but it will at least be a change of pace.
After doing what packing I could and tidying up the place a bit so that I don’t have to return to a mess next week, I sat down and pointlessly started working on a picture that there’s almost no chance that I’ll be able to finish tonight, and because I’ll be away from my computer for a week, it’ll end up sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to eventually get back to it. I’d say the odds are about even that I won’t ever bother finishing it, so, under the circumstances, I don’t really understand the perverse nature of my mind that led me to even start working on it.
Lately I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with Google Maps.
If you haven’t checked this feature out yet I highly recommend it. There’s something very cool (if a little disturbing) about being able to see satellite images of where you live.
It’s very similar to Microsoft’s Terra Server, but it’s got some cool usability features that are uniquely its own, and it seems a little bit more up-to-date. Based on the image of the area right around my apartment I’d say the images are about a year and a half to two years old.
One thing that’s interesting, though, is that it doesn’t have Europe, Asia, or Africa included, so if you have it zoomed out to show America (and only North America at that) and start panning over, you’ll go past a big empty patch of blue, punctuated by the UK, before winding up back in America,
In any case, it’s fun to play around with.
I doubt that I’ll be putting up much, if any, entries while I’m away, but I’m sure I’ll have lots of stories to tell when I return.
For now, though, I think I’ll do some pointless work on that picture.
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