hello friends

So here we are at Sundance At The Crossings. The name is painfully pretentious, but witness the perks of living here:

• No pounding car stereos!
• No pounding neighborstereos!
• No indication that we have neighbors at all, in fact, except that sometimes they come home and sometimes you see them quietly walking to and from their cars!
• No garbage in the hallways!
• When things break, it is not blamed on you until finally the sixth guy who comes out admits that, hey, actually the disposal was installed improperly and is COMING OUT OF THE SINK!
• No drug dealers trying to flag us down!
• No River Of Death (to be explained later) in the parking lot!
• I'm not afraid to go outside by myself!

And so on.

Mecha and I do have to live in one little bedroom now (he's planning to sleep in the huge walk-in closet once we clear it out enough to fit his futon in there), and we have to share a bathroom which eww share bathroom with boy when boys are yucky, but really, these are tiny sacrifices. Assuming we can survive having to live with mechamom who is the world's biggest neat-freak, we shall be cool. (case in point: she washes disposable plates before throwing them in the trash.)

There are cool paintings in our room. I should take pictures and share them later. They were made by Quentin's mom who is an abstract arteest. Quentin, for those who have forgotten, is mecha's stepdad. And his mom can do incredible things with a paintbrush. Tiny, tiny intricate lines of color that will no doubt not show up on camera.

Okay, I think I have nothing else to say about the new apartment, so I will explain the River Of Death. And I shall do it in story mode.

"Once upon a time, Wyckford Commons stank. Literally, in this case. A foul, lingering stench of human sewage filled the air both outside and in the upstairs hallways. It caused all those who smelled it to gag and wish fervently that they were elsewhere.

After a few hours of this, mecha and Jenny had gone somewhere to escape the stench. As they walked across the parking lot to the car, they had perhaps noticed, but paid no attention to, the water running across to where it puddled up by the drainage grate. However, on returning anew to Wyckford, and finding it smellier than ever, they looked upon the water with a wary eye.

"Look, look at the water," said Jenny. "The water is brown," said Jenny. "Why is the water brown?"

"Maybe a sewage line burst," said mecha. "Hah. This place really is full of shit."

"Well, so much for this story having Dick-and-Jane-style dialogue," said Jenny.

Jenny walked cautiously up to the edge of the water, squatted down, and inhaled cautiously. A second later she was leaping up again and hurrying away. "The water smells even worse!" she exclaimed. "I think that must be where it's coming from."

Thereafter Jenny and Mecha had to walk the looooong way around to get from their car to the apartment via sidewalks, because the river of smelly brown water blocked their way through the lot itself. As the days went by, the standing water dried, leaving a distinct brown stain behind it.

No one ever came to clean it up. No explanation for the stench, the water, or the lingering brown stain was ever provided. And as far as Jenny and Mecha know, that stain sits there to this day."

And that is the story of the River of Death.

Now to eat swedish meatballs made with green ketchup!

This is from mechamom's computer, so don't get excited and think I'm back yet. 'Cause I ain't. I won't be until mid-October at least.

For the record, mechamom's computer's spacebar SUCKS and after this sentence I am no longer going back to fix when it doesn't work.

We're finally getting out of thehorrible hellhole that is our current apartment,which is exceedingly nice. The downside is that we're goingto be sharing a two-bedroomwith mechamom and mechastepdad, which will be abit tight seeing as mecha and I aren't really inthe habit ofsharing abedroom. But the apartment is here inthe same complex as mechamom's current apartment, which isa lovely complex with the following attributes that differ radically from Wyckford Commons:

1. Nobody plays incredibly bass-heavy music for hours at a time and/or at 2 in themorning.
2. Nobody leaves literally dozens of beer bottles sitting out on the grass after their noisy all-night party involving aforementioned music.
3. If someone were to leave asandwich on the steps here, it would not sit there literally until it rotted away, as happened at Wyckford. Cleaning type dudesgo around every morning totake careof the grounds.
4. When you make a maintenance request, they don't a) not ever send someone so for all they know that cloggedtoilet you mentioned is still clogged tothis day; or b) send someone who does a half-assed job, promises to come back and finish later, and never returns. Thus meaning that
4a. What happened inSarah and Ted's apartment here at Wyckford, where the maintenance guys let thekitchen above themflood and THE KITCHEN CEILING BEGAN TO COLLAPSE, wouldnot be responded to by tapingover the bulge and then givingit a fresh coat of paint. (no, that is what really happened.)
5. You get the idea.

Sarah and Ted also moved, toadifferent complex. They too are glad to bid good-bye to Wyckford Commons.

Also, Sarah got ajob which she thenleft about three days later, at a steakhouse nearby... don't tell anyone I told you about all this stuff I'mabout to type, about *cough*thePonderosaonwest10th*cough*, but:
1. Sarah was informed that Indiana is a "no-break state", and so employees at this fine establishment are not given breaks or lunches, paid or unpaid. Except for the manager who gets a one-hour paid break every day.
2. Once this chick who worked there accidentally cut off the end of her finger and it went in somesoup. She dumped it out but was later told that she should have just left it -- it's just "more meat". (Sarah herself talked to the girl who lost the bit of finger, so this is not somecrazy rumor here.)
3. Sarah was asked to forge documents saying that temperatures on the buffet had beenchecked every hour when really it had only been doneacouple times all day.
4. She was also asked to forge documents saying that they had done therequired giant cleaningevery three days when it hadn't been done ina couple weeks.
5. There was more but I forget and mechais makingmehurry.

Also I need someone to log into Puzzle Pirates as me just for a sec so my chars don't get deleted. I'm going to make areal quick special locked post for the few YPP-playing (if you still are) people I knowfor sure won't do evil things while pretending to be me, so people like Jeremy and Andwoo and Tom, make sure you are logged inif you wish to do meafavor kthx. And respond once you've logged as me so nobody else bothers.

Think that was everything, must go, bye! See y'all againthenext timeI make aphonepost out of sheer boredom.

Dear whoever is setting off fireworks in the parking lot again:

It was illegal on the Fourth, but you got away with it. It was still illegal yesterday, and out of season as well. NOW you're just PISSING ME OFF.

Hate,

me.

I'm alive, though the lack of posts lately might suggest otherwise.

The neighbors below us left broken glass strewn about the hallway in front of their door AGAIN. I wonder if this time it will be swept up in less than two weeks.

I just realized that my family has probably already left Brea for West Virginia. Poop. I meant to call one last time before they did. Now I will have to wait till mom calls me since I have no way of contacting her.

Oh no, my bees!

So there is a new apartment manager now, and she sent out a letter that claims that they will be cracking down on various rules violations. We shall see whether this means that asking for rules enforcement will no longer result in sarcastic offers to kill other people's pets.

In unrelated news, I ruin everything I touch. For at least five minutes now I have been fighting the urge to just start screaming and possibly never stop.

It is hot. Very, very hot. The A/C is broken AGAIN and the maintenance guys won't answer mecha's calls -- he gets auto-shunted to voicemail. Meanwhile, Doyle is flopped over on his back with his legs sticking up looking dead, and our new special needs hamster¹ Gràinne (pronounced GRAW-nya, the name of a fearsome pirate queen way back when) keeps flattening herself out on the bottom of her cage.

Also meanwhile, for the first time in weeks, I am having trouble breathing again. I'd hoped it was just an allergic reaction to some plant that was no longer blooming or whatever, but it appears that the humidity also has something to do with it, because without the A/C to dry out the apartment air, here I am again, taking a breath and then coughing because any but the very shallowest of breaths hurt my throat/upper chest. So I guess I officially have a recurring respiratory ailment. Bah.

We expect the maintenance guys to be all "dur you are moving soon why do we have to bother to fix the air conditioner", whenever they do finally start not purposefully ignoring us.

On the plus side, I have a nice cold Coke, and Doyle is cute. Gràinne is cute too, but mean.

Of course, she is a fearsome pirate queen.


1. She's a little dwarf hamster, supposedly not quite three months old. She was a classroom pet at a home/school for, basically, troubled girls, and it is suspected that one of the girls abused her² because now she bites like nobody's business (I had my hand a couple inches above her head at one point and she actually leapt up to attack me -- almost got me, too). Either we took her or she got put down. So we took her. If we can eventually get her to not bite, great, but if not, we will simply let her live out her life without any handling except for if we need to put her in her little wheel module so we can clean the main cage. Mecha has gloves he can wear that she cannot bite through no matter how hard she tries.

2. For one thing, she named the poor creature Princess. I mean, come on.

Teenagers or possibly adults are setting off fireworks outside.

BY THROWING THEM AT A BUILDING.

To quote mecha: "This place is surreal."

Also, earlier we took photos of that dog to the office. The managerbitch responded by saying that neighbors continue to say they do not have a dog, and that she has sent people in there who have seen no dog, and that she personally has to see the dog before she can do anything. Then she angrily asked "what do you want me to do, shoot the dog in the head and get it out of the apartment?" Um, no, we're asking you to enforce the rules. Are those two things the same in your world?

8:00 PM: Go to bed, having been up for about 24 hours, in the hopes of normalizing sleep schedule. For those of you just tuning in: I have severe sleep problems that are normalized slightly by Prozac, which drug I have not had for a month or two. Thus I sleep when I can and wake up exhausted every time, even WITHOUT the type of disturbances listed out below.

12:15ish AM: Awake to sound of neighbors having another drunken loud gathering outside. Yeah, the same ones. Cops are called. Cop comes out and sends the white trash indoors.

1:00ish AM: Neighbors go outside and start yakking it up again. Cops called again. This time they shut up when the cop gets here so all he sees is some people standing quietly in the parking lot and thus he does nothing. Also, the (fairly large, maybe a lab mix) dog kept out on the (fairly small) balcony across the way, having been out there and barking for (mecha says) about three hours, is seen shivering and pawing frantically to be let in.

1:10 AM: A couple of the people from downstairs come up here and pound on our door, yell for a bit, then go away.

Thereafter there is some laughing and yelling and repeated door-slamming heard from their apartment, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Man, the office bitch is gonna be pissed when we dare to complain about the above.

Well, mecha and mechamom went to talk to apartment complex management about all the shit we've been having to put up with. Y'know, the drunken parties that go on long past midnight, the slamming doors and screaming domestic fights, the large dog kept locked in a bathroom where it whimpers and howls for hours on end basically every single day, all that good stuff.

Apparently first the office woman threatened to throw them out of the office. Then she obliquely threatened Sarah and Ted's tenancy (in, if you'll recall, another apartment in this same complex). By all accounts she was furious that anyone would come to her with complaints about their neighbors.

Also, apparently the fact that the disposal keeps clogging is all my fault. You see, I have been using it incorrectly. It MUST NOT EVER be asked to deal with pasta. Or vegetables of ANY KIND. Mecha says that when she was asked what, exactly, the disposal WAS for, the office woman responded...

Bread crumbs.

Just bread crumbs.



.....

So. Yeah.

At least three, probably four or even more neighbors are having a drunken revelry outside. It has been going on since about 11:15. It has been getting louder all the while, and since midnight or so they have been blaring the stereo with, naturally, wall-shaking bass.

Just now three of them broke into a shouted chant of some kind.

WHY THE FUCK DO WE PAY TO LIVE HERE.