Won't You Flee, My Neighbor?

While apartment life may seem grand and glamourous, do not be fooled. It does have its drawbacks. And these drawbacks, they live downstairs.

The general idea behind apartment living is that several people (hereafter referred to as tenants) indirectly agree to co-occupy a single location (hereafter referred to as location) for a pre-set rental rate, which is paid to the owner to the location. The owner gets to make the executive decision on who gets to take part in this co-occupation.. Tenants also enjoy some ancillary services provided by the owner, including common area janitorial, and centralized mail delivery. The rest is up to the tenants to figure out.

How does one live in a peaceful state when habitating in an apartment building? You're surrounded by 10 groups of strangers, who you had no say when it came to selecting neighbors. And yet, like a casino employee, you must deal. Sure, God and our leasing office could have blessed us with friendly, outgoing people that would welcome your presence walking on their ceiling, but that would make for too easy of a time. It's the renting time in your life, and so, you must persevere.

Our neighbors due south (ok, by south I mean downstairs, I know how a compass works) are not such people. In fact, I've never caught their name. So for the purpose of this blog, I will borrow a page from El Libro de Harford and arbitrarily assign them one. We'll call them the IcedTea Family (it's easy to stir them.) As per my recordkeeping, we've had three brushes with them. Each one involved us making too much noise.

Now here's the thing you may not realize: these people are crazy. The first time, we got a visit from the sun. His communication skills are the most polished, and he paid us a visit on Sunday night around 11:40 to tell us to stop running, he's trying to sleep. I couldn't figure out who of us was running more - Spud, who for the last hour had been sitting on the couch reading - or Condon, who had been on his computer chair for a good 40 minutes. You see, our AC had just kicked on, which cause the kid unrest. But rather than explain to him the inner workings of an HVAC cooling system, as it runs throughout an apartment building, where it may cause stange noises within the walls, I just said, "Fine, we'll stop running.?!" With the language barrier, I just figured it be easier. Big mistake.

Now that they think we're training for the Olympics, twice more they have come up to combat our disturbance. Once, the culprit was a spirited game of Dance Dance Revolution, ("The floor, is pounding my house.", and the other was music ("Yeah", Usher). Spud won the right to claim DDR as exercise, as well as the right to do it during the day. This was done by means of civil communication between he and Mr. IcedTea. Conflict: Resolved.

The music episode was anything but civil. Rather than come upstairs to ask us to turn down the song, Mr. IcedTea decided to allow law enforcement intervene. I'm sure the police hates these calls. If for no other reason than the trip could have been saved by the neighbor coming upstairs, asking, and finally, compliance.

I think everyone can agree that there's a level of volume that comes with living in an apartment. Hell, we have a dog upstairs who probably IS training for the Olympics, and he's always followed by little kids, up and down the hallway. To our left, they listen to their movies loud. I could have sworn Sky Captain was going to bring the whole World of Tomorrow through our wall a few weeks ago. We've never complained, assuming that these people know that they're loud but understand their surroundings.

The reason we blog on this today is that we've got our only real social-hosting function of the year coming up this Sunday, Oscar Party 2.0, and we're wondering if the IcedTeas are going to call the National Guard on us. This isn't a college-party throwdown, it's just some people getting together to watch the Academy Awards. The only reason it could be loud is the headcount. And we're not planning on training for the Olympics. So what do we do, YABites? Bribe them with cookies? Give them back their basketball they threw on our balcony? Call the cops on them pre-emptively?

We need your help.