Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
~Benjamin Franklin

photo credit: nDevilTV

Traditionally this is the time of year that I do the typical year in review type post. I broke tradition the past several years by either not posting at all or posting my todo list / resolutions for the year. Since the todo thing worked out well last year, I'm going to be wild and do both this year, though not in the same post. I'm writing this amid dirty looks and calls of "see you next year!" at a crowded Starbucks. The dirty looks are probably because I'm taking up an entire couch thingy with my feet propped up. Too bad! It's near a power outlet. Finders keepers and all that.

2009 in Rewind
I don't think there's any way I can describe 2009 other than frelling awesome. (Yes, I used frelling in a sentence. I'm aware it's a made up word. So is grok and I plan to use that at some point too so shove off.) Overall I think 2009 has gone well for me

Where I succeeded:

• I got in better shape. It hasn't been as quick as I wanted but I think I had some pretty unrealistic expectations going in. I've still got a long way to go but now I'm educated. I know more about muscle groups, exercises, and nutrition which will make this year even easier. It's like running downhill I think; the further you go the easier it gets. Daily Burn and my trainer Dennis were vital parts of this process as was the support of my friends and family.
• I was better at managing my money. I've setup automatic transfers into savings each pay check and a small spending stipend for things like books and movies. Mint.com has been a huge bonus to getting this done. Mint is like an automated version of Quicken allowing for automatic transaction categorization and alerts for a variety of situations (pending credit card payments, over budget, etc).
• Get more into my hobbies. Another one for the "win" column. I've been delving more and more into amateur digital photography/art, even to the point of opening my own store to sell prints. I've read more too, thanks to the Kindle app for the PC and iPhone, and I'm keeping up with it all via GoodReads. I rebuilt my website into something I like and I'm willing to maintain. As a side benefit I've learned a ton more about WordPress and I've actually done some custom site work and hosting. Hiking and camping excursions continue to grow, though not quite to the level I'd like. Moving out to San Diego will probably help that quite a bit.
• I moved to San Diego. Oh yes, this was a goal and it was most definitely met.

Where I failed:

• Self improvement. I didn't add a new technical skill or certification to my repertoire, and I didn't learn a new language. Gonna have to bump this one into this coming year.

Everything else:

• I bought a new car.
• I got invaded by ants.
• I had a few issues with the neighbors.
• I (unsuccessfully) tried Rogaine. More on this later.
• Attended MetaCon '09. Words cannot describe this event, ever. Probably because of the gag order from the judge. This year's MetaCon 2010 promises to be better!
• I got a job with Sony and moved to San Diego.
• Got told the truth a lot. Example: : patience (you don't have) is a virtue (again which you don't have)
• Did a fair amount of blogging. God, I hate that word. How about we say writing instead?
• Gained (and lost) a roommate.
• Went camping twice. Must do more!
• Got closer to my family. (Yeah, a win/loss there right? )
• Did I mention I took a lot of pictures?
• Got inspired by a pretty awe-inspiring blog post related to Harry Potter. I kid you not. Thankfully it's mostly due to the writer not the Harry Potter aspect.

Stay tuned for the 2010 todo list! Here's to another awesome year.

Aren't neighbors great? One of the highlights of apartment living for me is the opportunity to have so many close neighbors. Where else but an apartment complex can you pay extra for the ability to share walls with someone else? Not in them thar fancy houses, no sir! I personally think that's why most mortgages are so low; you're not getting to share walls/floors/ceilings with other people! With an apartment you're paying for the privilege of living near everyone. By that logic I wonder how much it would cost to live in a sardine can.

Of course there's a downside to this shiny happy sharing world- sometimes, very rarely, you get bad neighbors. Maybe they throw wild parties and don't invite you, or hang pictures all night. Yup, just pounding away at the walls with hammers in a rhythmic fashion. Definitely hanging pictures. Whatever the case may be everyone has had them and everyone has had to deal with them. But what happens when YOU'RE the bad neighbor? I've never thought of myself as the bad neighbor. I've definitely thrown a few shindigs in my day, listened to my fair share of gangsta rap too loud at night (west side!), and certainly I've cranked the bass for the occasional testosterone-and-explosion movie fest from time to time. Despite all of that I've never once had a complaint lodged against me in all my 10 years of apartment living until last week.

It started innocently enough. A voicemail popped up on my cell Monday morning from my apartment complex letting me know that "a neighbor" had complained about noise from my apartment over the weekend. They were very helpful, even going so far as to give me a few tips and pointers on how to move my subwoofer away from the walls so to not disturb others. "It's not the actual VOLUME you understand, just the bass every now and again. Thanks for looking into it!" I'm sure it's just a random coincidence that I had finished running the wiring for my surround sound setup the day before, and had felt the need to test it a wee bit. I shrugged it off with a laugh and a mental "oops" and went about my week. "Boy", I thought. "How lucky am I to move into an apartment complex that offers surround sound hookup advice?! Who needs GeekSquad? Not me buddy! I got Mission Ridge."

Friday night rolls around and I'm deep into my latest addiction- internet pr0n. Kidding... that's my fallback addiction. I'd been squeezing in a few hours of Dragon Age: Origins between work and gym nights, so I was looking forward to an uninterrupted romp through the game. Instead I got a visit from my upstairs neighbor at 11:30 at night. Talk about immersion breaking yeah? Nothing like opening the door to a barefoot schlub wearing pajama pants and an Affliction T-shirt to get you out of the RPG mood. Maybe he should have shown up dressed as Elrond (or his daughter, rawr!) and I'd have been more receptive. Instead the conversation went more like this:

Him: "So uh, like, hey. We can sorta hear some noise from down here? We think it's the bass from your stereo. It's definitely not the volume though, no question!. You seem like a nice guy even though I just met you and..."
Me: "Hrm, that's weird. Can you hear anything like now? I mean my door and windows are open, did you hear anything outside?"
Him: "Upstairs, yeah! But not out here. Want to come listen?"
Me: "Not really. I mean, it's 11:30 at night...."
Him: "Um... right.. I mean...
Me: "Kbye!"

Understandably I was confused; what kind of magical sound could travel through the floor, walls, ceiling, and air to reach out and disturb these poor people and yet not be audible from eight feet away. Clearly witchcraft was afoot or I was being framed. Or both... those crafty witches, always out to get us techno-savy regular folks. Obviously a case of techno-envy. If it wasn't the witches then certainly this was a fluke right? To be on the safe side I lowered the bass, treble, and overall volume on the subwoofer, but apparently that wasn't enough as someone began pounding on my ceiling at 9:30 on Sunday night. Now THAT was some magical floor transitioning noise.

By Tuesday I'd found a letter on my door. Reading between the lines (and the grammar issues) its obvious that he's been complaining to the apartment complex again. I'm going to call them in the morning to see what we can do to straighten this out. Between the letter, the neighbor harassment, and reading things like this on the web, it makes me lean pretty strongly towards finding another place when my lease is up in March.

Albert was the first neighbor we met after moving into the new place. Albert was roughly middle aged and didn't really seem to fit in well. He drove a beat up Cadillac when he left his apartment which was rare, and he continually left his door open and blared hip hop music over the parking lot.

Albert made his debut as he sat on his deck and watched us unload the moving truck. Literally. The man probably eyeballed every box and item we unloaded. He managed to ask my roommate for a trip to the check cashing place because he was too drunk to drive. We all sort of laughed it off that night, but it was two days later when I had my first (and last) run in with him.

It was Friday afternoon; I had the day off and my niece was out of school. She spent the night and hung out with me all day until my sister came to pick her up at 3. Maybe 10 minutes passed when I get a phone call; apparently they were still in the parking lot and she needed help. I freaked out and ran downstairs, blowing past a laughing Albert as he sat on the stairs below his apartment landing watching everything unfold. In the parking lot my sister was talking to a strange black woman while my niece sorta hide behind her leg. I walked up and the woman turned to me.

"Oh my God! Theresa is this your brutha? Nice to meet you Theresa's brutha! Me and her been friends a looong time." I took one look at this woman and the first word that sprang to mind was "crack whore". There was a flaky whiteness around her mouth/nose. Her hair was wild, and she was wearing shorts, tank top, and flip-flops. She sniffled a lot, and I don't think she was in need of some Benedryl. I turned to my sister and gave her a BS story about other sister waiting on her. My niece, ever happy to play along chimed in with "Oh boy we're going to Aunt Chel's house!". My sister fled and I began walking toward the building with the crack whore following me. She rambled on about how she was trying to get Theresa to give her a ride because she needed to check on her baby right? Her baby daddy wasn't home to watch the kids, just her 14 year old... the story got bigger and better every second. I knew better but I asked anyway:

"So uh...how did you two meet?"
"Oh we met a looong time ago, downtown. I haven't seen your sister in forever! What's your name? I know Theresa told me but I done forgot"
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Say, you got a car?"
"Nope, my roommate is at work in it."
"How about a phone?"
"Nope, just moved in. No service yet."

By this point, we were starting up the stairs, and Albert was watching us both. We get to the landing and she starts in again.

"So which one you live in?"
"One on the third floor."
"You aren't being too specific."
"Nope, I'm not. Have a nice day."

At this point Albert stands up and tells her to get back in the house. I go on upstairs and lock the door to call my sister.

As it turns out Albert had apparently picked up this crack whore downtown and brought her back out here. She got here and freaked out and was trying to leave or call someone to come get her. My sister never would tell me why she gave the woman her name.

One call to the front office later and Albert was told to move. Surprisingly enough this wasn't the first complaint against him.

Part 1 of the story is here.
Part 2 of the story is here.

So the stage was set. Steak? Check. Booze? Check. Friends? Check. Lots of shit needing to be unpacked? Check. I was forgetting something... Oh right. I didn't own a grill.

Grill/groceries/booze and two hours later we were ready. Park and Michelle were on the deck trying to figure out how to assemble the grill when the instructions consisted of only pictures. I couldn't trust Michelle near fire unattended, and Park had helped load us up, so we decided they needed a break. We ended up with a two stage unloading process; one team unloaded the truck to the parking lot while the other carried it up the stairs. Thanks to four extra sets of hands we managed to get everything unloaded before 8. We were starving, but everyone was afraid to light the grill. It's not that I didn't trust Park or my sister, it's just that I had a strong desire to live to see tomorrow and handling combustible chemicals via pictures doesn't fill me with comfort. We all cowered behind furniture and boxes for that first test light. "Late as always Layla" took over the cooking of the steaks while the rest of us tried to recover from the repeated trips up and down the stairs.

It was after dinner that we met our first neighbor. Specifically, Albert. Albert is a middle aged man who lives across the hall and one floor down. Albert doesn't really fit in with many of the residents as he has a tendency to leave his door open blaring hip hop loud enough to be heard from the parking lot. Albert first came around when Jeff was unloading his car. Apparently Albert had been drinking and asked Jeff to give him a ride to "that there check cashing place". Jeff mumbled something and promptly ran away.

After all the drama of the move, the unloading was probably the easiest part. Unpacking would take weeks: I slept on a love seat for the first week before I could work up the energy to go buy a new mattress and bed. Jeff and I learned a lot though:

1. You'll have crazy neighbors wherever you go.
2. Save time and energy. Hire movers.
3. Never underestimate your friends. Especially their ability to move your belongings while drinking.
4. Lemon pepper is probably not the best seasoning for steak. Any port in a storm I suppose.
5. Don't wait until 1am to take a shower after unloading. What do you mean there's no hot water? Yeah, the hot water heater is outside. I don't know why the pilot won't light. Yes I'm doing it right.
6. To have hot water, it helps to call and connect gas service. The apartment complex maintenance guy will laugh at you otherwise.
7. The nice lady at the gas company will put a rush on your order if you give her your heart rending tale of multiple cold showers.
8. Always make sure your heat works when you move in. Several weeks into our first month the temperature dipped into the 20s. It got cold.

Part 1 of the story is here.
Part 3 of the story is here.

Apparently Destiny didn't put up much of a fight or the colander on Jeff's head had some extra-ordinary properties that gave him an edge in battle. +1 vs one of the Endless? Either way we ended up being doomed to pack and move our shit ourselves. On top of that, my landlady announced we had to repaint the place before we could leave; we (I) had done some renovations to the place (mostly just some new paint and ceiling fans) and I most certainly was NOT going to spend my weekend and money repainting those walls over. I was ready to just duck out on when when my next door neighbor saved the day. It turns out that Robin was moving in, she liked the paint job, and she wanted it as is. Our landlady warned her she would have to paint it when she left but apparently she was planning to duck out much like I was. I guess that's classified as a win/win/lose.

Now one of the reasons we ended up moving ourselves was Jeff's debit card got stolen (and abused) over the weekend so financing the move became extremely tricky. We tried contacting a discount place, Two Men and a Mule, but never got an estimate. Maybe they were on siesta, maybe they didn't move gringos, maybe they weren't even Mexican. Most likely they didn't like the sound of "moving from a two story townhouse to third floor loft" because I know I sure as hell didn't. Damn my honesty.

The morning of the move dawned clear and cool so we we headed over to UHaul to snag a truck. It put us a bit behind schedule; apparently discussing your boss's colonoscopy is more important that helping customers. With the help of our dedicated friend Park we began loading the 24 foot UHaul at around 11.

And continued loading.
And loaded some more.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that we had slightly underestimated exactly how much junk we had to move. I gave away my queen sized bed frame, mattresses, futon, and futon chair and we STILL had too much. I even went so far as to throw my coffee table and nightstand into a dumpster which was probably "rescued" by some of my old neighbors as soon as we drove out of site. I was that desperate about not wanting to move it. By the time it was all loaded and we drove to the new place it was almost four and people were expected to show at six to help us unload. We were dirty, stinky, and exhausted from carrying things down from the second floor of the townhouse: the last thing we wanted to do was carry it up to the third floor at the new place by ourselves. We drove the UHaul over, made a few car trips to get last minute bits and settled down for a break. My sister showed up not too long after so we hit the store for steak and beer to bribe my future unpackers with...

Editor's Note: Sadly this post was funnier with pictures, but they've since been lost to the fickleness of the internet and bad harddrives (because I was a chump and not using Flickr back then). I'm still trying to find old copies to put back in.

Part 2 of the story is here.
Part 3 of the story is here.

I've talked about my neighbors before; we have a semi-classic love hate relationship: I love to hate them. I probably shouldn't make such a broad statement as some of them have been pretty good, but the really bad ones are really, really bad. Midtown began sliding down the slippery slope of ghetto-ness in the three years since I've moved here so it's finally time to move on. I've ignored it as long as possible as I hate moving with a passion. It always tends to end up becoming a deep spring (fall) cleaning because I'm too lazy to take everything with me. I say fall cleaning because without fail I always seem to move then. It's also come to be associated with massive upheaval in my life with what I can only assume is something similar to Army brat syndrome.

Since I've lived here, I've seen:

• 1 fight in the parking lot over food stamps (With real police action.)
• 1 bounty hunter taking a guy away while his four year old daughter stood there and cried.
• Countless screaming matches (Now with and without police!)
• One wreck in the parking lot. The girl's brakes failed and she managed to clip my old convertible before slamming into the front brick wall and collapsing half. (Once again guest starring the police!)
• One hurricane (I was at the office most of the time so no problems there. Unsure if the police came, but there were a lot of people sitting on their porches)
• One guy arrested for various things, some real some not. (Yes police came, and yes it was me)
• One guy arrested for murder of a gay man at another apartment complex.
• One guy arrested for failing to register as a sex offender. (This was not me)
• One family of raccoons run out and shot for setting off a burglar alarm constantly.
• One tree falling into the building as three idiots tried to cut it down and managed to pull it INTO the building instead of away.
• One lesbian couple making up after one of the screaming matches mentioned above.
• I got a roommate.

It's been an unforgettable three years to say the least, though not in a Nat King Cole kind of way mind you, more of a post-9/11 sort of unforgettable. I think the word "traumatic" sums it up nicely. I've said I always try to live my life with no regrets and I definitely do not regret living here. Had the neighborhood not steadily declined I might have stayed longer.

So the packing has begun. It seems like Jeff was just moving in. I can't believe it was six short months ago. We were originally planning to move it all ourselves (with help from friends to unpack) but after realized that the new place was on the third floor, and that it's going to rain on the moving day it became increasingly clear fate was pushing us toward hiring movers so who am I to fight destiny?