Kind of. At any rate I start my new job tomorrow. I’m a mix of excitement and apprehension. Looking forward to work with/for an old friend. Looking forward to being around people. A little hesitant about going back to the same company and into the same field. Didn’t get as much done during my time off as I wanted… but that would always be true not matter how much I got done or how long I had off.

I have orientation tomorrow – it must be the fifth or sixth time I’ve had to attend. Wonder if anything has changed…

Oh yeah… got a job. I start June 1st. After having been laid off for 6 months. It’s back at the same company. I’m conflicted. I want to work, but I’m enjoying my time off – mostly because it’s paid. Anyway, this basically mirrors everything that happened back in January 2002. Specifically check out January 2nd – 8th.

This isn’t about the swine flu – don’t get all ought 9 on me. This is about me becoming this guy. Yep, I’m having noisy neighbor woes. The thing is, I read that original post where I complain about the neighbor complaining about my noise and I’m conflicted. In that case I didn’t feel we were making excessive noise and that he was just a crotchety old man trapped in a twenty-something frame. In this case I feel like they’re being obnoxiously noisy… but only about once a week.

And usually on weekends.

Blech. So basically when Mr. Complainy moved out of the apartment below us, everything was golden. The people next door were fairly quiet and the people below too. And better yet, no one complained about us. Then a couple of months ago the neighbors two floors down moved up and directly underneath us. The only reason I know this is because of a sign on the door downstairs posted for the mailman. Again everything seemed okay. They seemed relatively nice – a head nod, or “How ya doing?” in the hallway on occasion. Then one night while M and I are watching TV this huge noise vibrates up through the floor, rattling glasses and freaking us out. It was bass. LOTS OF BASS. But only for a few minutes. Accidental volume adjustment? Maybe, happens to us sometimes when TiVo kicks out of pause. And everything was grand.

For two weeks. Then it happened again. For about 20-30 minutes. I got the idea that maybe they were covering up the sounds of love with sounds of early 90s drum and bass. Seemed plausible. And so life continued on. Until St. Patty’s Day when it went well into the night. I totally didn’t sleep. I left a nice note about keeping the noise down after 11pm (seemed more than generous) and things settled down. Till last Friday when they wents nuts and ran their little dance club until maybe 12 or 1am. And now again tonight… although we’re only at 8pm.

1. Is it noisy? Yes. Very. The floor vibrates, glasses shake and I we have a hard time understanding the TV or going to sleep.
2. Is it on a school night? Well… no.
3. Are they rude otherwise? No, actually they seem quite nice. I’ve had nice conversations with the girl.
4. Any other complaints about then? No. They seem – great. No trash in the hallway. We never hear them fight.
5. So what’s my fucking problem? I don’t know.

I think what was a minor annoyance caused by noise has now drifted into an almost phobia of hearing sounds drift up from below. And now I’m more annoyed that I’m annoyed in the first place. I’m turning into an old annoying neighbor upstairs. I’m having a hard time turning off this anxiety. But I’ll keep trying, because they’re really not that bad.

My friend T lived below a crackhead… DJ Downstairs really ain’t that bad.