May 31, 2005   Woke with a start today to the sound of someone beating on the front door. "What the hell," I thought, then remembered that beating the door down is how the apartment maintenance workers knock. Panic ensued, being that if you don't answer the door in 30 seconds, the maintenance guys let themselves in, which is bad when you're half asleep and naked.

I grabbed my clothes and ran for the door, only to discover that it wasn't one of the maintenance workers. The maintenance guys are hispanic and they're all really nice, but this guy looked like a short, snarly version of Jeff Foxworthy and he just stood there glaring at me, like I was wasting his valuable time by having no idea who he was or why he was there.

"Phone!" he barked, which baffled me. As best I remembered, the phone actually rings, it doesn't send angry rednecks to your front door to tell you to answer it. Looking at me as though I were a moron, he snarled, "the phone!" as if adding -the- to the front of phone would clear things up. When I still had no clue as to why a stranger had stopped by to angrily impersonate a phone, he dug deep into his vocabulary bag and managed to string a whole sentence together. "Do you have static on your phone?"

With that, I knew what he was talking about. We called the apartment management weeks ago to report static on our phoneline, and they said it wasn't their problem and to have the phone company fix it. So we did. Qwest came by and got things taken care of, but we didn't think we needed to report it to the apartment twits, since they wouldn't help in the first place. But, efficient as ever, they sent this guy over to take care of an issue we reported weeks ago and were told wasn't their problem.

I told the guy that the phone company had fixed the problem, and the look of contempt that crossed his face nearly catapulted his eyebrows right off his head. "You had the phone company fix it?" he snarled, "did you ever think of letting us know that?" I half expected him to continue on with "you never call, you never write..." but instead he just stomped off. But that's understandable. I'm sure this pesky maintenance job really detracts from his work at the U.N.

I went back to bed but, just as I layed down, the toddler upstairs started screaming and screamed for an hour. That's our neighbors' new way of dealing with the kid's tantrums, they just let him scream until he shuts up or passes out. So instead of sleep, I layed in bed and fantasized about moving to a deserted island where there are no toddlers, no angry redneck maintenance guys, and no black mold. But since the $700/month we pay in rent isn't enough for an island, we'll have to settle for a new apartment, but as long as it has no demon toddlers, I'll be happy. Hell, I'd be happy living in a box, just as long as it was quite and had DSL.

Is silence and a fast net connection too much to ask for?

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