My Lousy Upstairs Neighbor

So I have this upstairs neighbor. She's mid to late 50's, possibly mentally challenged, and possibly senile. She has an annoying habit of pounding on her floor whenever she thinks we're being too loud. The best part about this is that 90% of the time, we're not being too loud. Either that or it's early in the day when I should be making the most noise.

Like this guy, but a woman. Apparently she works at Wal*Mart.

But when we had our post-hockey party on Sunday, she was at it again, multiple times. And we're throwing a Christmas party this Saturday, with a bunch of people possibly coming. So, since she refuses to answer the door after her pounding acts, I had to write her a note, warning her about the party and telling her I won't be putting up with her shit come Saturday. Oh, and it's full of big(ger) words, to confuse her. And it goes something like this:

To our upstairs neighbors;

We will be having a gathering of close friends and family at our apartment on Saturday, December 19^th, 2009. It will start at 8pm. I am writing this to give you due notice of the event, because you seem to take issue with the level of noise coming from our apartment at times.

I will have my guests remain cognizant of the fact that there are tenants occupying the upstairs apartment. As such, they will be asked to keep their voices at a reasonable speaking level. We will have Christmas music playing, and that too will be kept at a reasonable level. My dart board, which I know can be heard from your apartment, is not to be used past 10:30pm, which seems to me to be a reasonable hour on a Saturday. I will do my best to maintain a reasonable level of noise. However, similar efforts on my behalf have been wasted, and our very reasonable (and sometimes overly-reasonable) levels of noise has been considered to be offensive, as is evidenced by the pounding noises you send out to show your disapproval.

There have been countless occasions on which we have heard your disapproval of our noise level. However, on one particular occasion, I responded to your pounding with a friendly knock on the door, so that we could have a conversation and possibly work out a solution to our mutual annoyance. However, at that time, you did not answer your door, despite the fact that you were clearly home (you had pounded only seconds earlier). It is very clear to me that you are not interested in any sort of conversation or compromise to the situation. This also shows your refusal to take into account our experiences and our issues with the ways that you compose yourself. Due to your actions (and your lack of actions), I will say this:

We will have between 15-25 guests being merry, and I will keep the noise at a reasonable level. However, I will not ask my guests to whisper. I will not ask them to do anything less than a reasonable person would do at a social gathering. Do not pound on your floor; it will go unheeded. As I said, I will keep the volume at what I consider to be a reasonable level; you forfeited your opportunity to explain what a reasonable level is when you refused to answer your door. However, if you would like to take this opportunity to work on a solution, I would implore you to do so. You can feel free to call me at ***-****, so that we may set up a time to meet and talk about the situation. If you do not make contact, we will assume that you understand that we will continue to compose ourselves as we have been. The ball is officially in your court.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Andy Taylor

Apartment 2

So what do you think? Too mean? Too condescending? It won't make a difference, I'm giving it to her tonight. And man, am I looking forward to it.

It's Christmas Time Again

Well, it's about a week before Thanksgiving, and I'm pretty sure we all know what that means: Christmas starts to get laid on pretty thick. It's official. Egg nog is in stores. Star 102.5 has started their all Christmas music, all the time stretch, which I believe goes through New Year's day. Stores, obviously have had their Christmas displays out for at least two weeks already (some before Halloween), but they have all started stepping up their displays with Black Friday just ten days away. Lights are on houses. Decorations are up. I'm starting to think about getting my tree (actually, to be honest, I've been thinking about that since September). The season is upon us. Every year this time of year gets here, and every year I hear people who are surprised that it's here so early. People who are legitimately angry that it's here so early. And I honestly don't understand these folks.

Now granted, I love Christmas. It surpassed Halloween as my favorite holiday after I became too old to trick or treat, and it hasn't wavered. There's nothing on earth right now quite like the spirit of the Christmas season. Even if I have become pretty jaded with religion, I still love everything about Christmas. But don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people that thinks it's OK to be Christmas all year wrong. I don't. Though I would probably like that, I'm not going to lie. But as a matter of principle, so that the Christmas season doesn't get stale, there needs to be a line drawn. And I don't have a problem with the line being a week or so before Thanksgiving.

When you think about it, it's the perfect time. From a marketing standpoint, it's a week or so before Black Friday, the circulars are going out, and it gets everybody thinking about Christmas, which feeds the collective seasonal desperation to find that one perfect gift. And the music? A lot of Christmas music is synonymous with Thanksgiving anyways, or is at least not Christmas-specific. "Baby it's cold outside" is one, and "Over the River and Through the Woods" (which is actually a Thanksgiving song anyways) is another. And the timing will leave Christmas about 5 weeks away, which is way closer than it sounds. Even if you hate seeing signs of Christmas life so early, you will keep hearing the songs and seeing the lights and eventually, when you're ready, you stop being a douche and start to enjoy the season. And for people like me, who wait for months to start hearing this, well, it gives us five or six good weeks to take it all in. So everyone, stop bitching to me whenever I start to hum a Christmas tune, or think out loud about when I'm going to get my tree (I'm thinking the weekend after Thanksgiving. Seriously) or when my phone rings and it's a Christmas carol (I will wait until after Thanksgiving for that, however. I need to use my Adam Sandler Turkey song ringtone and gobble text alert). I enjoy the hell out of this time of year. The season is starting, the excitement is here, don't ruin it for me.

The last thing I wanted to mention is regarding trees. I found this blog, which is basically about a new way to get your Christmas tree - online, through a company called Green Valley Christmas Trees. Seriously, internet? Look, I've been against fake trees since, well, forever. Not just because you can't experience that beautiful pine aroma, either. It's the whole experience, finding a good tree nursery, picking out that perfect tree, getting it wrapped up, on the car, through the door, and finally into the stand and standing upright. It might be a pain in the ass, but it's a fun pain in the ass. You can only do it once a year. With this, you pick out your tree online, it gets FedEx'd to your house, and someone takes it inside for you. Not only does this take all the work out of it, but there are a lot of intangibles in choosing a tree that you can't take into consideration when you're choosing online. You need to choose what side will be facing forward, you need to eye it up to see the trunk (measuring can only do so much), and you need to thoroughly inspect the trunk to make sure it's straight, and that it will fit in your stand, etc. And when you're ordering the tree on the site, you're given a general picture, not necessarily the one you'll be ordering. So you don't really know what you're getting. And the trees are really expensive. Shipping is free, which helps, but the cheapest tree on the site is $89.95. And it's only 3 feet tall. The taller trees go for between $150 and $250. I paid $40 for my 10 footer last year. They don't even have a tree that tall. Their best is 9 feet tall, and it's $244.99. It might work for the casual Christmas observer who wants to finally try a real tree, but I'm not a fan.

And in the blog, it has a poll asking if you would ever consider buying a tree online. I'm glad the majority sided with me (Never! It's sacrilegious, 58%), but I'm worried by the 33% who said "Why not? I order everything else online". And 9% said "I'll do anything to avoid another traumatic Christmas tree nursery incident". Traumatic Christmas tree nursery incident? What does that even mean? Does it mean your old man blew a flat on the way home from getting the tree, and when you went to help him you spilled the bolts and accidentally dropped the F-bomb?

Because that's not even the nursery's fault.

I will, however, concede the fact that this service is perfect for older folks who can't physically handle getting a real tree, and don't want to puss out and buy a fake, plastic, shitty one. But anyone who is physically able should get out off their asses and get their own real tree.

Well, that's all for today. If you've learned anything at all, it should have been "don't mess with my holiday". I'll try to write again before Thanksgiving, but if I don't, everyone have a safe and happy one.

Really, Tops? Seriously?

So I'm returning cans and bottles today, because let's face it, I'm pretty poor. The grand total is a whopping $3.80 in cash back. I have a quarter in my pocket. I give it to the lady at the register along with the receipts. She immediately hands the quarter back to me and says "no". And apparently doesn't feel the need to explain her actions any further. Now, as a rule, I try to be a nice guy at all times. Surely there is a reasonable explanation for this. So I say "I'm sorry?". She says "No" again. So now that I feel that frustration building, I ask "Why not?". She says "store policy".

That's right, it is apparently now a store policy that, in order to make change more even for yourself, you cannot give the cashier more change. If you're supposed to be getting $3.80 back, you are not allowed to give your cashier a quarter so that you can, instead, get $4.05 back. And it's a policy. Which means that it's not just in this one case in which my developmentally disabled cashier is not able to discern that $3.80 +.25 = $4.05, it means that Tops is confident that none of their cashiers on the floor can perform this simple math function. And before anyone says anything, I gave her the quarter well before the register was opened, so she could have fucking entered the quarter in the register and it would have given her the correct answer.

Listen carefully, Tops. This policy is asinine. The people working your cashiers are going to be handling money their entire shifts. The reason for this policy must be that the cashiers, in Tops' opinion, do not possess the math skills necessary to perform functions such as addition and subtraction. Tops, if you are going to hire a cashier, the first test you should be giving them is a math test. If they cannot pass said math test, then they should not be a cashier. If my cashier today truly was developmentally disabled, then she should not have been doing her cashier job. She should be mopping. Or stocking. Or bagging. Something that does not involve the math skills that she apparently does not possess. You should only have people who can count working your cashiers and making change for your customers.

As such, the policy is unnecessary. If you have people working your registers who know third grade math (and if you're hard pressed to find some, you can probably find them in third grade classrooms), then there's absolutely no need for this policy. Tops, please clean up your act, and your HR department, so that I can possibly, in the future, walk out of your stores without being weighed down by massive amounts of change in my pockets. Of course, maybe I should pick up some Tylenol while I'm in there, for the headache you're giving me.

And pay for it with nothing but change.