: : whatever : :

I've lived in my condo since March of 2007. Since then, we've not had any neighbors in our building. We could be as loud as we wanted, park where we wanted, do whatever we wanted. It was a glorious nine months of solitude in our building.

Two or three weeks ago we came home to notice some lumber in our yard. "That's odd...," we thought. They must be building a fence somewhere. Hmmmm. Two days later there was a stack of concrete mix sitting on our patio. "What the heck?" we thought. The next night when we got home there were holes dug in our front yard. They spanned from one end of the building to the other and they were all of SEVEN FEET away from our patio. "Oh no they didn't!" we exclaimed! This is an outrage! How can they build a fence IN FRONT of our window without telling/asking/notifying us? So the next morning while Sara was still home before she left for work, she called our maintenance man and asked what the heck was going on...

"Well, we're putting a fence up. Why? Do you not want a fence?"
"NO! We bought this condo because it has a nice yard and a view and your fence is blocking it all."
"Well, you can still walk around the fence and enjoy the yard!"
"That's NOT what we want! Why are you putting it there anyways?"
"Your new neighbors wanted a privacy fence."
"New neighbors?"
"Yes, they're moving in tomorrow. They wouldn't buy it without the fence. I guess we could stop it before your window."
"Fine. That's good enough."

Turns out they could have stopped it one section earlier and not blocked any of our patio, but for some dumb reason, they didn't. Now a portion of my wonderful patio is blocked by a lovely (it is nice) seven foot tall cedar fence. Good thing it's not in front of my kitchen window.

These neighbors we were getting were already on our black list without ever meeting them. We expected them to move in the next day, but it turned out to be the next day of the next week. We never saw hide, nor hair of them. Just their car parked in MY SPOT. Really blacklist now.

The other night around seven o'clock, we're lounging around the house, watching TV at a normal volume and there is a knock on the door. I went and answered the door to finally meet the new neighbor. (she looked to be in her 30's)

"Hi... my name is Carrie and I just moved in next door with my mother, Myrna. I hate for our first meeting to be anything less than pleasant... but can you turn down your TV please?"
I'm a nice guy... "Yeah sure..."
"Thank you... if you ever need anything don't be afraid to ask."

What the??? My TV is too loud at 7:00pm? I could understand it if it was up at the half-way level and rattling the walls (as it usually is close to when watching movies). But we were watching "My Wife and Kids" and it wasn't even half way up!

Since then, we have not seen either of them once. I think they're hermits (maybe vampires) who are afraid of going outside. Their car sits in the same place all day, everyday. Do they go anywhere? Who knows... Do they work? Don't think so...

My thoughts turn to the title of this blog... whatever. What are they going to do? Complain to the landlord we don't have? I mean, come on lady. You bought a CONDO. You better expect to hear a neighbor every once in a while. Whatever.

We're going to try and sell our condo now. We liked the solitude and quiet. Now we have neighbors that complain about a not-very-loud TV. Being that I work for a home builder, we're going to start searching for a lot to build on.

Yippee!