The joy of neighbours

So anyone who’s ever lived in an apartment building has had the joys of having neighbours that you would never want to live near. Normally it’s not too bad, there’ll be one unpleasant one near you with the rest being normal. I however have the joy of having three different annoyances. I’m sure many of you have had similar if not worse neighbours but I’m kind of fed up with them so it’s time to vent.

Pain in the ass #1: Video game loser

This guy, and it’s always a guy is about my age, maybe even older. He lives right above me. Now for the most part he’s ok, he doesn’t seem to make a lot of noise and other than his sink causing mine to back-up I wouldn’t even know he’s there. That is until he starts to play video games. Actually video game would be a better description. As far as I can tell all he ever does with his free time is play something like Counter Strike. Over the holidays I had to endure a near endless barrage of computerized explosions for hours on end at all hours of the day and night. Now I’ve got nothing against video games, just you aren’t going to play a variety of games, turn the fucking volume down!

Pain in the ass #2: Smelly cooker

This neighbour is the one who proves the law of diffusion on a regular basis. As someone who loves to cook I can understand how the sent can permeate an area and spread from room to room. But I’ve also never been to a restaurant where the whole place smelled as strongly as my hallway does when this neighbour cooks. And it’s not good! I really have no clue what they are cooking but the other night I would have sworn that it was roast BO!

Pain in the ass #3: Screaming lover

This last neighbour isn’t so bad, of all the sounds a neighbour could make this isn’t the worst…well it kind of sucks when you aren’t getting any and your neighbour is. In fact it led to an interesting dream when her screaming woke me up last time. But the odd part is the infrequency of it. See my neighbour is a guy, and though the girl isn’t there all the time I have heard here over there more often than I’ve heard them having sex. Now seeing as she seems to be really enjoying herself, one would expect that she’d be there more often, not only once a month as it seems. Which makes me wonder; is my neighbour hiring a hooker? It would explain why he’s “so good” yet getting some so rarely!

I have a REAL job!

So a week or so ago I mentioned that I had an offer from a pretty sweet job. Well as it stands right now I have the contract in hand and I'm going to sign it. Up, I'm about to get a real job...well as care to take.

See my idea of a real job is one where I don't really have a boss and I can do pretty much whatever I want, hence the desire to find a faculty position. But I don't kid myself in believing that it will be a cake walk, I know that I'm going to have to work my ass off to make things work out well, but I think I'm up for the challenge.

So at this point most of you are wondering what school would have low enough standards or is desperate enough to want me to teach and do research there. Well, in the southern California area it turns out that there are in fact two such schools. The way I look at it is one school was desperate the other has low standards, I'll leave it up to you to figure which is which. But I was actually offered jobs at CSU Dominguez Hills and San Diego State University (also part of the CSU system).

I chose to accept the SDSU job. Sure I'm passing up a job in LA proper, next to such appealing communities as Compton and Watts and at a campus with a world class velodrome (that part was hard to pass up). But the research potential and resources at SDSU (not to mention the crazy salary they offered me) will make up for whatever pains I have to go through with commuting from LA.

So that's that, I'm in a tenure-track faculty position, which means that in about six years if I get tenure I will have job security for life, it's a pretty sweet deal. What this really means though is that I get to move to LA and live with Deirdre again as well as being able to teach and pursue my own research, all things that I think are really worthwhile. And if I ever find the time I'll be in one of North America's best climates for bicycling...seriously, how the fuck did I manage to pull this one off?

Fingernails

Can someone please explain the point of super long fingernails to me?

I'm not talking about the losers who grow coke nails for use or to just be posers. I'm talking about ridiculously long, absolutely pointless talons grown by women.

Face it, these things cannot serve a purpose. Have you ever had a woman with long nails hand you change? They all drop the coins in your hand from 8 inches up because they are afraid you'll damage their wonderful creations. Frankly I'm glad that they keep their hooks away from me, I don't want to be impaled by one of them. Seriously, I've seen some that could pass through my hand!


And of course with those nails you can barely touch anything. Just look at how you touch the keyboard on your computer. If you're anything like my your fingers stab down on the keys like miniature high-speed pistons (frequently hitting the wrong keys and knowing exactly where the backspace key is). But with saber-tooth nail you have to lie you fingers flat and brush the keys with the pads of your fingers. Hell, with the incline of the keyboard I wonder how they don't hit the keys two rows up with the tips of their nails.

Without exception every woman whom I've ever seen with such nails does the same thing to them. They get the most brilliant, sparkly, neon nail polish possible and try to replicate the works of Jackson Pollock.

Finally, I want to know, who finds this to be attractive? I think I'd be afraid of being stabbed in the back if a woman with those nails ever gave me a hug. I shudder to think what damage those Freddy Kruger imitators could do to more sensitive parts.

Quit rubbing my nose in it!

So working at a university I have come to realize that there are a lot of people who are required to actually get things done around here. So I appreciate all those who work in supporting roles to keep things running smoothly, and I of course understand when they take a day off. In my opinion they deserve it. And I'm not only saying this because my wife used to have such a position. Though I have been warned that she will be checking with the secretaries at my next job to make sure I'm not an ass to them. And frankly I don't want to incur her wrath, because I think she'll rip my arm off and beat me with it if I piss off any of my support staff.

That being said, there's a guy who works here that I'm becoming more and more tempted to smack upside the head. Without fail this guy sends out an email every other week with some delightful (i.e. anger twitch inducing) way of saying that he'll be taking an afternoon off to make an extra long weekend or some other chipper way of saying he's going home early. It's not the vacationing that pisses me off, it's that I have to hear about it. I just checked my email and in the last 10 months he's sent out 19 of these fucking emails. Now I'm pretty sure there have been a few other support staff members who have taken a vacation in this time but I haven't heard about it, so what makes this guy think he's so great that we all need to know he's going to leave at 1:30 on Friday? In fact the above mentioned head smacking would be rather hard to do since I don't even know where he works or what he does!

You know what, I might just start personally emailing him every time I decide to take a day off. The only reason I don't is the fear of getting some annoyingly chipper response to it each time.

Fucking rhinovirus

So I guess I've been lucky over the years, generally I don't get sick. And even if I do it's short term. The last time I was "really" sick I had mono. I was functional with it for two weeks before I got diagnosed, though the golf ball sized lymph node in my armpit was a good clue that I was more sick than normal. But even then once I knew what it was I let myself sleep for 80% of the time for three days and I was almost back to normal. I still remember some good friends coming by with a care package on the first day that I was almost feel normal, I felt bad for feeling good when they showed up.

But now for the first time in years I have a full blown cold. I think I've had smaller colds in the past, with only a runny nose or a day of congested sinuses. But not this time, it's the full deal. It started to hit me on Friday and last night was the first night of uninterrupted sleep that I have had since then.

And thinking of it, this virus is just downright mean. It starts off with the annoying sore/itchy throat, making even eating a slightly painful experience. Then it adds congestion of your sinuses, to the point where it seems hard to breath and that your skull shrank in the last shower you took. Of course this makes sleeping just shitty because you wake up unable to breath. When you finally do start the day it's even worse as all the mucus and crap that your body produced over night is now finding it's way out. Then there's the coughing. There's no way that coughing is going to help me in any way, yet my body will do it, constantly. The only benefit I might get is sounding like Barry White, Vin Diesel or a chain smoker for a day. Finally when you can sleep through a night and start to feel good your nose decides to compete with Niagara falls for the greatest volume of liquid flow in the day. Oh and let's not forget the wonderful cornucopia of sounds that accompany you through this journey.

Frankly I'd prefer leprosy or Ebola over a cold. At least that way I'd have the same symptoms throughout the course of the infection. And a little hemorrhagic fever isn't nearly as unpleasant as the mucus running out of my nose right now. And if I have to keep blowing my nose for much longer I think it may just look like I am hemorrhaging from there anyway.

Stalker?

So over the weekend I needed to get to a computer to send off an email counter offer for a faculty position I've been offered. I'm not going to say anything more until the papers are signed, but it looks like I've got a sweet job lined up with a damn nice amount of money to go with it, yay me! Anyway, since the guy I usually pirate my wifi connection off of seems to have disappeared I had to find an alternate means of sending the email, so off I trudged to the coffee shop. Sure it was freezing cold out but a nice hot chocolate and free wifi do the body good.

Anyway after I dealt with all that I packed things up and started to walk home. Now being as tall as I am I tend to walk very fast. Generally the only people to pass me on the street are almost running, so I almost instantly notice when someone is catching up to me or walking the same pace. Now this happened when I was a couple of blocks from my place, which was no big deal, it didn't sound like the guy was going to pass me but I was going to turn the corner anyway so I don't care.

But wait a minute, I can still hear the plastic bag he's carrying rustling, I guess he's going the same way, well that's not unheard of.

Then I saw a reflected flash off a tree next to me, like someone took a picture behind me, but why would someone do that?

Then there is the unmistakable sound of a disposable camera being rewound. Now that's just strange. Maybe I'll slow down and see if my mysterious friend will pass me, because surely this person isn't taking pictures of me.

Wait a minute, this person's still behind me and was that another flash? So looking over my shoulder I see a guy who might be taller than me a few feet behind me and looking at the houses next to us.

Alright this is getting fishy, maybe he's checking the houses out but I'm going to make sure. I need to be on the other side of the street so I may as well cross now.

Sure enough the fucker snaps one last picture of me then turns and takes off back up the street.

So I was left on the other side of the street wondering why some guy was taking pictures of me from behind? I mean sure my ass is one of my top 5 best features but still, that's just weird.

Well that was uncomfortable

So the other day I decided to swing downtown to pickup a microphone for my computer. Why you might ask? It’s to get me back into shape. Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense until you know that the bike computer/heart rate monitor I recently got uses an audio coding system to upload the information that it gathers to a web based training file.

But anyway that’s all beyond the point of this blog. What I want to know is do religious groups search out the socially inept to deliver their message? I ask this because I had the joy of sitting next to a self-proclaimed missionary on the way home.

Now like the rest of the world I can spot one of these guys a mile away. They are far too clean cut, too young to be wearing a tie, and they always travel in pairs. Now I’m not sure why there is a need for missionaries, it’s not like this country isn’t educated about religion and unable to make choices, but what the hell, so long as they don’t bother me I don’t mind.

But there’s the problem, this guy did bother me and I did mind. When he tried to chat me up I made sure to give as many signals of disinterest as possible; a very short answer with a sigh after a long pause before answering and not making eye contact. You know, the kind of response I used to get when I would try and hit on a girl. And just like a young, dumb, drunk version of me hitting on a hot girl, he kept on trying to engage me in conversation.

Now his good fortune is that I’m not some snotty bitch who gets off on crushing the self-esteem of a young innocent boy. I simply said no when he asked me if I wanted to hear about the gospel. But I do wonder what it would be like to use some of the responses I got back in the day to get ride of missionaries…

Oops...

So have you ever done something unintentional while you were doing something else? You know, like pointing at something only to realize that you’ve accidentally flipped off a cop? Well, I’ve managed to unintentionally do something a bit more serious.

See, as I mentioned in the blog a while back, I got married. Now I checked for restrictions and prohibitions about marrying an American, I didn’t want to get there just to find out I needed some kind of form. Well I didn’t need one so I figured all was good…until I came to cross the border back into the US from visiting my parents. It seems that I’ve changed my “status” and it turns out that I’m now immigrating to the US.

So that’s not the end of the world, I’ll still be able to keep my Canadian citizenship, which is important to me. I do however have to fill out a number of forms and pay somewhere up to $600 in filing fees!

The best part about all this is some of the questions that I have to answer. Here are a few of my favorites:

Do you intend to engage the United States in:
a) Espionage
b) Any activity to overthrow the government

Have you ever engaged in genocide?

Have you ever knowingly committed any crime of moral turpitude or drug-related offense for which you have not been arrested?
(What is a crime of moral turpitude?)

Do you plan to practice polygamy in the United States?

These are all yes/no questions to which I only have to ask, has anyone ever actually checked the yes box to any of these while trying to immigrate? If so let’s hope that they aren’t the ones practicing polygamy, because they are going to have some really dumb kids!