This Week in Hallucinations

I'm home with the cold medicine today.

Apparently that generation the media was so worried about has graduated college and started to effect our everyday lives. How else do you explain the idea of Coke and fake lime flavoring in one container?

The other night C and I were trying to sleep when our neighbors got themselves a fit of home improvement energy. There were a couple of problems with that. It was 12:45 a.m. and the noise they made woke me up; causing irrational logic zoom to take over my body.

I awoke to noise that appeared to be coming from our garage. I thought there was an earthquake, and all of our boxes were fallling over. In panic mode, I shook C awake. We listened some more, and he said "It's the neighbors, or something is in our trash..., I'll go check it out."

My brain wouldn't let it be that simple, so when he made a move to get out of bed I screeched "Nooooooo! Don't go out there!" In my head, whatever was making that much noise should be permitted to go ahead and do it - because it obviously wasn't worried about remaining un-discovered.

C was just going to look out the window to see what was going on. Oh yeah, windows. I had completely forgotten that those could be used for that.

C, being all to familiar with my zoom logic says "Ok, then we will just sit here and hypothesize", after which he did get up and peek out the window. That revealed our neighbors dumping some debris from their on-going home improvement project.

I'm pretty sure we will be interviewed 5 or 10 years from now, and you will see us saying things like "They never made any trouble, seemed like normal people....but every once in a while we could hear a buzz saw over there late at night."

I've had some fabulous luck in the past with neighbors. And as mentioned before, I watch entirley too much crime t.v.

My last neighbor was a certified nut-job living in a condo directly across from mine. He was the brother of a man I called "Drunk Russian Guy". DRG was a former piolot, and was indeed Russian. These were the only bits of information I ever understood when he spoke to me.

He was always walking to the grocery store to cart back a box of wine. I never saw him without a drink in his hand. He even started dating one of the cashiers from the store who happened to live in our complex.

DRG's Brother soon moved into DRG's old studio condo.

Before long, he was seen in his boxers and little else, leaving mints on the rocks around the little stream that wound through the complex. He said it was for the ducks. He began to carry a squirt bottle with some green stuff in it, and he would wander about "killing germs". He wandered to another unit and sprayed his germ killer through someone's screen door. The police were soon called, and he hid inside his house refusing to come out.

As time went on and neighbors became more alarmed, DRG was contacted and often came by to try and convince his brother to take his medication and stop freaking out the residents. It never worked. We were constantly assured he was harmless, just kooky.

DRG'sB would wander right into your house if left the door open for even a split second. When my place was for sale, he was almost always in my yard and my windows asking if he could come in and take a look - and a few times made it into the doorway before I came around the corner with a large cooking pan in my hand as a "shoo" device.

There were nights when he would sit in his house and flick his porch light on and of. on off. onnnnnnn. off. on offfffff. on off. It was like trying to sleep with a lunatic rave going on outside of my bedroom window.

He began taking cover on his balcony and shooting his pellet gun at .... nothing. Sometimes it was people, but usually it was air. C saw this himself, and we found numerous pellets on the ground all around. I remember one day when he was out in the parking lot shooting at parked cars. It appeared that his gun didn't have much power behind it (pellets appeared to be lobbed a maximum of 5 feet - as if he could have done more damage if he threw the pellets), and nobody was ever hurt, but it still scared the crap out of me.

The police never could do anything about it for whatever reason. They were out there ALL THE TIME, but never did take him away.

I once left a dish towel on my a/c unit and received a threatening letter from the HOA telling me to get rid of it or face fines and an enthusiastic scolding by the Board Members. Apparently it was quite ok for DRG'sB to keep a jungle and flea market on his balcony - AND SHOOT AT PEOPLE - but my dish towel was a serious threat to the overall veil of desireability that the community preferred.

When he wasn't shooting at air he could be seen on his balcony putting dremmel tool to styrofoam. I never did get a good look at what he created out of packing styrofoam that I would watch him steal from the boxes I had placed outside. Sometimes he would ask if he could have it, other times he just took it. I would always put trash outside to be taken to the dumpster until I was reasonably sure he was inside his house and I'd be less likely to actually run into him. Even then I would carry the "shoo" pan with me.

What made me think I could leave all of that behind?