Remember the Tacky Water Bottle people from across the hall?  Well, last Friday, I received a notice on my door from the apartment management, letting me know I’m in violation of their “common areas” policies with my water bottles.  While I wasn’t thrilled to hear this — I mean, where else are you supposed to keep them in an apartment? — if that’s their policy and I’m in violation, fine. I’ll figure something out.

So I called the office to let them know I was going to comply and ask for suggestions on where I might keep them, since it’s a month’s worth of water.  I was connected with the manager, who informed me that I was issued the violation primarily because there were “several complaints” about my water bottles “blowing over and rolling down the hallways very noisily” and neighbors were having to “round them up” for me.

I like to consider myself a lady, but I have to quote my father here and cry, “Horseshit!”  Total, utter nonsense.  And I told her so. I said, “I’m happy to comply with your policies if that is the case. It’s not the most convenient thing, but if that’s your rule, that’s how it goes.  However, I can tell you with about 99.9% accuracy that those ‘reports’ are hogwash. I am home all day, every day and my desk is right on the other side of the ice cube glass window/wall from those bottles.  I sit right there.  If there were anything blowing anywhere, especially noisily, I would have heard it. If there were someone out there rounding up my anything, I would have seen them.  I know you can’t tell me who it is, nor do I really want you to, but if it’s the neighbors across the hall, I have an idea of what this is about. “  Then I briefly recapped the interaction on the 4th of July.

She told me I can store the bottles on my patio and I, as obviously retaliatory as it was, informed the management that “if we’re going to go there”, then the neighbors across the hall aren’t exactly angels, rummaging around in their storage unit (in the common area of the hallway) loudly at 1am every night. I also mentioned the constant stream people going in and out of their apartment loudly (which is directly across from the ‘ice cube glass’ wall, so I’m constantly distracted by it), multiple times, at all hours of the day from dawn until midnight, causing me to speculate how many people actually live there.  I also mentioned that their guests occasionally peer in my glass wall/window, sometimes even putting their hands up to block the side glare.  Into my apartment! They can’t see anything, even with the lights on, except shapes, but I feel kind of skeeved by that!   I told her that other than that one interaction, I’d never spoken with them and didn’t want to start a feud with my neighbors, but that I wouldn’t stand for fabrications and again, “if we’re going to go there”, then I would also no longer stand for morons peering into my apartment.

The pleaser in me wants to say, “It’s my fault, I probably shouldn’t have provoked them by embarrassing their friend.”  But then I remember, “Hey! She was the one being a jerk… sure, I could have left it alone, but why should I be punished because someone else is an asshole?”

I really am frustrated with ‘prick’ being the default personality in society lately. I realize that’s kind of a broad statement and wholly unfounded, but… it’s not far off.  It used to be that people were generally good and you’d occasionally run into a prick. You could easily blow it off when that happened, “Eh, they’re just a prick. No big deal.” But when you’re faced with prick after prick after prick, when even kids are pricks, sometimes you can’t shrug it off.  Someone needs to be put in their place.

Despite what I told the management, I really don’t want to start anything with my neighbors. I moved to a big complex for a reason and want to be left the hell alone. So I don’t want to stay on her radar.

And I don’t think she’s actually going to do anything about my complaints. I think she was just letting me vent.  I promptly moved my bottles, but now every time those people come out the door, I think of ways I’d like to smite them.  I’m more of the “living well is the best revenge” type, but it didn’t stop me from considering everything from sardines in their storage unit to anonymous gift subscriptions to Donkey Lovers Monthly.

But the next time some frat boy peers in my apartment, someone’s junk is going home in ziploc.

Of course, no travel is complete without a little drama. As soon as I landed last night, I received a metric ton of emails from a client panicking because his site was displaying the WordPress install screen.  I *just* finished his site and signed off completely on it yesterday. It was beautiful, perfect even. In fact, I was pretty impressed with myself!  That’ll teach me. I go away one day and the sky falls.

Normally, I don’t totally freak out about such things because that’s just the nature of the Internet. Things happen. You put in a support ticket and hash it out. But the poor client was at his wit’s end. He’s great, though, I really like the client… he’s just not jaded by the wonky workings of the Internet yet and is new to blogging so it sent him into a multi, multi, *multi* email tailspin.  I had to call Hostmonster and Troy, who is the most patient man on Earth, listened to me rant and carry on. I think there were tears at one point. I explained that I’d been up all night, that I’d been traveling for 7 hours and that I just got off a plane and asked him for forgive me my temporary psychosis.  He was so gracious about it. Kudos to you, Troy at Hostmonster.

Anyway, Troy said he couldn’t help me technically because they don’t support WordPress, but he said he would “take a peek”. I submitted an official ticket to support and told the client that what can be done is being done and that if nothing was resolved by this morning that I would call again.  Well, this morning I was greated with an email from the client that the site was back online, nothing was lost and hallelujah, I can stop drinking antacids.  Thank you, Hostmonster! (Seriously, I love Hosting Matters — we’ve hosted with them for years and years, but I must say that Hostmonster deserves epic accolades.)

Ok, Kathy is back from putting Reilly down for a nap and now we’re off to the movies to see Twilight.  I could go for some popcorn….