Monday, January 3, 2011

How I Spent My New Year’s Day

*sigh* My goodness. I certainly never expected to have a year’s worth of bad and unfortunate events happen in the span of literally one day. It started around 1am. There were parties and happy people scattered throughout the apartment complex here which, of course, is no surprise. However, it was at this time when I realized the neighbors to my left were playing music rather loudly. Jeffrey was already sound asleep in bed. It would have been fine if they were playing their music in the front portion of the apartment, where the living room is, but no. It was in the back portion next to our bedroom.
I figured it would calm down eventually and I got into bed. For the next two hours I laid still, occasionally drifting off into a very light sleep. The music, however, never ceased and the party next door even moved out to the patio, which is also right outside our bedroom window (and it just so happens that the bed is positioned underneath the windows. So we could not have been any closer without physically being at the party).
Around 3am a scuffle began. People were too drunk and voices were escalating. There was one partier in particular who was the worst offender, and I woke up Jeffrey when I heard that the fight was escalating quite seriously. At one point I even thought the guy might have an assault weapon of some kind. I heard protestations about choking among the fight talk, and from there took the cue to call the cops. I was only going to dial the non-emergency line, but when I could hear them from my living room I decided it would be best to call 911 instead. The guy ended up taking off on foot, stumbling around the street and out of our line of sight. Thankfully, I kept Jeff from going outside to make sure everything was okay. Lord only knows what would have happened then. Unfortunately, things were only just getting started.
It was going on 4am and I still had not slept; Jeffrey was completely awake now. When the music resumed and continued until 5am, making me terribly irritable, we called the police again. At this point it didn’t seem like we were going to be getting any sleep any time soon and decided to just go grab a (very early) breakfast from McDonalds. A cop followed us back and we found him outside of our apartment complex with another cop and a resident. The neighbors had turned off the music, the lights, and did not respond to knocks at the door. Who knows what happened to them? It’s been rather quiet ever since.
We watched a dvd and finally made it to bed somewhere between 6 and 7am. We woke before noon and spent the remainder of the day watching dvds and cleaning the apartment. The day was not done with us, however.
Around 9pm we decided to head out to the neighboring city to rent a particular dvd (we’ve been watching How I Met Your Mother and we’re trying to find season 3) and I offered to drive. We went out to my car and the key fob didn’t work (I think this was probably only the second time ever that my car was opened manually with a key). My car was dead; wouldn’t turn over and it had no electric power. Fine enough, Jeffrey went to get his car to jump my battery. As soon as he put the last jumper cable on my battery it sparked and my car alarm went off (not a pleasant thing to experience when you’re face-down in your engine with the hood open!) So everything was fine and we proceeded to head out to the freeway. As we waited at the first intersection by the apartment complex we witnessed a car run a red light and hit another car in the intersection. My reaction? Literally “Oh, great.”  The offending car was full of teenage boys and one of them took off on foot. No one really cared about them when we noticed that the other car was a family with two kids.
Jeffrey immediately got out to help and remove car parts from the middle of the road (I helped!) as I pulled over behind the other witness. Due to the fact that I had just jumped my car, I had to leave it on so that the battery would fully take the charge. By the time we were given clearance to leave (about an hour later) and we made it to the video store, they didn’t even have the dvd’s we wanted.
At this point the day just seemed comical. It was after 11pm and we had experienced shitty experience after shitty experience for 22 hours, and the first day of the new year, no less! We ended the night by ordering from In-N-Out and then went home to watch a movie.
Today has been far less interesting. I was, however, able to exact my revenge on the offending neighbors for playing their music by playing my own music, with our Bose speakers pointed directly at their apartment. Whether or not it did anything I have no idea, but it was rather nice to imagine them with insufferable hangovers, lamenting me and my loud music.
I’d like to think that all the bad stuff of 2011 has happened in one day and that the rest of the year will be nothing but successful and tremendously wonderful. Here’s hoping.

2 comments:

  1. What a hot mess. Goodness, I am so sorry you had to endure all of that.

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  2. Yeah it was a pretty intense day. It seems like this year is starting off to a precarious start. Hopefully it only gets better from here!

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