Wipe out the noise
There is a strange intimacy involved in apartment living. It's strange because you often don't know the people who live on the other side of the wall from you, but you know about them. You know when they shower, what time they leave for work, how often they do laundry. You know what night they call their mothers and you know exactly how they sound when they orgasm because you've pulled your pillow over your head and tried to drown it out hundreds of times. Then you pass each other in the hallway and nod politely, smiling as you try to forget the things you shouldn't know about this stranger's life.
It's normal in the sense that it's inevitable. What else could possibly happen when you build a brick box and cram hundreds of separate lives within its walls? But there's really no social norm for how to handle the people who share your walls, especially if there's a problem. Some people call the landlord. Some leave nasty notes. Some pound on the walls, and some just ignore it. But no one seems to know the proper way to deal with it.
I'm on this little tangent because our next door neighbor decided that last night at 1:30 a.m. was the perfect time to vacuum her entire apartment. After that, she kicked back and watched TV (with the volume at full blast) until almost 3. She is out of control. Noise is one thing, but it's a little different when she decides to rearrange all her furniture in the middle of the night at least twice a week.
Noise doesn't really bother me. I can sleep through pretty much anything. The problem is, the acoustics in our complex rival Carnegie Hall. There's no soundproofing or insulation in the walls -- just plywood covered with plaster. This acts like a speaker for the apartment next to you. Our landlord has actually considered posting "quiet hours," much like a college dorm, because of the ongoing noise problem.
I sound like the biggest asswipe right now, and I know that. But here's the thing -- my roommate and I aren't the quietest people around. We know that. Because of this we've made a huge effort both to keep the noise down and to keep the sound from traveling so badly into her apartment. And yet she still pounds on our wall with alarming frequency when we're not doing much more than talking. The one time we actually were being annoyingly loud was our Super Bowl party the other night, and it was 9:30 pm on THE NIGHT OF THE SUPER BOWL. I feel that raucousness is excusable on Super Bowl Sunday, or any other large sporting event.
Anyway, I've bitched enough and I am supposed to be doing homework. Good first entry after almost a month though, huh? Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years.
It's normal in the sense that it's inevitable. What else could possibly happen when you build a brick box and cram hundreds of separate lives within its walls? But there's really no social norm for how to handle the people who share your walls, especially if there's a problem. Some people call the landlord. Some leave nasty notes. Some pound on the walls, and some just ignore it. But no one seems to know the proper way to deal with it.
I'm on this little tangent because our next door neighbor decided that last night at 1:30 a.m. was the perfect time to vacuum her entire apartment. After that, she kicked back and watched TV (with the volume at full blast) until almost 3. She is out of control. Noise is one thing, but it's a little different when she decides to rearrange all her furniture in the middle of the night at least twice a week.
Noise doesn't really bother me. I can sleep through pretty much anything. The problem is, the acoustics in our complex rival Carnegie Hall. There's no soundproofing or insulation in the walls -- just plywood covered with plaster. This acts like a speaker for the apartment next to you. Our landlord has actually considered posting "quiet hours," much like a college dorm, because of the ongoing noise problem.
I sound like the biggest asswipe right now, and I know that. But here's the thing -- my roommate and I aren't the quietest people around. We know that. Because of this we've made a huge effort both to keep the noise down and to keep the sound from traveling so badly into her apartment. And yet she still pounds on our wall with alarming frequency when we're not doing much more than talking. The one time we actually were being annoyingly loud was our Super Bowl party the other night, and it was 9:30 pm on THE NIGHT OF THE SUPER BOWL. I feel that raucousness is excusable on Super Bowl Sunday, or any other large sporting event.
Anyway, I've bitched enough and I am supposed to be doing homework. Good first entry after almost a month though, huh? Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years.