As I think I've mentioned, our apartment is bordered on 3 sides by a forested area, and we get a lot of birds. The cats LOVE sitting in the window sills and watching them. The loudest are the cardinals, and being bright red, they're easy to spot. I'd never seen one before moving here, so I thought I'd share this with you! The video isn't mine- I've been trying to catch a pic of them for days without any luck.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Ooom-pa-pa- Ooom-pa-pa, Boom-Boom-Boom, Weeeyow-Wow- Clang- Olé!
I'd planned on doing a post with a few pictures of the outside of our building, and the community, but that will have to wait. Right now, I need to vent about our neighbours.
The building consists of three outside doors, each letting in to a foyer with mailboxes. There are six steps down to the two garden-level apartments, six steps up to two middle level units, and another two small flights up to two more units. So, six units per door, eighteen per building (well ours at least; many of the other buildings are bigger).
We have a mid-level end unit, so we really only have three neighbours to worry about, the people below us, above us and to the left of us. Let me tell you, it's more than enough.
As I'm writing this, it's 3pm, and next door has had their music on super loud, on and off, for the past 17 hrs. We've never seen our neighbour in 6d. I have no idea who he or she is, but they like to party. And not just on the weekend, apparently. Things will be peaceful, the sun shining, the birds singing, and then the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM starts. The cats are terrified and go hide and I try to ignore it. It was loud enough last night (between 11pm & 4am) to be annoying, but now the noise seems to be permeating the entire apartment. I could wear headphones, but that's not the point.
You may think the walls are thin, but they aren't. Not overly anyway. We hear the downstairs neighbours at mealtimes, mainly because there's a family of at least a dozen Mexicans living in there, and they're happy, passionate people. The kids are always making happy kid sounds, and there's never any angry yelling. They're loud, but at least they're a good loud.
The only noise we hear from the upstairs neighbour is the occasional creaking of the floor boards in the middle of the night. (Thank goodness!!)
A while ago, I'd had enough. I`d been moving/unpacking things all morning, and I was taking a break to have lunch and watch a show. I couldn't hear the dialogue for the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM coming from next door. So I did something I never do. I put on a CD of my own, specially chosen to mix horribly with the din next-door (Florence & the Machine for anyone interested)... and I turned up the volume...
For one song. I just couldn't do it; it's so rude and inconsiderate. Funny thing is, it also worked (temporarily anyway) because the person in 6d left!
Unfortunately, if only half worked. When 6d left, I turned off my music and through the hum of silence and bruised eardrums I could hear more noise. Downstairs is playing what I can only describe as some sort of hybrid Latin-Oom-pa-pa music. Presumably to drown out the rest of us.
Earphones it is.
The building consists of three outside doors, each letting in to a foyer with mailboxes. There are six steps down to the two garden-level apartments, six steps up to two middle level units, and another two small flights up to two more units. So, six units per door, eighteen per building (well ours at least; many of the other buildings are bigger).
We have a mid-level end unit, so we really only have three neighbours to worry about, the people below us, above us and to the left of us. Let me tell you, it's more than enough.
As I'm writing this, it's 3pm, and next door has had their music on super loud, on and off, for the past 17 hrs. We've never seen our neighbour in 6d. I have no idea who he or she is, but they like to party. And not just on the weekend, apparently. Things will be peaceful, the sun shining, the birds singing, and then the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM starts. The cats are terrified and go hide and I try to ignore it. It was loud enough last night (between 11pm & 4am) to be annoying, but now the noise seems to be permeating the entire apartment. I could wear headphones, but that's not the point.
You may think the walls are thin, but they aren't. Not overly anyway. We hear the downstairs neighbours at mealtimes, mainly because there's a family of at least a dozen Mexicans living in there, and they're happy, passionate people. The kids are always making happy kid sounds, and there's never any angry yelling. They're loud, but at least they're a good loud.
The only noise we hear from the upstairs neighbour is the occasional creaking of the floor boards in the middle of the night. (Thank goodness!!)
A while ago, I'd had enough. I`d been moving/unpacking things all morning, and I was taking a break to have lunch and watch a show. I couldn't hear the dialogue for the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM coming from next door. So I did something I never do. I put on a CD of my own, specially chosen to mix horribly with the din next-door (Florence & the Machine for anyone interested)... and I turned up the volume...
For one song. I just couldn't do it; it's so rude and inconsiderate. Funny thing is, it also worked (temporarily anyway) because the person in 6d left!
Unfortunately, if only half worked. When 6d left, I turned off my music and through the hum of silence and bruised eardrums I could hear more noise. Downstairs is playing what I can only describe as some sort of hybrid Latin-Oom-pa-pa music. Presumably to drown out the rest of us.
Earphones it is.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Setting up House
So, I'm home. My new home, that is, in Baltimore County Maryland. I'm still a little bit amazed that I drove across the continent last week. Still settling in.
The apartment is... well, I'm still undecided. The bones are good, but it's clear shortcuts have been taken over the years, and it's not as quiet as we'd hoped. I'll blog more about neighbours later, but lets just say it turns into a Mexican Karaoke Disco around here on weekends. It's not as bad as it sounds though, because it means we don't have to worry too much about the noise we make. Besides, some of those karaoke singers aren't half bad. (but most of them are ALL bad)
The apartment is... well, I'm still undecided. The bones are good, but it's clear shortcuts have been taken over the years, and it's not as quiet as we'd hoped. I'll blog more about neighbours later, but lets just say it turns into a Mexican Karaoke Disco around here on weekends. It's not as bad as it sounds though, because it means we don't have to worry too much about the noise we make. Besides, some of those karaoke singers aren't half bad. (but most of them are ALL bad)
When I first got here, I could tell that Sean had done a lot of unpacking and assembling. The living room was basically unpacked, as was the kitchen.
The kitchen is large for a rental apartment (big enough to fit a 4-top kitchen table), but it has about one quarter of the kitchen storage I'm used to, and very limited counter space. I opened the cupboards, and Sean has them well organized, but they're already full... and there's a lot more to go.
Then, I saw the bedrooms. Yikes. These are some of the empty boxes (Sean broke them down shortly after this was taken and we took them out to recycling).
These are just a few of the boxes waiting to be unpacked. Sean's been hard at work, but the truth is, we've run out of places to put things. You may have noticed there's not a lot of furniture... very observant to you. Let me show you some of what we have.
Our media center where we watch TV & movies, play Xbox 360, listen to music and relax.
My office, where I email, surf the web, and blog.
Our bed, where we sleep. (Don't worry- it folds out!) Also the dining room (chairs which double as tv trays not shown)
Alright, it's not quite as bad as that. We have a kitchen table which is currently being employed as a computer desk & breakfast nook. We have some cabinets and bookshelves. But that's pretty much it. We didn't bring a whole lot with us, because we weren't sure what was going to fit, and it was going to be cheaper to buy new furniture than it was to ship the old (much of which were hand-me-downs and didn't owe us anything).
So what did we do this weekend? Quite a bit. We ordered a butt-load of furniture for one; bed, mattress, chest of drawers, night tables, desk, more bookshelves, etc. This will be the first shipment of several as we paint and get an idea of what we want to do with the space. We've decided to take the second bedroom as ours because it's quieter, and use the master bedroom (which is almost twice as big) as a media room. It'll have a desk with the computers, a sofabed and tv. We'll see what else we can fit in there.
For those of you counting, that means we're going to have 2 guest beds... enough to accommodate a whole family... *hint* hint* Quinns, Brayfords and Kings! We already have some friends who have made plans to come and visit and I can't wait to have them here!!
We also got some phone lines (land & cell) set up, so if you don't already have our numbers, and you want them, let me know!
The rest of the weekend was quiet because we both needed it to be. We did some grocery shopping, a little housework and just spent time together. Nice to be able to do after so long!
Finally, a big thank-you to everyone who followed me across the country, leaving encouraging comments and emails!! It felt good connecting with home every night and sharing my adventures. I'm going to continue blogging both the amazing and the monotonous parts of life here in 'Bawlmer'. I hope you all stick around for the ride and keep in touch! Leave me a note in comments if there's something you'd like me to write about!
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