Won't You (NOT) Be My Neighbor?

That is what Alanna and I will be saying to Syracuse, two months from today.
We've been in Syracuse for almost 2 years now. We're about sick of our neighbors here. We can't wait to leave.

Some of y'all may know a little about our neighbors here. They're insane! They've been doing laundry in our basement ever since we've been here, and probably for the last 10 years. The basement is like a storm shelter, where you enter through two big metal doors outside, that lead to the stairs and in the basement. They are down there twice a week, sometimes more. It's kind of creepy, especially since we know they can hear whatever we're doing. Then they leave the "clean" clothes down there to dry, except in the summer when they scatter them along side the driveway and behind our house. You may remember me shamelessly posting their undergarments on this page last summer. Well as of 2 months from now, we'll have our own laundry facilities to use.

Winter is quite a time for Brent next door. He must get really bored, or want to get away from Sherry. He will shovel one inch, I said one inch, of snow, while it's still falling. Then be back out at 11:30 PM, that's PM, to "clean" up a few flakes. (Notice how I use the term "clean" loosely with them?) But what really gets us, is that he'll always leave a strip in the middle of the driveway that he won't touch. But sometimes he'll shovel half the strip, or leave just 10 feet. It's really strange, I haven't figured out his pattern yet. Yet three days after the snow is done falling, he's still shoveling little bits and pieces here and there. But he won't touch our half of the back lot. You'd think someone that needed to shovel that much would just finish the job. I'm not expecting it when there's 5 inches, but he can't do the one inch? Strange.

Well that's one neighbor. Then there's the one guy upstairs, Jonathan. He never takes the garbage to the curb, and will walk right past the empty cans and leave it for us or Randy, the guy in the other apartment upstairs, to put away. Recently we found a garbage bag that somebody put out, not in a can. That was last week. No one has taken it to the curb. We're assuming it was Jonathan, or even possibly Brent and Sherry next door. Well, we're tired of doing other people's work. At least Randy takes out trash and shovels the front sidealk. Jonathan has done jack crap.

So last winter, Jonathan and his then boyfriend Jason that lived here only shoveled their parking spaces twice. Then they started parking on the street, presumably to avoid shoveling. So Jason left last fall after they broke-up. Then a couple months ago Jonathan inexplicably started parking his car in back, for about a week. Well him and Jason (back together?) were out last night and wedged their car in next to ours, where we've been busting our butts shoveling all winter. They had to shovel a little to fit in Jonathan's car. We think they took off for a trip in Jason's car. Look at how close they parked. Arrrgh! Notice the six foot high pile of snow to the right, where we pile it because nobody else parks there. That's what WE get for shoveling all winter.
Last winter, when we had two cars, I came home to find Jonathan's car parked in MY spot. He left it there for the weekend. He did tell Alanna, right after he woke her up, and I was gone to work. That's what WE got for shoveling last year.

So anyhow, enough with my rant! We will be glad to leave here, and live in a house where we are the only ones in it.

See everybody soon! We'll be home May 17th.

Tim