Things That Go WOOOOOOOO In the Night

To the uninformed: I have a policy in which people who shout "wooooooo!" immediately get kidney stones. Don't ask how I set that up; I just do.

Here's a retrospective of the last 10 years of sleeping arrangements:

1. The house on 24th in Eugene. First year: quiet, because we were a weird, dysfunctional group of kids. Also, when it was noisy I didn't care, because I was 17-18 and stayed up late.
2. The house on 24th in Eugene. Second year: paint-peeling-from-the-walls party house. I got so used to sleeping with the pillow over my head it felt weird to switch it back over. I was generally in the thick of it anyway, so it rarely bothered me. But the seed of the inhuman rage was planted...
3. England: never-ending screaming, false fire alarms at 3:00am, noisy dickheads everywhere.
   
4. Crappy apartment in the student ghetto in Eugene: never-ending screaming, noisy dickheads everywhere.
   
5. The Epoxies house in Portland for almost 2 years: I had to get up at 5:30am for work and I lived with a new wave/punk band. I lifted a lot of weights and drank a lot of alcohol and simmered with rage.
6. Apartment on Stark in portland: The kids downstairs didn't get the memo that you don't get to have band practice IN AN APARTMENT. That said, it usually wasn't that bad.
7. House in Eugene: two houses full of 19-year-old girls gone wild on each side of us...for two years. I got cozy with the cops, I chased hobos with my maglite, I told drunk teenagers to get the fuck off my porch. I was a cranky old man at 26.
8. Now, the apartment in downtown Santa Cruz: against all odds, it was the quietest place we've lived, ever. For three-something months, there was blissful silence almost every night. Now, the teenagers (we think there are two of them) downstairs slam doors and bang around until well after midnight most nights. Once again, I'm going to have to go do the confrontation thing. What fun.

The moral of the story is that I regret nothing about being a perma-broke-ass graduate student and I'm happy with my lo-fi bohemian lifestyle, but sometimes I still dream of lottery winnings and a house made of solid concrete and sound-proof padding. I think if I had a whole year of quiet nights, my internal sound-sensitivity meter might reset.

Oh, those halcyon days of youth...