Future tenants?

Joe and I are in our NY apartment for the last day and night, cleaning everything. This is the floor in our NY kitchen. When we moved in, the entire kitchen floor was the gray color. We thought the linoleum was a speckled gray color. We mopped the floor, and it was still the speckled gray color. But then one day, after living in NY for about 6 months, Joe accidentally spilled some concentrated cleaner on the floor, and a white spot appeared. Turns out, our floor was once, a long, long time ago, a speckled white linoleum. Once we realized this, we were pretty disgusted. Unfortunately, regular mopping stuff doesn't do the trick. I had a leftover Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, and I used that on half of the kitchen floor today. You can tell where the magic eraser finally gave up and died.

The broker also came by today to show the apartment to someone while we were here. It was a couple about our age, and they did a quick walk-through while we chatted with the broker. I was trying to figure out a way to corner them to warn them about 6N and tell them to stay far away from this particular apartment. They were ready to leave pretty quickly, but not before they asked Joe a question about the bathtub leak, and the internet. The broker was rushing out the door while they were asking questions, so I mouthed to the potential tenant, "The upstairs neighbors have a drum set in their kitchen!!!" At least if they move in, they can't say no one warned them.

Possible Tourist Endeavor

There are only a few days left in NY, and Joe and I have been trying to figure out if there are any touristy things left that we should do before the move. We talked about getting up really early on Thursday or Friday and going to the Today Show. I said that if we're going to get up that early, we need to bring a great sign to make sure that we make it on TV. Here are just a couple ideas so far:
I'm not quite satisfied with any of them yet, except maybe the third. So, if you can come up with something spectacular enough to be on TV (I'm looking at you, Justin), I'll turn it into a poster, and I promise we'll get up super early and go try and win Al Roker's heart on Thursday or Friday morning.

I spent a week with the cats in Maine, and I'm not even going to post pictures of the cats. So there, Newton.

Sorry for the absence, I was vacationing for the last time before the big move and the start of my new job.  When Joe told one of his friends that I was in Maine for the week, the friend's comment was, "Oh no, does that mean she's only going to blog about her cats for the entire week?"  I took that as a hint that it would be okay to take a brief vacation from the blog, too.  Instead of showing you pictures of my cats, here's a picture from the top of Mt. Agamenticus, taken on the one sunny day of my trip.

The votes are in (again), and it's almost unanimous that I should turn this blog over to the future residents of apartment 5N.  I'm excited about this result, and I'm hoping that the future 5Ners have a solid grasp of the English language and are good enough sports to at least post and say hi.  The NY lease isn't up for awhile though, so don't expect to hear anything from Future 5N until at least August. In the meantime, expect to hear more about what I've been doing to keep the noise from above from getting on my nerves.

In closing, here is a picture of the NY sky a few minutes ago.
And another:

The band so far

I've only received two responses to my request to start a band.  Not too shabby, considering tons of people post in the musicians section of NYC Craigslist.  When I first posted the ad, I almost included a line about how if the band didn't work out, the person should at least be up for drinking some beer.  Turns out that maybe I should have included that line, because the first response I got was from a girl in high school.  Aside from the age, she does have a knowledge of physics (though she said she doesn't want to be in the class, so protests by reading comic books in the back...not sure that qualifies, but hey, at least she read the ad!).  Unfortunately, she plays the keyboard and sings, and wants to make "truly beautiful music."  I just can't allow a high schooler with true musical aspirations into my new "band," because she's never had to rent her own apartment, so I'm not sure that she quite understands the real purpose of my band.  Plus, it's creepy to hang out with a high schooler that you meet on Craigslist, even if it is to be in a band.

The second response, from Frank, was much more promising although he used a lot of emoticons in his response, which always makes me a bit wary.  He sings, but not very well, and is a beginner on the electric guitar.  His musical inspirations include Three Doors Down and Breaking Benjamin, and he wants to play music like that.  Besides the excessive emoticons, he seems like a keeper for the band, mainly because I think his musical tastes will be recognizable to 6N.  He also included a "p.s. say hello to your neighbors!", which I found amusing.

This cat sits in the hallway in our building a lot.  As soon as it sees you, it starts hissing.  I thought it looked funny sitting under the umbrella, so I took a picture, and even managed to capture the evil in his eyes.  Or I just had the camera on the wrong flash setting.

I'm starting a band!

After figuring out yesterday that our management company has done nothing about the noise problem upstairs, I decided to use my legal research skills to read up on a few NY cases about noisy neighbors. Turns out that tenants in NYC seem to have no right to quiet, and that part of the "price" of living in a big city is dealing with noisy neighbors. And here I thought the price of living in the city was the rent I paid every month. Anyway, it seems that as long as the noise ends by around 11 p.m., courts have found that neighbors can play musical instruments, including drums, as long as their lease doesn't prohibit it. Mine doesn't prohibit it, so we're pretty much screwed in terms of enjoying any quiet in our apartment.

Rather than being upset, this information actually makes me feel a little bit better because now I know that at the very least, I don't have rights that are being violated. As a lawyer (not barred in NY though, and none of what I write is legal advice anyway!), it would really make me angry if I had rights that were being violated. Now I realize that I'm just oppressed, and what better way to rebel against oppression than to start a band? Change things through music, right?

As usual, click to make it bigger and be able to read it, it's easiest to just post Craigslist ads by taking a screenshot.

Does anyone have any good ideas about what I can name my new band?

And the votes are in! All three of them.

I have two votes to turn the blog over to the future residents of 5N (let's hope they can read/write English!), and one vote for "other". The person who chose "other" did not elaborate on what they thought I should do with the blog, though. I'm pretty sure Justin, my most frequent commenter, didn't vote. I extended the time for voting by another week just for Justin, although also because Blogger just randomly decided on the first end date for the poll.

In other news about me, I've been having a pretty bad and boring week, so I tried to turn my frown upside down by taking a walk to the bakery this morning for coffee and a chocolate croissant. The bakery lady put my croissant in one little paper bag, put my coffee in another little paper bag, and then put both paper bags inside a plastic bag. The whole "putting the cup of coffee in a bag" thing is something I've only seen in New York, and frankly, I just don't get it. Since the notion of putting a cup of coffee in a bag to make it easier to carry is so absurd to me, I often forget to speak up in time to stop the person from putting my coffee in a bag. I'm much more paranoid about spilling my coffee when I'm carrying it around in a bag than when I'm just carrying the cup.

Anyway, on my 15 minute walk home from the bakery I was convinced that my coffee was going to spill inside the bag and get my croissant all wet, which would mean that my frown would stay a frown. By the time I got home and took everything out of the plastic bag, this is what my croissant bag looked like:

I started to get a little upset with myself for not taking the coffee out of the bag, but then I realized that the croissant bag wasn't wet. The marks on it are just the butter/grease from the croissant, and for a few minutes this morning, everything was delicious and right with the world again.

State of the Future of My Blog

Dearest Readers,

It's approaching that time. The time I've been waiting for since about two days after I moved to New York. It's almost time to move out from underneath apartment 6N. I am writing this now, because we have an important decision to make in the next few weeks. Namely, what am I supposed to do with a blog that I started because of my obnoxious upstairs neighbors when I no longer have obnoxious upstairs neighbors (as of July 4)?

You will notice that there is now a poll in my sidebar, so that you, the three readers who have been regaled with my tales about the drumming from above, the terrible taste in music that 6Ners have, the six to seven people who live in a one-bedroom apartment above me, as well as my other random thoughts, can choose the fate of this blog. If you have other ideas, please make them known in a comment.

Sincerely,

Mandy

P.S. I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying I won't have obnoxious upstairs neighbors in the new place. It's entirely possible that I will. I was promised by the leasing agent that they'd have to drop something very heavy for me to know they're up there, though. Something heavy like a piano.

Monday Music Video, featuring 6N

Make sure you have your sound turned on before you check out the awesome music video that I made. This is just the first of many folks, so please excuse the graphics. I was afraid that if I spent more time on them, I'd miss the peak sounds coming from upstairs. I'm calling this one "Meditations on the Ineffectiveness of Soundproofing in Pre-War Buildings in Queens."



I apologize for the poor sound quality, you may have to turn your speakers way up to hear it. I assure you that in the original video, you do not need to turn your speakers up to hear the "music." I guess Blogger hates the sound of the drums as much as I do.

That noise upstairs is definitely drums, and we met one guy from 6N

Last night I was sitting in the kitchen trying to finish my homework. It was about 11 p.m., and I kept getting distracted by the drumming coming from upstairs. There was drumming coming from 6N the night before as well, until 1:30 a.m. It might have lasted even later than 1:30, but eventually I fell asleep. As soon as Joe walked in the door last night, I pointed out the drumming, and he decided that he would go upstairs and confront the neighbor. I decided to go with him, just to make sure we all started things off nicely, and to be there to call 911 in case someone from 6N mistook Joe for an extra instrument and started hitting him with drum sticks.

Joe headed out the door pretty fast, so I didn't have a chance to grab my camera to get a picture of 6N, and I also didn't have time to grab the switchblade out of my nightstand. I really do have a switchblade in my nightstand, not for protection or anything, but because one of my friends has a crazy family, and her family mailed her a bunch of knives. She showed me how to flip it out and look like a badass, and every time I've gotten out my knife to play with, it's totally freaked out Joe. He's convinced that when I'm flipping it open, I'm going to let go of the knife and somehow stab him. What this all means is that I have no fun pictures of me standing in front of apartment 6N with my switchblade to post, sorry.

Anyway, the guy took a long time to answer the door, and informed us that he had just gotten his drums that day. Funny that we heard them the night before....maybe he was banging on some pots and pans all night since he couldn't contain his excitement? I asked him to please not play drums after 11:30 or 12 at night. I think that's more than reasonable.

What was most disappointing about the experience though, is that Mr. 6N left the chain lock in place when he opened the door, (because obviously Joe and I are an extremely intimidating pair), so it was impossible to tell whether there really are 18 people living up there. We were pretty sure that there are six people living there, but based on where the drums sound like they're coming from, we're no longer certain of our hypothesis.