And more about my neighbor

If you had the time to lose
An open mind and time to choose
Would you care to take a look
Or can you read me like a book

Time is always on my side
Time is always on my side

I decided to blog this as I'm ignoring the knocking on my apartment door. Its my neighbor, the one mentioned in my last blog.

Where to start? He seems like a nice enough guy, but as I mentioned the marijuana habit seems to make him all not quite there. We've hung out a little bit, usually watching tv or a movie at his place. He'll sit there on his laptop during most of it, and usually I feel fairly uncomfortable over there. I think its the spectre of him telling me again "Hang on a minute man, I just wanna do this one-hitter real quick then we'll start the movie". Ugh.

When I moved in, like I said he seemed nice enough. And he's not a bad guy I guess, he's just kind of...off. A couple weeks after my ambulance trip he wound up in the hospital himself with a bad asthma attack. He emailed me from there and asked if he could borrow my Zune for a few days since he was going to be laid up there for the rest of the week. Of course, no problem. So I gave it to his roommate and she took it to him. Well, in the meantime he downloaded the Zune software to his laptop and realized you can transfer stuff from the Zune to your computer as well as the other way around. So he asked me if I would mind converting a few dvds to .wmv for him (I bought a cool software program earlier in the year for conversion) so he could have them on his laptop. I figured sure, why not?

Can I tempt you come with me
Be Devil may care fulfill your dream
If I said I'd take you there
Would you go would you be scared

Time is always on my side
Time is always on my side

Don't be afraid you're safe with me
Safe as any soul can be... honestly
Just let yourself go

You know why not? Because his "few dvds" turned out to be entire seasons of tv shows, thats why not. And on top of it, he got them from various libraries so they were all due back "real soon, so could you do these right away?". Oh sure, no problem. So I did the first couple cause I still feel indebted for the whole ambulance thing. The week of halloween I literally spent all my free time after work each night converting his stuff because it was due back that weekend. Now when I run this software it uses up a lot of resources, so I really can't use my computer. Plus its a giant pain in the ass to do that, and on top of that I'd been wanting to undertake my Seinfeld conversion project, converting the 8 seasons I have into .wmv to put on my Zune for my own use. Its a big enough pain in the ass when I do it for myself. I dunno, maybe that makes me selfish. I wasn't fond of how he just assumed that I would do all this, and under a deadline no less.

When I finished the first 2, turns out he had 4 other season sets he wanted converted. Ok, thats enough. So I told him, "look...it took me over 15 hours to convert this stuff last time, this is too much. I don't mind a movie or two once in awhile, but this is unreasonable. And to have a deadline on it makes it even worse". So I figured that was that. But of course, it wasn't. Last weekend he somehow managed to give me the other 4 season sets back. I was fairly incredulous as he appeared to be totally oblivious to what I had told him just one day earlier. So I told him I doubted I could get to them, but he wanted me to take them anyway. So I did. And they are still sitting on my kitchen counter.

But wait, there's more.

Caught somewhere in time
Caught somewhere in time
Caught somewhere in time... oh oh
Caught somewhere in time
Caught somewhere in time
Caught somewhere in time... oh oh

When my landlord came over to change the locks Monday, this guy popped out in the hallway and told me to stop by after cause he had a chair he wanted to give me. So I go by, and his roommate had this old recliner in her room. It wasn't brand new or anything, but it looked sturdy enough and I don't have a recliner...looked like a decent gaming chair. But I told him hey, I'm kinda light right now so I can't give you anything for it. He assured me it was no problem, they were going to throw it out anyway so might as well give it to me. Well ok cool, thanks...I'll see about picking it up in the next day or so. And as we were walking out of the room he throws in "yeah, so maybe you can see about doing those movies for me...?"

<sigh>

Know what? I don't want the fucking chair. Then as I leave and am opening my apartment, he tells me to wait. He goes in his kitchen cabinet and pulls out a bag of cat treats and tosses them to me. I'm like "uh, thanks..." and then he says "You can just give me $2 for them next time you get paid". So I tossed them back to him and said no thanks, they make Kitty puke.

Like a wolf in sheep's clothing
You try to hide your deepest sins
Of all the things that you've done wrong
And I know where you belong

Time is always on my side
Time is always on my side

Make you an offer you can't refuse
You've only got your soul to lose...
Eternally... let yourself go!

Now, in the past he had broached the subject of being roommates. No way, no how. Just the pot smoking is enough on its own, I wouldn't want to live with that. Factor in that family court would probably frown on my son being in that environment and its an even sweeter proposition. Then there's the fact that he's a freelance cab driver (read: unemployed) and it just gets better and better. He's told me that he basically runs a tab with the landlord, that he owes him a lot of back rent. Now thats none of my business of course, but it doesn't look good on the roommate resume. And then he also mentioned getting a 3-bdrm so his current roommate could share the apartment with us. Oh yes, his roommate...

The first week I moved in I met her. She introduced herself by saying (and I'm not making this up) "Hi, I'm <XXXX>...I'm insane.". Um...nice to meet you? Now everyone has problems, and I certainly have my share, but thats not a good situation either. She had some kind of botched hysterectomy or something and she suffers from bouts of manic depression and really can't work. Then she told me since she can't usually pay her share of the bills, she does all the cleaning and "other things" for this guy.  And to be honest, she kind of creeps me out. So yeah, the roommate thing sounds like a great idea. Not.

So anyway, thats my story for tonight. Sleep tight, and thanks for reading.