It's an ugly day in the neighborhood

So, my downstairs neighbor seemed like an okay-enough fellow. Sure, the very first night Lydia and I moved in, we could smell incense rising through the floor. And sure, he and his ever-present friend-who-stares-a-lot often sit on the front porch watching people parallel park. And yeah, he plays techno music pretty loudly, and the beats pulsate below our living room floor. But overall, he seemed nice enough. He brought Lydia a fan on the day we moved in, and he shared his umbrella with me during a downpour as I was crossing the street.

But for the last couple of nights, he's been partying, and it is, frankly, annoying as hell. I feel like I live in a dorm again, except that in our dorms, the college cleaning service had the unfortunate task of disposing of the broken beer bottles and empty beer boxes. The neighbor, however, leaves half-empty beer bottles strewn all over the now-grimy front porch. He fills trash bags with empty lager bottles and stinks up our shared trash cans, and then he doesn't even bother to move the trash cans to the curb on trash night. Lydia and I have maybe two very small bags of kitchen trash in those heavy-duty outdoor cans, and the rest is Downstairs Dave's partying refuse.

I don't really care if he wants to party. Whatever. But I want him to shut the hell up after midnight, so that I don't have to lie awake in my bed two floors up listening to yells and giggles, willing myself to doze off so that I can deal with getting up early five days a week. Does Downstairs Dave have a job? I do not know. His frequent reveling would lead me to believe that if he does, it requires little responsibility. Or perhaps he just functions well on very little sleep, lots of beer, and much smoking out of a hookah, which he also leaves on the front porch. Someday, I am going to put his precious hookah in one of the trash cans that I haul out on Trash Pick-up Tuesday, and then I am going to laugh as he wonders what to do to pass the time until he can purchase another hookah and 24-pack of Miller-Freaking-Lite from thewonderfulworldofinconsiderateneighbors.com.

I know it could be worse. It could be way worse. But for now, sleep-deprived as I am, annoyed that I have to wade through bottles of cheap beer to get to my mailbox, I will complain about it.