Anywhere in Johnson county seems like it's close to one Richy McMansionville or another. What do all those people do?

I dunno, but they care a LOT about lawn care!

Aw, sucks about the house plan, Gud. Hope another thing comes along that's even better.

Jesse, maybe the calendar already knows you're just Done.

My place is generally pretty quiet, considering I live right in the city. There's occasional plane noise (hard to avoid), and godawful early this morning there were SERIOUSLY crazy birds. I do not know WHAT was going on, but it wasn't chirping so much as honking, pretending to be a car alarm, and other fun stuff, for like, ten full minutes. And then they suddenly stopped.

...more annoying are the occasional fun bits of the apartment building next door. Either late night dramatics with people leaving or arriving and yelling at each other, or just folks sitting on their balconies talking loudly (the other week, there was this group of older dudes sitting on the balcony, talking loudly ALL DAY LONG. Literally, we noticed them first thing in the morning, and they talked INTO THE NIGHT. Which...OK, glad you're having fun but could ya be a little quieter???)

But those are more occasional than constant.

There are extraordinarily insistent birds outside of our new house. Or just one bird who makes a lot of noise several times a day.

Our hippie-girl neighbors (the ones who would spin fire and hoop in the street) moved out in May, after graduation. So it has gotten much quieter (although the new neighbors who moved in -- a young-ish couple -- have a small yappy dog, so not totally quiet).

Our neighborhood is in no way as quiet as the suburbs, but I am so used to it that when I go out to my mom's, the quietness is slightly freaky.

We hear street noise, but not much out of the ordinary. (Other than our favorite game t SPOILER: NOT REALLY A FAVORITE. OR A GAME. of "fireworks or gunfire?". That gets a little trickier this time of year, unless it's semi-automatic. [Which, to my knowledge, has happened only once since I moved in 5 1/2 years ago. There's somewhat frequent -- defined as "once every couple of months" -- isolated gunfire from non-automatic guns, but no semi-automatic shit, except that one time.])

We do have a neighbor across the street who has a drum kit that he does actually practice almost every day. He keeps his windows open, and even with ours closed and the a/c on, we can hear it. But it's no big deal (although sometimes it makes me want to run out on the porch and start playing air guitar).

Does feeling like you should get fired ever help anything?

I woke up this morning too headachey to function, and just feel like unreliable shit. Aargh. This does not help the headache go away.

Wimbledon real-time spoilers:

Holy crap, Nadal. Holy crap. This is really not your tournament any more.

I've lived in my neighborhood for 10 years, and it still throws me just how bourgeois it is.

I completed an onerous task! I made dental appointments for the kids (complicated in that our dentist left her former practice and is working out of another one now, and is only in the office rather occasionally - and I got lucky and the appointments were available on one of my two "random days off during the week" a month!)

I've lived in my neighborhood for 10 years, and it still throws me just how bourgeois it is.

My neighborhood is weird and awesome. I joke about the hipsters -- of which there are many (although I think lots of them come from other parts of town to visit) -- but really, it's chock full of low-income families, mostly racial minorities, many of whom are single-parent families. And it's got the largest concentration of GLBT people (some of whom also fall in the hipster and low-income categories). And it's chock-full of vocally, actively liberal hippies (some of whom are some combination of hipsters, low-income, racial minorities, and/or GLBT).

It is a good neighborhood in which to just be your freaky self, but it's also full of people just trying to go about their lives, and survive. I love how involved many of the residents are in trying to keep crime rates down (by creating citizens watch groups, etc.). People tend to love living here, and get involved to one degree or another. They don't just live here, they're building community here.

And getting their freak on and/or wearing those fucking straw fedoras.

The con is over. It was great. I had to get up too early to drive our toastmaster to the airport. Sleepy cat is sleepy.

Good to hear!

Gud, sorry about the house. Sounds like you did the wise thing.

They don't just live here, they're building community here.

This. This is what I miss about Fells Point most.