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.

ION, my sixteen-year-old cousin said something yesterday that made me almost ask if he had seen it on tumblr, but I just couldn't get into it at that moment. I am curious about his life!

My neighborhood longs for the days of Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. If you don't go to the nearby church, you are a non-entity--which makes me happy, when it doesn't make me a conversion project, but the last one of those I was aware of was a couple of years ago.

We get "fireworks or gunfire" regularly, due to this being Utah and Guns Make God Happy, and being on the edge of town with large fields nearby for target and varmint shooting. Though why the targets are being shot at midnight, I'm not sure.

And on the hipster front, a new store opened in the business district of our neighborhood, called Northside Grange: Pet & Urban Farm Supply. The large sign in the window says "Dog, Cat, & Chicken Feed."

Northside is the Midwest nexus of secret hipster chickens. (Actually, they don't have to be secret; city ordinances allow chickens as long as they aren't a nuisance, so it's sort of just a matter of making sure your neighbors are cool with your birds.)

I love that my urban hipster neighborhood has a feed store now. Oh, Northside.