So, at about one-thirty in the morning, a couple of cars pulled up right outside my window. One of them made a loud noise, and they were putting on an obnoxious light show complete with blinding white strobes. They were camped out on the street for a solid hour, blocking the driveway (to the chagrin of one of our neighbors who keep strange hours) and generally keeping me awake.

I should’ve called the cops… OH WAIT.

(Two Portland Police cars, one white Mustang, and eventually a tow truck for the Mustang since its driver was eventually stuffed into the back of a police car. If the one cruiser had simply toned down the rock-concert lighting effects I might’ve been able to get back to sleep. Argh.)

So, if my daughter’s school choir performance hadn’t been scheduled for tonight…

And, if the #9 Broadway TriMet driver hadn’t gotten lost for a few minutes on the way home…

…I’d have missed some guy totalling his Volvo because he was in a hurry to race the yellow light. (more…)

I should clear something up.

It’s not that I should, or would, call the cops on the Party House most nights. See, in fact their music isn’t actually that loud. (Most nights.)

The problem is that it’s just loud enough.

Most people can and do sleep through the low-level bass rhythm they can barely make out above the ambient noises in their sleeping area. Most people have an ability to tune out (as it were) anything that isn’t a foreground annoyance. You’ll note that I’m not most people, however.

Let’s add it up: I’m a nervous, easily-startled person. I can’t not-listen to any kind of music, just due to funny mental hardwiring. I almost always have a difficult time getting to sleep. So, there I am, 11:30pm and unable to even get partway to slumberland because there’s a quiet but steady “bum-bum dum, bum-bum dum” coming from the apartment across the carpark.

I’m sure they think I’m some sort of annoying lunatic. I probably am, come to think on it. But I had to ask them to turn the bass down just a bit, nonetheless. Of course, by the time I get annoyed enough to get dressed again and stomp over there to have words with them… my adrenaline’s so high that I’m not sleeping for a while yet anyway, am I?

Cannot win. Just, cannot.