I've had to deal with a real asshole apartment neighbor these past couple years. I won't get into all the issues I've had with him here yet (those who read my journal might already know) but over the past several months he's been doing something that I really hate. He bangs on the wall when I'm too noisy. Our shared wall in this duplex is mostly a kitchen on my side. On his side I think it's a living room. The guy who bangs on the wall is named Warren and, as far as I can tell, spends 24 hours a day on his couch, watching TV. I can hear the TV on most of the time when I'm in the kitchen. He's 40 - 50 years old and lives there with his sister. She always seems to be out working and he has never worked as far as I can tell.
The thing is, I'm not a noisy neighbor. The first time he did this is when I was doing dishes and I closed a cabinet door. I didn't slam the door, I just closed it like normal. A bang on the wall is returned to me. A minute later I close the same cabinet again and hear another bang on the wall. Several days later this all repeats again. A few weeks later, I'm using the blender and he starts banging on the wall. And this becomes a regular thing with us. Every time I use the blender (milkshakes for the kids) he freaks out. And this isn't late at night; it's typically somewhere in the 6pm to 8pm range. One night he really lets loose on the wall, banging the hell out of it, and my kids go to the front door and open it, thinking that someone is banging on the door. I can see how the vibrations of a blender on the counter connected to their wall would probably be noisy over there. But damn, it's only for about a minute each time, maybe two times a week. It's not like he has to get some sleep so he can work in the morning.
I've only retaliated to his banging once. After being done with the blender I spent about 5 minutes revving it up, over and over. I could faintly hear him bitching about it through the wall. I got bored and quit, though. Normally I'm the type of person that would just go next door and talk to them about the problems.
Anyway, all this leads up to what I'm going to do for the next two weeks. Last weekend I moved into a new place, but I've still got that old apartment until December 30th. I've been going over there occasionally to clean things up. At some point this week I came up with the idea of leaving my blender running on the counter for 3 weeks straight. But I ditched that idea, thinking it would probably burn the motor out and maybe even start a fire in the process. And while setting Warren's place on fire sounds hilarious, I just don't think that's a good idea.
Then last night a friend of mine suggested controlling it remotely, or putting the blender on a timer. What a great idea! And I just happened to have a timer too. So I went to the Salvation Army store and found an old blender for $8.00. Here's a picture I snapped this evening:
For the next two weeks, Warren is going to be treated to approximately 4 hours of blending per day, every single day. The timer randomizes the starting and ending times by 15 minutes. So sometimes the blending will last for 45 minutes and sometimes it'll last for 75 minutes. I spaced it out to turn on throughout the day and at reasonable hours. Originally I had one of the times set to 4am, but I decided against that for 2 reasons. One is that he would complain to my landlord and I wouldn't have a very good excuse for blending at 4am. And two, because Warren is the type of guy that might break into my apartment in a fit of rage to turn the blender off. I think this is much less likely to happen during the day.
I'm pretty sure that Warren doesn't have cable TV (they don't even have a phone there) and that my blender might be messing up his reception. If he freaks out this much about 2 minutes of blending per week, just imagine his rage when the blender is running for 4 hours a day! This has the potential to make him miss EIGHT HILARIOUS SITCOMS PER DAY!
What's everyone think? Could I do better? Is it a bad idea? Will running a blender for an hour at a time burn out the motor? I'll let everyone know when he breaks into my apartment. My landlord knows that I'm not living there and I've authorized him to come over any time he wants to show the apartment to people. It's gonna be funny if halfway through the tour, my blender turns on. I guess I'll blame my kids if he asks. "Oh weird, they must have plugged in the blender and the timer that I just happened to have sitting there on the counter, even though I've taken every single other item that I own to the new place..."
