hey you kids

Mine is a quiet neighborhood. Except fopr the retired nurse next door and her Harley. And the guy on the corner who plays his television so loud you can hear the dialog a block away. And the occasional fireworks and firearms.

Tonight the student house across the street is having a rockin Halloween party. Each track they play is a little louder than the one before. It's almost one in the morning. Aslo they keep shouting like there's something really exciting going on, but as far as I can tell it's just a lot of okay music and Phyllis Diller wigs and fake cobwebs. Fun, if you're the one doing it: but not worth roller coaster screams. Oh maybe it is. What do I know?

It's Friday night, check, it's Halloween, check. But they better calm down by two in the morning or I'm calling it in.

I won't go over there myself. The last time I did that it was the loud television guy whose volume was deafening when I was several blocks away and the conversation quickly went from me trying to be kind of gentle about complaining about how very loud it was to him making vaguely threatening noises (but not actually making any threats). But he hasn't been so loud since. I think he's been called on it before. In any case, it's the cops who are going to deal with this.

Oh lord, they're yelling like drunken Ivy-league frat boys. Is that what happened? The Gaona family abode has turned into a frat house? Can they do that without a public hearing?

Because if there had been a public hearing I'd have said anything but that. I don't mind living with overcrowded student houses -- I lived in those myself for years -- crap, they're chanting. They stopped, it must have been the chorus to the song they're listening to -- anyway, I would be okay with a half-way house, a group home, a raft of students -- almost anything but a frat house.

I'm going to bed. If I can't sleep because of the noise in an hour I will definitely call the cops.

I guess one o'clock is the magic hour

The noise stopped abruptly at one. I was already in bed so I didn't go to the window to see if the cops had come.

I wonder if I should go give them a motherly talk about the difference between a neighborly loud party and an excruciating one?

My ears were seriously hurting by the time I went to bed. Really, I don't mind hearin somebody's music clearly through my windows. That's okay, it makes the neighborhood sound alive. Ditto for the sound of laughter and merrymaking. But there is a threshold.

Nothing about it in the online Sentinel. I don't get the paper one anymore, a decision I mildly regret from time to time, since their online presence is paltry.