I May Finally “Get” the Appeal of the Idea of Owning Something Besides a Fantasy Football Team, Like a House

Dear Upstairs (well, 4 floors upstairs) Neighbor Who Decided to Venture Onto the Roof Last Evening at Approximately 11:25pm:

I am a largely forgiving, relatively shy, and calm person. In other words, besides the rare occasion when someone makes the oh-so-incorrect claim that Joe Montana was a massively better quarterback than Steve Young to my face, I do not get overly angry.

However, Sir or Madam, I am angry at you. For some reason, you decided to venture onto the rooftop of my apartment building last night. Maybe it was to smoke up. Maybe it was to look at the eclipse event that was going to occur later on. Maybe it was because you were so drunk you opened a door you incorrectly thought was your own. For whatever reason, you opened the roof door, and triggered the fire alarm.

The piercing, screeching, louder than my little sister’s scream when she was 1.5 and had a massively bad ear infection, fire alarm.

Normally, I could have let this go, chalked it up to the bad luck I was having that day, and let bygones be bygones. However:

1. Since my first grade music teacher, Mr. Donmoyer, scared the musical talent out of me by telling our class that if we didn’t pay attention to fire drills, “we would all die,” a little bit of that six year old me horror has lived with me everyday.
2. Then, a week after my 25th birthday, some homeless drug addict set fire to my apartment building right under my bathroom.
3. And in the previously mentioned fire, my cat, who somehow survived the fire and subsequent complete destruction of my apartment unit by the Boston Fire Department in fighting the fire, became justly skittish and scared to high heaven everytime a fire alarm, smoke alarm, or siren is heard.

Therefore, Mr. or Ms. 6th floor Neighbor, I can not really let this one go.

See, because the alarm went off, I went to grab my cat to carry her outside with me. She was flipping out and yowling and proceded to scratch me in four places (one from each paw) as she jumped out of my arms to scurry under my bed, since that’s where she hid in our January fire. We eventually got outside, where we waited for the firefighters to look around the building and make the determination that there was no fire, just some idiot opening the door to the roof, and that we could all go back inside.

That’s not the worst part.

No, the worst part was that Mr. Firefighter could not turn off the fire alarm. A few of my neighbors called our management company to ask them to hurry over and shut the alarm off, which they did.

At approximately 1am.

So thank you, Mr. or Mrs. 6th Floor Neighbor, for an hour of unnecessary piercing alarming that drove my cat to hide under my bed and yowl in fear, and that kept me up when I desperately wanted to sleep after working a 14 hour day. I would love to thank you personally for causing this sequence of events — however, I doubt you’ll ever step forward and collect the thanks.

I wish you all the best in your future endevors. With best regards,

Sincerely,

Katherine

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I guess the only redeeming portion of the above mentioned fire alarm was that because of the insomnia that it produced, I got to watch Michael Vick’s apology broadcast in its entirety on ESPN three times. I can’t believe how misguided one person could be to engage in such an activity as dogfighting, but especially because Vick had been given every chance not to be misguided since entering the NFL. In Vick’s early NFL years, the Falcons brought in retired quarterbacks, most notebly (well, to me) Steve Young, to mentor him on the field, and I imagine off the field as well. I think, tragically, Vick became caught up in the interests of his “entourage” and decended into this type of illegal activity. However, his apology was either extremely sincere or he has the best PR firm ever, and I believe it was worth the fuss it received.

I doubt Vick will ever play football again, not nesscarily solely because of what he did (unfortunately) but because he never lived up to expectations as a quarterback, does not work well with any offensive coordinator or coach he has ever been given, and because I believe the era of the running quarterback has come to an end. (Donovan McNabb is forced to run less because of injury, yes, but also because the most productive quarterbacks against today’s defenses are tall-ish Montana types like Brady and Manning – even if McNabb had never been injury prone, he would have been forced to change his rushing ways.)

On a related note, the Vick situation has led me to believe that fantasy football magazines are a waste of money, since the one I bought two weeks ago reccomends drafting Vick in the sixth or seventh rounds, Corey Dillion in the tenth round, and waiting to see if Trent Green keeps his starting job over Damon Huard in Kansas City (great googely mooglely) before picking either one of the two. Really, peeps, come on now. Why do I fall for this trap? Because I’m too lazy to print out the Yahoo rankings myself to read on the T? And, on another related note, why did I feel woefully inadequate when I did read my fantasy football magazine on the T next to people reading actual books? I mean, at one point, I was reading the magazine in the elbowing vicinity of two riders reading The Kite Runner. I felt both sets of eyes lift up from their texts at one point to silently judge me. Really, I read non-sports good-for-you socially acceptable tombs of literature or non-fiction on occassion. Just not now.

Just wait till I bring my new Buffalo Bills 2007 Media Guide onto the T. Ooh, I can hear the smirks already.