Neighbors

Isn't it weird how neighbors can be? They can be your worst enemy, your babysitter, an enigma, almost family, or anything in between. You never know what kind of neighbors you're going to get. People usually don't rent or buy houses based on their neighbors--That is unless they are actual family members. They do, however, sometimes buy or rent based on the lack of neighbors (as in being away from everybody).

Me? I ended up with some pretty damn good neighbors.

Gayle lives next to me. Freshly retired this year, she has worked the recent years of her life in the retail environment--Specifically Home Depot. I don't know much about her, but we talk to each other any time we happen to run into each other in the driveway. What makes her a great neighbor? Two things:

• She's just an all around really nice lady
• She's never home

The fact that I'm on the outside of a triplex means that I don't have anyone on the other side of my North wall. There is another apartment building a few feet away though. Although there were at one time "neighbors from Hell" living there, they have fortunately moved on so I don't hear anything from that direction any more. On the other side of me is my absentee neighbor, Gayle. The reason she is absentee so often is because she is always at one of her kids' houses babysitting her grandchildren. She plays "live-in" when she babysits, so she only comes around every few days or so.

On the other end of my triplex is a young (30 or so) family of three. Chris, Angie, and Kailey. Kailey is 3 years old and quite a handful. Chris is a fellow motorcycle enthusiast and computer nut. Although they've lived here for a while (I believe they moved in right after I did), I never really "met" them until the warmer months when I would be out in the garage with my door open. Kailey loves to come over and pester me, and she is the cutest little blond-haired brown-eyed girl you have ever seen. Chris hangs out quite often when I'm out there, and we've become pretty good friends. What makes Chris a good neighbor?

• He is nice, his wife is nice, and his daughter is such a precocious cutie
• He gives me things

He will occasionally, without warning, leave a little green "bud" sitting in my garage when he departs. The first time it happened I didn't catch it until the next day. When it happened a second time, he was still there.
"Do you know anything about this?" I asked, pointing to the bud sitting on my drill press table.
"I might..." He replied, with a twinkle in his eye.

One other time he was watching me typing something into my garage computer, and said, "I'm going to have to get you a monitor for your garage." He works for a branch of Dell that provides computers to Boeing, so I knew he probably got good deals from time to time, but I didn't think much of it. That is, until this past Friday. I had just gotten home a few minutes earlier when he roared home on his Honda crotch rocket. He came ambling over with a drink in one hand and a bunch of cables in the other. He laid the cables down on a table in my garage.
"I don't know if you can use any of these or not." he said. "I'll go get the rest." and he went back over to his garage. When he returned he was carrying a 19" black Dell digital flat panel monitor! This is not one of the "cheapie" ones they make either. It's digital or analog, has a built-in USB hub, and it telescopes upward and even rotates 90° if you want to.
A couple years ago I replaced the video card in my computer with one that supported a digital input, expecting that I would be upgrading to a digital flat panel monitor in the near future. Although flat panel monitors look great with an analog input, they look even better with digital. Anyway, with the divorce and all, it just got swept under the rug and forgotten. I guess I was lucky my computer was ready though eh?

Neighbors: When they are bad, they can be a total nightmare, but when they are good, they can be really, really good!