The people upstairs ...

are building something again. By my count, they have built enough things since the summer to amount to at LEAST four cabinets, a bookshelf or two, a large bed, and innumerable tables. This one has a lot of hammering and so far no sawing. Interesting.

The people upstairs are fascinating tenants. They run around a lot in high heels (there is a woman and a man living there, but who knows which one is wearing the high heels). They yell and cheer sporadically in tones that sound like sports fanatics' screams, but Brian and I always search the TV guide and flip channels when they do this, and there are never any sporting events on. They also failed to close the shower curtain correctly for so many showers in a row that the water leaked through the floor and into our ceiling, where it finally busted the plaster open in a nice, round, nasty-zit bubble. And they have a dog that often seems incredibly distressed, and runs around at night, clicking his toenails on their water-covered, high-heel-marked, construction site of a living space. This fascinates me.

The other thing that fascinates me is this selection, from one of my students' papers about "A Raisin in the Sun":

"Walter Lee Younger is the kind of person that dreams of so many things that he wants to come true but in the end realizes that there just dreams. Walter is the type that dreams of things that will hopefully come true some time in his life. Walter has goals that go beyond the truth. His expectations drive him to a point where he believes his dreams will come true."

Um, HELLO, are you ever going to actually make a POINT?

I also enjoyed this little excerpt: "Walter L. Young was a slim male. He always had a thing with the ladies."

The hammering has stopped. Back to work.