I get lost a lot. I don't completely lack a sense of direction, if someone gives me good guidance I can generally figure out where to go. However, in the case of faulty directions where instinct is concerned I will without fail always make a left when I am supposed to go right. Needless to say the invention the GPS has helped me greatly. No longer do I have to ask "How many streets past the McDonalds is the freeway again?" Generally speaking if the location I am going to is a hour away I can leave an hour and a half in advance and make it there on time.
Of course GPS's still have some quirks. I'm sure that many of you out there in Internet land have had a run in with a prankster GPS one that waits until the last second to tell you to turn or one that prompts you every 12 seconds to "stay left" while driving for 300 miles on the freeway. I recall one time driving out in the middle of cattle country in search of Dairy Queen. After 30 miles of hills and trees I came upon a faded sign trapped in the beams of my headlights that read "The Dairy Queen Dairy Farms."
The most annoying problem that I have with my GPS is that it is a source of isolation during a road trip. Every time that my wife and I are going anywhere new we must sit perfectly quiet and wait for the monotone computer lady to incorrectly pronounce what street we are supposed to turn on to. We've tried to have conversations only to have "Samantha" (we've named her) barge in with the proclamation: "KEEP LEFT!". Often we have tried to predict when she is going to speak and have adjusted and paused over conversations mid sentence only to be met by Samantha's dead silence. When we finally decide that she is going to be quiet we try to start talking only to hear her bark: "RECALCULATING!"
Perhaps it is just me but I find the cold quiet confidence with which Samantha delivers instructions to be unnerving. I need a human connection app for my GPS something to make the driving experience a little more comfortable. How about a GPS with a passive aggressive personality? Every once in a while I decide to turn left or right preemptively without my GPS's endorsement. I have a crazy mental misfire that screams at me "Turn now! the GPS is broken!!! You're going to miss your exit!!" So I turn. Predictably my GPS calmly states "Make the next available U-turn." A real life navigator would say "Why the hell did you turn? Did I tell you to turn? I don't even know why you gave me the map because obviously you seem to think you know where you are going."
They can't all be winners right? I have a lot of anger about a lot of things but I don't feel like refining it down and pushing it through a sarcastic filter today. Nope, I think I'll just meander here for a paragraph or two just to see how it feels. Actually, it feels kind of weird. I'm already getting an inkling that I should be saying something more important...Aw hell.
Okay, how about this: I live in a one bedroom apartment (as all wildly successful people do) if I haven't mentioned this already I'm pretty sure it's a converted motel. I'll attach a picture don't worry. Actually by the time you read that sentence the picture will already be there.
Anyway... There are several buildings in the complex and mine just so happens to back onto another apartment that is just like mine within the complex. What this means is that I can hear the abusive stepmother that lives behind me threaten to force feed the kids Nyquil between long drags from her cigarettes. The only reprieve I get from her yelling is if she is chasing the kids around trying to beat them. What this usually results in is a prolonged hacking, coughing spree that lasts up to and including 15 minutes in length. I would be lying if I said that I didn't wish she had succumbed to her failing lungs on more than one occasion.
I've also had the pleasure of hearing a gentleman I've never met, routinely hork up a mouth full of phlegm and blast out a few snot rockets while having his after work shower. If I'm really lucky on a special occasion while I am out walking the dog I might encounter a man who has clearly walked downstairs from his second level apartment to stand shakily between two cars in the parking lot and void his bowels of all the cerveza his liver could handle. Why he didn't use the toilet inside, I'll never know. But these are the charms of apartment living! What I've decided to talk about today is something a little more soul crushing.
I was sitting in the living room and I heard a sound that was reminiscent of a selection being made on a DVD home screen. Just a small little "beep". I convinced myself that it was my wife watching something in the other room and she was scanning between chapters of some television show she'd seen numerous times. I thought nothing of it until the next day.
The next day my wife said to me:
Wife: Did you hear the beeping?
Me: What beeping?
Wife: The beeping.
Me: Uh, you mean that noise wasn't you watching a movie?
Wife: No, it's a smoke detector beeping.
Me: Is it ours?
Wife: No, it is someone else's.
Me: Who's is it?
Wife: I'm not sure.
Herein lies the problem: We live on the top floor and our apartment backs onto another 2 floor structure just like ours. The beeping could be coming from the apartment below us, the apartment beside us, the apartment beside us and to the right, the apartment directly across from us, the apartment across and below, below and beside, across and beside, and on and on and on. Worse, between the two apartments there is this strange channeling effect where all sounds echo between the opposing buildings. So, it is conceivable that the sound might be strong enough to beep from 200 feet away and be ricocheting off the walls and into my apartment window. In other words, the origin of the sound can not accurately be traced.
What is worse is that the person who occupies the apartment wherever the noise is emanating from has yet to discover it. It is inconceivable that someone could not hear a high pitched beep that sounds at the very least every 45 seconds. It has seemingly become more frequent as the days (yes I said days) have passed. Why oh why if it was your apartment and you heard it would you just not pull out the freaking battery and end the noise until you get a replacement? It's not as if a smoke detector is really going to do its proper job when the only sound it can muster is a lonely and meek cry for a battery replacement.
So this is where I'm at. I'm going to have to spend perhaps hours tomorrow standing between two buildings trying to track down the origin of the beeping and either beat the ever loving hell out of an unrelenting smoke detector or implore one of my lovely fellow tenants to get a new battery.
