Sunday, January 18, 2009

"The Case of the Missing Shoes" or "A Run In with the Law"

In order to understand this story, you have to understand my living arrangement, so bear with me. I own a condo (which is a little misleading because it is really just a very small two bedroom apartment, but I pay a mortgage so it counts!). There are a total of 4 units in my building: mine, an apartment across the hall, one beneath that and one directly beneath mine.

The occupant beneath me, Stephen, is a gentleman about 40 years old. He has some medical issues and has trouble speaking. I guess I would describe him as slow, but I really have no idea what his deal is.

So the story begins with a dinner with some friends. Now I never invite more than a couple of people over at a time because (as I pointed out) my place is small and seating is limited. But this being the holiday season and me really wanting to have some of my favorite people over, the guest list reached 5.

I made dinner and then we played some games, in all a very low key evening. Around 8:30 Stephen comes and pounds on my door...hard. In all honesty, I anticipated this. Stephen has a short fuse and often complains at the slightest noise coming from my apartment.

I answer the door and he starts yelling about the noise of the foot steps coming from my apartment. I told him we would try to keep it down and closed the door, explaining to my guests not to worry, he complains all the time. We all go back to playing games and occasionally we hear him pound on his ceiling, but I ignore it because the noise that is being made by us is reasonable. He comes up one more time and knocks on the door, but I don't open it as I refuse to deal with him.

So the rest of the evening is spent playing games and just having a good time. When the evening ends, my guests go to put on their shoes, which were left in the hallway because it had snowed and they had left them out as to not mess up the floors (very courteous of them). However, one of the pairs of shoes is missing. I thought the owner of the shoes was kidding. He was not.

Instantly, I have my suspect. I go down to Stephen's apartment and knock on his door. He is pissed and says he was sleeping. I ask him about the shoes. He denies having taken them. I then threaten to call his sister and the police.

Now here is the part that really makes the story to me... He says he didn't take them but check the dumpster. He closes the door and I head out to the dumpster to find the shoes on top of a trash bag. So I fish them out and my guests are on their way.

So you would think this would be the end of the story, well it isn't. About an hour later the police show up. Stephen has called to complain about the noise. Without going into too much detail, I talk to the cops and explain the situation. Apparently Stephen turned himself in on the shoes, and, thinking we hadn't retrieved them, was currently dumpster diving for them. I told the cops that we had gotten them out, but they were annoyed with him and let him look while we chatted. Basically, they encouraged me to talk with Stephen's sister, which I have done and haven't heard a thing from him since.

So what have I learned from this? Keep your guest's shoes IN the condo at all times! I just hope my guests wern't so annoyed by the situation that they would be hesitant to return.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Everything is status quo

I was tinkering with my profile on Facebook and inadvertently caused a little bit of a stir amongst my friends and family. One of the options on your profile is "Relationship status" and I have always left that field with nothing selected. You see, for me Facebook started out as a work tool for me to keep in contact with the college students I work with and felt that field was irrelevant in regards to my work. However it has since morphed into a tool (addiction) I use in all aspects of my life, so I m looking at it in a bigger scope, but I digress....

Anyways, I decided to list myself as single, which is all fine and good until you see that, for privacy reasons, I only list my name, hometown, and birthday. Now you add "Relationship Status: Single" and it looked to me to be very conspicuous, so I decided to leave that status blank. After all, I have worked hard to create "the Ian mystique", I don't want to ruin it by giving up all my secrets on Facebook, right?

Well, Facebook's feed picked up my activity and posted "Ian Martin is no longer listed as single", which is misleading at best. This started messages coming in from friends and family nosing around for dirt.

So let me clear the air: I am single. When that changes I will most likely tell anyone who matters (and probably some who don't) personally. After all if the is one thing I have learned this year, it is you have to be very careful with the Facebook relationship status, as this clip from the Big Bang Theory points out: