Today's post is one that I've been meaning to write for awhile now. I should post about some cool stuff that happened over the weekend but I can't really talk about it without revealing some of my thoughts on a certain situation and considering my horoscope said to keep things close and not talk about them, I'm going to stick to that.
What I will write about is the apartment building we live in here in Chicago. It's cheap which is why we moved here in the first place, and it's in a neighborhood we love, but cheap apartments always have there idiosyncrasies and this one is no exception. Just to give you an idea of size, it's a four-story brick building that has approximately 60 or so apartments. Mostly studios and one bedrooms. We live in a one bedroom that has a large living room/kitchen.
Overall, we like our little place and like our previous apartments it has earned a few nicknames. Our place in Texas was the ghetto apartment, our first KC apartment was the "haunted or creepy" one, our second the tree house because it was on the third floor and we were surrounded by the treetops of the birches that lined the front, and well, the Iowa apartment could just be considered Hell on Earth. This building is the smelly building or the weird building.
There are so many different smells from this place it's really quite amazing. Part of the problem I think is that there are no exhaust fans over the stoves so of course you can smell what everyone is cooking and it doesn't always smell very appetizing. But it goes beyond that. One day there was an overwhelming stench of acetone on my floor and once the first floor reeked of turpentine. Both of these instances made me wonder what the hell people were doing behind closed doors because the sheer amount of these chemicals that would be needed to produce that potent of an odor was staggering. Then there are some people on my floor that blaze quite often and if they all do it at the same time it's like walking through a college dorm in the 60s. The best part is when the apartment next door does it we get to smell it in our bedroom.
Aside from the myriad of odors this place produces, there are the people. Weird, strange, sometimes disturbing people. There's the chick down the hall that seemed cool at first until I had more interaction with her. She seems a bit socially awkward and seemed put off that I would be annoyed that people (including her) take clothes of the washer/dryers. I just don't like people touching my stuff! There's also the couple down the hall. He has some sort of disability and requires a wheelchair or walker. He sometimes walks with the walker up and down our hall for exercise. He is very nice and I always say hello to him. His SO however, is never friendly and never responds to my hello's or excuse me's. I keep doing it anyway just to annoy her.
One day I was in the laundry room folding some clothes and a man walked in, saw me there, stopped mid-step, said "OH", then backed out of the room quickly. Strange in itself but even stranger after I realized he didn't have any laundry with him and the machines were only being used my me at the time. WTF was he going to do in there? I'm sure I don't want to know...
Many times since moving in I've passed by someone in the hallway that gave me a strange look, like I wasn't supposed to be there. I say hello and they ignore me but continue to stare. It almost makes me feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.
