next time leave a raft

From the kitchen I could hear the familiar hiss of the hose. I went promptly to the front door to confirm my suspicions. Earlier in the day our landlord had been watering the plants. As I had guessed he had left and forgotten to turn off the hose that had now created a small pond outside the doorsteps and was flowing into the neighbor's yard. The landlords, Bill and Nikki are an elderly but feisty couple. Senility is steadily overtaking them. But, what they lack in wits they make up for in stubbornness and misplaced assertiveness. Once Bill was wandering though the living room and demanded to know what we had done with the french doors that separated the living room and dinning room areas. It took me a while to convince him that there were never any french doors as long as I had lived here. Leaving the hose on outside our door is a popular activity for both of them. Once Nikki came pounding on the door demanding to know why we had left the hose on and accusing me of wasting water. At first she didn't remember turning it on, then she insisted that she had asked me to turn it off at a certain time. She's insane.

They have no answering machine and when our shower faucet wouldn't turn off I found myself calling over and over with no answer. Nikki finally picked up the phone the following evening and then proceeded to chew me out for not calling sooner, insisting she had been at home the entire time. If I got a dollar for every time she called me a liar... California law says that if the rent's due date falls on a weekend or holiday the landlords can't penalize you for turning it in on the next business day. This didn't stop Nikki from waking me up at 8am on Labor day threatening to kick us out for not having the rent already under the doormat. She is always imagining that we've done something terrible like having more people live here than we admit to. Nikki yelled at Shane when she saw him leaving, unwilling to believe he was just visiting. She also never forgets these imaginary wrongs and will sometimes bring them up months later for no apparent reason. Like I said, she's crazy.

I nearly tripped over a stack of four cases of beer when I walked into my living room last Friday. In response to my puzzled inquiry my roommate simply said, "the beer fairy visited." Hey kids, remember to leave a bottle cap under your pillows. Our friend, Jon "Marty" Allen, works for Anheuser-Busch and is allowed to walk away with a few cases every couple months. He was kind enough to donate this month's allotment to our party. Oh, hey, by the way, we're having a party. Halloween party to be exact. Oct 31, 9pm, 684 Locust St, Pasadena. We finally have a web page up, but it might go through a couple more changes. The URL is http://shadowlurker.com/halloween. Check it out, pass it on, and most importantly show up on Halloween. If anyone is interested in helping out with supplies (booze, snacks, etc) or with setting up before the party please let me know. There's a lot of preparation to be done so we could really use the help.