"Keep it down up there!"

I will start out by saying that I have been extremely lucky in my housing situations since I started college. I have rarely lived near anyone who causes a lot of disturbances. The 8th floor, the SLH, the senior apartments, my above-garage apartment in the first year of grad school, the house we rented when we first got married... they have all been pretty good living arrangements. Yes, I have complained about all of them at one point or another, but nothing is quite as bad as now.

We are not apartment complex people. Or, if we are, it is certainly not THIS apartment complex.

We live in a building with an 18-family occupancy limit. We are on the second floor of three, so we do have neighbors living above us. Our upstairs neighbors have two little girls who run around a lot. Seeing as how Jared and I are generally fans of little kids, it's not a big deal to hear some thumping every once in a while. What does become a bigger deal is when they blast the bass on their stereo so that our apartment shakes. Or better yet, when they begin arguing at 3:00 a.m. and don't stop until 5:30 a.m., waking us up and keeping us from falling back asleep. I can tolerate some extra noise coming from above when I am awake, but as soon as you keep me from sleeping, then we have some serious issues.

Of course, we can't really complain because our apartment managers don't really respond to any complaints. And we don't really feel comfortable confronting the people upstairs because he often practices boxing outside our building.

Needless to say, we are trying very hard to save up money this year so that we can perhaps buy our own house sooner rather than later. Either way, we're probably not staying here past our lease. The location is convenient and the view from our window is pretty, but it isn't worth losing sleep over.