For the record, I have never been much of a fan of the place I currently call home. At best the condo complex that I am a property owner in could be described as an upscale slum. The percentage of renters far exceed the percentage of owners, and the renting class is certainly not what I would consider the cream of the crop.

Still in my three years of living in my own personal purgatory, things have never been as bad as they are now. For the most part I’m a very accommodating person who doesn’t like to cause trouble for anyone, but I expect the same in return. My current next-door neighbors obviously don’t follow that philosophy.

They have two T-Birds (only one of which runs) in the parking lot. They have five people and one dog stuffed into a two bedroom abode, two of them being loud and obnoxious teens who drag their hoodlum friends to hang outside my window into the ungodliest of hours. Teens who think playing wall ball off of the front of our building where there are gigantic windows every 15 feet or so is a grand idea. They have a broken front window that has been loosely patch with a sheet of plywood for nearly three months. They have had the cops called on them no less than five times by everyone else on my street.

They have to go. Seriously, because now I’m starting to get dragged into their white trash soap opera.

I can see battle lines starting to form. The neighbors from hell have allies just three doors down. One of the neighbors across the way stopped me while getting my mail to tell me that I should call the condo association early and often as they have in an attempt to uproot these people. I sit in my room and vent my frustration to my web site because I’d rather not deal with either side.

If I have an issue with someone I like to let them know in person. I have confronted the neighbors on at least two separate occasions, both times they were being out of line. One time it was near 1 am and the teens were sitting on the front stoop blabbing away like it was Noon. One was even pushing around a kids toy car and bellowing at the top of his lungs. I yell, and it quiets them for the moment. But they don’t learn.

Their values are fucked up, in my opinion. Seriously fucked up. Honestly, what do you think is more important: Fixing a basket-ball sized hole in the window, saving your cash and finding an actual house to buy or rent so your delinquent kids have property to roam around on, or buy a 61′ television that keeps shorting out your unit’s power? Guess which one my neighbors chose?

I can not leave this hell hole fast enough. Anywhere is better than here.

Update: My sister overheard one of my neighbors talking about them being kicked out of the complex! I’ll believe it when I see the moving truck, but this could be the early Christmas gift I was looking for! Of course it would mean having the 5th set of neighbors at that address since we moved into our own little slice of hell, but right now you could stick Hitler and Stalin in next door and I’d call it an improvement!

So there I was just siting in my room Monday night, watching TV and minding my own business, when my sister Shannon came in and decided she wanted to make me feel really old. How you ask? By showing off the engagement ring she had just gotten a few minutes before.

Yup, my little sister is getting married.

This comes as little surprise to me, since my sister has been hinting that the news was coming for nearly two months. Well, not so much hinting as she was starting to put together guest lists and telling me about ring shopping trips her and her now fiance were making.

The wedding day is at least a year off, to which I say “thank goodness” because I need a bit of time for this to all sink. Most of the knots in my mid-section are there because I’ve been more than just an older brother to Shannon. I had a hand in raising her through some very turbulent years when her dad died; in fact my last pseudo-fatherly act will be to give her away in the ceremony. It’ll be quite the day to be certain.

Congratulation Shannon and Chris. I wish you two all the best.

Back from No-Maam, a little tired and a little banged up from the experiences but feeling refreshed regardless. It was good times, at least what I can remember of it all. The first night there I partied a bit harder than I could handle, and the next thing I knew it was morning and I was lying in my tent. There were some pictures in my camera to help fill in the missing memories but it’s a scant view into a night lost and to be honest I’m not sure if I want to know the whole story anyway.

The rest of the weekend I made use of the natural amenities available at Jim Thorpe the best I could. I took a couple of night hikes down to Mauch Chunk Lake to catch some stars sans the mass amounts of light pollution that you have to deal with at the Jersey Shore. I even got to catch a falling meteorite that resembled someone arc welding the sky, which was very cool. This was supplemented with a bike ride on the Switchback Trail, which was hampered by the fact that the derailer on my bike is severely fucked and I needed to remount the chain about once every 15 minutes. There was also things like playing horseshoes, watching the camp fire burn, drinking lots of Rolling Rocks and other very low impact activities. In the end they all balanced out.

With the clearing of the camp site this morning and the start of the NFL season in earnest (with a Giants win no less!), fall is officially here by the AJ Fischler calendar. It’s just a matter of the temperature and the foliage colors catching up now.

It has been such an unbelievably dull couple of days here in the land of Andrew. The better part of this holiday weekend has been spent inside the confines of my home, mostly catching up on correspondences and annoying my neighbors with my drumming during daylight hours. In fact, if it weren’t for a Saturday springing to go watch a friend of mine wrestle out in Jackson I would have been a captive of my house the entire time.

Of course that shall change with this upcoming week. I am fast approaching the departure date for the fifth annual “No-Maam” camping trip, a tradition among my friends and I where we waste a weekend in front of camp fire in the wilds of Jim Thorpe, PA. This guys only retreat is treated somewhat as a great escape for those with significant others, but seeing how I’m single and all this is just a great excuse for me to go hang out with my friends, drink beer and eat red meat cooked over an open flame, among other things.

When we started this traditional trip none of us ever imaged that it would last this long. We’ve had the cast of attendees change from year to year, but there has always been a steady core group always attending (of which I proudly count myself as on) and so long as that core group always has the desire to make the trip, there will always be a No-Maam.

Now some might hear about this little tradition and think “Why those misogynistic fuckers!”, but they couldn’t be more wrong. This has little to do with woman hating, unlike the organization portrayed in Married With Children from which the name was derived. It’s simply an escape that gives us a chance to renew the bonds of friendship that we’ve built over the years. As young as I may still be in the grand scale of things, I see time passing faster and faster and the circle I once knew changing in ways I never expected.

I have friends who are married and engaged. Others now have children. Some are starting businesses. In so many different ways we are becoming full fledged adults and society is charging us to act that way. At the same time personal choices are pulling us to the far corners of this country and I see more and more that my life could be heading in that direction in the near future. We don’t hang out like we used to, or talk as often. None of it is on purpose or due to any ill will; it’s just time and life pulling us down separate paths.

So this is our annual chance to catch up and make up for time lost to living. Some in the group have known each other since our freshman year in high school and to this day it still amazes me all we’ve managed to survive through and yet we’re all still together. That is why I look forward to this trip so much and why I plan to never miss a single one so long as I can help it.

The day we let this tradition die will certainly be a low point in my life. Here’s hoping that day never comes….