Today should have been a good day.

First of all, this morning was the first morning of the semester in which it was actually LIGHT outside when I left my apartment--streetlights off and everything! It's also the day on which I returned the last of those 110 papers. Even better than that? It's midterm day in my survey classes, so I had one less prep.

What could ruin such a day?

My downstairs neighbors, that's what. I may have mentioned that my downstairs neighbors (and my next-door neighbor, but I've never had any problems with him) are rock musicians, and I may further have mentioned that they occasionally do REALLY ANNOYING THINGS like decide to start mixing bass tracks at 2 a.m.

But last night took the cake. I went to bed around 1 a.m.--much too late, already, for the time at which I had to get up today--and I could hear their music softly wafting up from the floor beneath my bed. In fact, I really couldn't hear the music at all, but I could hear the bass line. It wasn't all that heavy, but it was heavy enough and variable enough (they must have had multiple CDs in the changer) that I couldn't relax and fall asleep; I just keep feeling that beat in place of my heartbeat.

Well, I thought, they'll stop soon. They usually do.

But they didn't stop.

Okay, I thought, I'll pound on the floor.

I did this a few times, and usually that has the desired effect--but this time it didn't.

Instead, I lay in bed for hours, occasionally starting to doze, but never for long. Then I tried sleeping on the floor in another part of my apartment, but that was even worse: closer to the noise. Finally, I dragged a blanket and pillows into the bathroom, which juts off away from the main room, and I finally managed to sleep in two installments for a total of perhaps an hour.

When I left my apartment after 6 a.m., the bass was still going.

You'd better believe I left a note on the fuckers' door when I left.