My Noisy Neighbor

The past few weeks, someone has been blasting the rock music in the apartment next door, which is adjacent to my bedroom. (I've lived here five and a half years and never once heard the slightest sound from that apartment until now.) The noise has roused me out of bed on the weekend, spoiled my nap time, and persisted well into the early morning hours on weekdays. Afraid of confronting some kind of madman by knocking on the neighbor's door, I've called the security guard several times and the noise stops, only to return another day. It's been driving me crazy.

It turns out that my neighbor has moved out of the apartment temporarily while it's being renovated. So the person renovating the apartment is making all the noise.

Today it started up right after I'd got out of bed (thank God for that). The bass guitar was reverberating throughout the entire apartment. After a while I called the security guard, who said he couldn't leave the desk but would call the apartment. The noise didn't stop. The security guard called back a while later and said he'd called the apartment five times and no one answered. The noise went on for hours.

I didn't know my neighbor's name so I looked it up on a county property search and wrote her a letter, telling her about the problem and warning her that she could be fined by the condo association if she didn't address it. Then I looked up her telephone number on a White Pages website. I then called the number and spoke with the guy. He asked me who I was and I said I was a friend. He said she wasn't there and then I asked for a number where I could reach her. He said she was staying at his parents' temporarily. I said thank you and hung up. (So the handyman is my neighbor's boyfriend or something.)

The music meanwhile persisted, perhaps less noticeably, but when I tried to take a nap in the bedroom, it was too much. (I could have taken a nap on the futon here in the second bedroom but it's covered with cat hair and not very comfortable--at least nothing like the new bed and pillow, which now have me spoiled.) So I called the guy back and told him who I was and asked that he please turn the music down so I could take a nap. He graciously apologized and said he had temporarily moved the sound system from the living room into the bedroom (adjacent to mine) but that he would be moving it back out tomorrow. (Boy, was I glad to hear that.) Meanwhile he turned the music down to where I could barely make it out and asked me to call him back if it still bothered me, but by then I wasn't sleepy anymore. Oh well. At least things have been resolved.