I finally got a good night's sleep last night. Wow, that's twice in one week. Normally, sleep is not a problem for me, but for the past month, I've been wracked with insomnia and weird dreams. But this week, I actually slept well on a couple of occasions. That's always a good thing.

I still had strange dreams but for once they had pleasant overtones.

I've been rethinking this whole diary as of late. I don't know, I mean it's a good thing in a way and I still want to keep it, but lately it seems like a newsletter. And I've run into the problem that I had when I did my comic, where someone who vaguely knows you reads your stuff and starts coming up with some full psychoanalysis on the matter. It's irksome. Not just because these are senseless babblings to fend off boredom. I mean, I write anywhere from 12 to 20 entries in a month, sometimes more, and really there's not that much substantial gray matter to sustain constant profound philosophies or to give a deeply personal insight to the workings of my brains. It's more of an exercise, more like the journal one might keep for a creative writing class and less like a diary.

Those friends that I've let read my transcribed diaries know exactly what I'm talking about. They've seen what the diaries I keep in notebooks contain, and how much more insightful those are. And even those diaries have been filtered in the interest of being more concise and less redundant. The serious introspection gets summarised a bit at times, because five pages of thought on a day I had is really only interesting when you're writing it.

But still, the pitfall of the online journal is that it makes people feel like they know you even when they've never met you. People that have actually hung out with me substantially know that the diary is only one dimension of things. They read it because of my tongue in cheek humor or because of clever little anecdotes of my life. But they don't necessarily think that because I ramble on about a town full of zombies that I'm going crazy with paranoid delusions or that I'm in a pit of socially deprived despair. They understand that these are fun things, fodder for screenplays and most often some bizarre, drunken rant.

On a related note...

I went off on someone recently.

It was mildly entertaining, which I guess was sadistic of me. But I felt it was long overdue.

It was one of those people I'd mentioned, someone I barely know. In fact, I think I've talked with said person maybe once in my life, and I was so drunk that I can't even remember what was said. We've talked via AIM but we were never particularly close. I mean, I lived in the same town as this person for over two years and never once invited said person to one of my parties. I figure the sentiment was returned, since the person also never expressed interest in hanging out with me, either.

It's not that this is a bad person or even someone I dislike. To quote the simpsons, "I'm a well wisher in that I mean you no specific harm."

Well, at one point, this person started talking to me on AIM a lot more. Sometimes, we had fun conversations but sometimes we had so little to say that I wondered if I wasn't being pinged to fend off their boredom.

Again, this was not a source of frustration or disdain. But there were times that I just would stop talking to this person simply because I really didn't want the conversation to be forced.

But, what did bother me about this person was one very specific quality. There were times when this person would be somewhat condescending. The fact that this person had absolutely no clue that they were doing this made it worse, because for the longest time I didn't want to get mad about it. But there were constant, little statements that made it clear that they had a very strong idea about what was "best" for me and what I should be doing with my life, how I should be handling things. Sometimes it involved "explaining" how something worked to me, when in fact that was something I had been raised with and probably knew more about than they did.

Now, I don't claim to have the perfect life. I know I'm just kind of making it up as I go along, but who isn't? The fact is, I might not have spent a long time in college or have a great career but I still have done an incredible amount of things that others haven't. I've done more than I could possibly list. Most of my friends tend to either be adventurous types themselves or bohemian writer/artist sorts that can relate to and respect this sort of life. I'm more interested that I have a lot of experiences and not be bored than I am interested in having a life that looks good on paper.

But sometimes, those little comments that presume that the other person has some sort of secret to the universe that I don't possess,annoy the shit out of me.

What annoys me more is when they come from people who so obviously don't have it all figured out. You know, people who I look at their life and think "my god, I would never in my worst nightmare want to have my life like that." Maybe it works for them, maybe it doesn't, but it's open to at least as much scrutiny as my own life. I'm not sure what they think qualifies them as an expert but I would never count on them to give helpful advice about absolutely anything that I could ever want to do.

But what makes it especially irksome is that they aren't even friends. My friends give me advice or make assumptions about what I want or need. I don't mind that. Actually, when they make the occasional comment that lets me know they're aware of how I think and respond on a very visceral level, it actually really impresses me. But even when they're wrong, I don't mind saying "no, you're wrong." and telling them why. I mean, they're friends and that's what friends do, and as long as they don't mind being corrected, I'm fine with that.

But when a mere acquaintance becomes completely convinced that they hold the holy grail that will solve all your life's problems, and when they so blatantly don't have a clue what they're talking about, yeah, it starts to grate on me.

So, this was my state of mind the other day. This had been happening for awhile.

Until a couple of days ago. I had been drinking a lot of coffee and doing nothing, which seems to be a ritual of mine as of late. I went online to look some stuff up and launched aim just to see if anyone was on. This person pinged me and started doing it. Even worse, they started doing it about something that not only was a personal decision that only affected Rob and myself but was something I know for a fact to be a sound and responsible decision on my part, not to mention something I've given a lot of thought to.

So I started arguing the point, made some comments that were pretty practical and sensible. Most of these got countered with more of the same "I know better than you" attitude.

Well, caffeine pumping through my veins, feeling the effect of that bad ass, pull no punches, I-live-in-the-worst-city-in -the-country Detroit attitude, I basically said that no, I know what I'm talking about, I've lived at least as much of life as you, and what I'm doing is the mature thing to do, what you're suggesting is not, you have no idea what you're talking about, so why don't you just shut the fuck up?

Heh.

So said person told me that they had obviously hit a sore point, hadn't meant to, and would give me my space. I was on a roll, so I said it wasn't a sore spot, I just thought they tended to make too many presumptions about other peoples' lives and situations and that they needed to give other people the benefit of the doubt of being at least as capable of making decisions.

Well, this gave way to the natural inquiries of "when have I ever done that" along with the comment that "it's just that I hate to see you waste your life doing something like that when you have so much potential." I just laughed and let this one slide. This was the exact thing I was talking about. I'm glad you think I have potential but you know I don't think I'm wasting my life or selling myself short. I think I've had a damned cool life, and I think I continue to have a cool life and I'm living it basically in the way I want to. There's a lot of people who can't say that. And the fact that someone who has never had more than a club conversation with me, and even that was over two years ago, to assume that they know what my "potential" is, not to mention whether or not I'm wasting it, is the absolute height of arrogance.

At this point, I backed off a bit. Partly because the comment displayed that this person really had no idea and partly because I'd more than made my point. We just did the AIM small talk thing, and then wrapped up the conversation.

I must say that it was a vindicating feeling, to be brutally honest like that. I think it's good to do, too. There are lines that a person needs to draw in the sand. Most people can't discern between a patient and kind person and a naive push over. It's good to periodically say exactly what you think, especially in regards to something that is an ongoing source of annoyance, otherwise it will keep happening.

Speaking of not being a push over...

Rob and I are at war with Drake's Pond, our previous apartment.

When we moved out, we cleaned the apartment thoroughly. I mean really thoroughly. Rob's mother and grandmother went over it with a fine toothed comb. If you've ever met one of those old Italian ladies you'll know just how thorough the place was. Well, we got our deposit back. Out of $1500. we got back $100. Irate, Rob called the apartment manager. Apparently, they had found a spot that was wet from carpet cleaner. They somehow determined this was "excessive pet urine" and tore out the carpet from all 1100 square feet of the place. Yup, because there was a damp spot from carpet cleaner on a barely visible stain in a very remote corner of the apartment.

Their defense?

"Well, we replaced the carpet when you moved in, too."

Apparently, they do this every time someone moves in. And somehow they seem to think they're entitled to our security deposit over this, whether we actually did damage to the carpet or not. Other than that one tiny spot, the carpet was in perfect condition and even that one spot would have been completely removed by steam cleaning.

The apartment manager was baffled as to why Rob was upset. She seemed to think that they were entitled to use our deposit for anything they like, not just for damages that occurred as a result of us living there. So, Rob is talking about getting a lawyer. He's supposed to fax a letter to the apartment manager officially contesting it.

It's an obvious scam. They all but admitted that they always re-do the carpet. Well, if they always re-do the carpet, and our deposit goes to that even when we didn't damage the carpet while living there, I believe they are legally obligated to tell us that this deposit was non-refundable. If we knew we were just giving them $1500. we never would have agreed to it.

So now we're negotiating with them. They told us to fax a letter and would "try to settle this without bringing in lawyers". We'll see if they do. We're determined to bring in lawyers if we don't get at least half that money back, though. Rob has some good contacts in Detroit and finding a lawyer would not be a problem for us.

The annoying thing is that we're now renting one of their other properties. We went to a lot of effort to be fair to them when we realized we would have to move. We could have screwed them royally but we didn't want to. So we traded our lease for one that was actually more expensive and one that is far too costly for the area. We're mainly paying for the status symbol of the apartment. (There's a big sign in front of the complex stating how expensive the apartments are, as well as it being a "gated community") The only reason we did it was because we liked them and they seemed like good landlords.

Additionally, we had thought we would be transferring our lease when we moved here, and that if the expense of the place was too much, we could move out when the lease expired in April. But they actually started our lease over at the new place, which sucks because January is a shitty time to apartment hunt. Now, we don't really want to stay a customer. If possible, we'll opt out of our lease in six months and find ourselves a nice house somewhere (I've seen three bedrooms with a basement going for four hundred less a month than what we pay now). At best, they've lost us as a customer. At worst, they have a lawsuit on their hands.