Memories from 6 years in Family Housing

Warning:  Long post, lots of words, no pictures.  Hopefully, worth the read.

When we moved to Lincoln in 2004, we didn't have time to come and check out apartments, so we signed up for a month-to-month lease in the UNL family housing.  We expected it would be crummy and thought we would only stay for a few months while we figured out Lincoln and found a better place.  6 years later, we are still here.  It turned out that the apartment was really nice, WACKY cheap and super close to campus.  So, in all honesty, it has been great.

However, we have had some "interesting" experiences here with neighbors and the surrounding neighborhood.  In no particular order, here's our top 10 memories:

1. For about 6 months, our upstairs neighbors' answering machine would run out of tape (who uses a tape answer machine?!?!) and then the phone would stay on line making that horrible beeping noise for HOURS.  I even went up there once to explain, and we couldn't break through the language barrier.
2. Once while sitting over at Mike and Jamie's next door, the patio window was shot out in a DRIVE BY!!!  Granted, it was only with a b.b. gun.  Good times.
3. When people go to Husker football games, lots of them park in our neighborhood and walk through out parking lot on the way to the stadium and back.  Evening games are troublesome because fans have all day to get wasted drunk.  The morning after one game we came out to find that some drunk idiot had literally bashed an enormous 2 ft. dent in the side of our car.  Seriously.  I don't know if he punched, kicked, body-checked or fell into it - but we we had to get the entire door replaced.  Goooooo Big Red!
4. Just the other day (and a couple times since) we have spotted a (homeless?) man on the street and in our parking lot dressed in  robes, with a weird hat and a sorcerers staff conjuring up spells that he shoots at passing cars and dancing in the middle of the street.  Shaman?  Rafiki?  We're not sure.
5. We have a lot of foreign neighbors.  For a while, one apartment whose windows faced the parking lot was always drying weird stuff out in the sun.  We're talking stuff from dead chickens to trays of nuts and beans.  Tasty.
6. One day I was up on campus and Julianne called me all excited about some lady being arrested right outside our window on the street.  Her car was parked in the center turn lane and the police ended up chasing her as she tried to climb under the cop car.  In the end, they tazed her.  I tried really hard to get Julianne to turn on the COPS theme song, open the windows and blare.  Bad Boys, Bad boys . . .
7. Just last night while we were reading, Julianne said, "BRENDEN!  Come over here!  Can you smell this?!  The AC smells like beef curry!"  Now, understand - Julianne normally has a horrible sense of smell.  Coupled with her occasional hypochondria, I generally ignore these delusional outbursts.  While pregnant though, her smell is quite good.  So, I went over to the bed and sure enough - the AC smelled like beef curry.
8. Up until recently, we NEVER heard the neighbors to our sides.  Then, last fall around 10:00 PM one night, we heard a weird noise.  We couldn't figure out what it was or where it was coming from.  Then, I put my ear to the wall and realized that our neighbors were practicing barbershop with their friends.  To make it worse, they also practiced piccolo and trumpet on occasion.  
9. The Flood.  Read more here.
10. Last, but not least (this might actually be the best one) . . . For about 2 full years a usually inebriated Hispanic gentleman would call our house phone asking for someone named Trecia.  Seriously.  TWO YEARS!  He was always really drunk.  We even had a friend of ours who speaks Spanish talk to him when he called during a party we were having.  By the end, I think he knew he had the wrong number and was just messing with us.  We ended up calling the police when he made some violent threats.  They said they couldn't do anything about it, so we had to change our phone number.  I feel bad for whoever got our old number reassigned.  Classic.