Don't tell anyone I said this, but the second we are no longer using our current hosting service, there's going to be a page on any website for which I ever do work; that page is going to be a detailed description of why one shouldn't use OLM hosting. I'm going to dedicate (a small portion of) my life to it. I bring it up because, as I'm sure all of you have noticed, ATF is going down more frequently than a Belizean divemaster (hey - this is a family blog). Which is horrible for everyone involved. You guys (because you don't have access to what is arguably the funniest thing on the net since that dancing baby), the ATF squad (since we don't have access to our email. Which I've probably mentioned before is, to us, kind of like being a zombie. Sure, you aren't dead per se, but it's not like being alive either), and to the people who work the phones at OLM (whom Ben, Ton, or I call fairly frequently to harangue. Act of the purest futility: We know they are clueless, they know they are clueless. The only people who gain anything out of those conversations work for Sprint, as they watch my daytime minutes tick away).

But enough about me. What about you? There's actually been a fair amount of learning about you - in the days since my self-deprecating comments about only having one loyal reader, I've been inundated by emails from my readership. Wait, did I write 'inundated'? Maybe it wasn't that overwhelming. But still, it's been great to get email from people who aren't Ben, Ton, or jessiegirl6fd543d@yahoo.com (although I do think I'm making some progress with her - she sent me 6 emails today alone!).

I went home to Long Island last night to eat some dinner with my parents and pick up my passport (I'm heading to Seattle tommorrow, and am probably going to take a trip to Canada once I land. I'm excited to visit our brothers to the north, but have to admit about being a little concerned about the SARS. I'm psyched to wear a face mask. I'm going to draw a smiley face on mine. You know, make the whole "killer flu" thing a little less ominous). My mom made some cookies after dinner, and it got me to thinking about my apartment (remember my apartment? That's what this blog is about).

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I just recieved an email from my housemate. I think you all should read it:

Kenny,
Only 3 hours and 15 minutes till the amazing race starts. aren't you excited? too bad i'm going to the gym, or i could make it home in time for felicity then the amazing race. now that would be a great night of tv....

This is the sort of thing I deal with on a daily basis. That, and he's a baseball fan. Giving him the remote when he asks is kind of like answering your girlfriend when she asks something about one of your previous girlfriends. You know you can't not respond, but you know nothing good is going to come of it.
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I had to call 911 the other night. I suppose I didn't have to call 911, but I definitely thought it was appropriate; I've decided that when you can say to yourself "calling 911 right now wouldn't be a wrong move," you should call 911 (almost always. I found that when you call 911, you get an extra charge on your phone bill. It wasn't an enormous fee or anything, but I personally think having any charge is going to have some percentage of people deciding on how much a given emergency is worth. "Yeah, my mother-in-law's arm is on fire... But there's a blanket right there, and she's left handed anyway"). I had been woken up at three in the morning by the sound of screaming and banging outside. Which isn't a completely new experience (though considerably less frequent once I moved out of Bushwick). Usually it dies down after a little while. There was some guy trying to break down a door a couple of houses down, screaming that he was going to kill the woman inside if he didn't let him in.

I can only assume he hadn't taken any classes in forensics; even being woken up from a deep sleep I could tell that wasn't a persuasive argument. Anyway, after about 5 minutes of the yelling and the screaming I decided that he wasn't going to stop, so I called the police. I wasn't too worried about the guy getting through the door on which he was banging, but I decided that a quiet night's sleep was well worth the 911 charge. Cops came, guy stopped screaming and threatening lives, the neighborhood was peaceful once again. Between this and the purse-snatching incident a few months ago, I'm officially declaring the block on which I live My Block. As in - "This is my block, and I don't want to see you around here no more."