How's this for another day in paradise? Last night after supper, I'm sitting at the computer and Rick is cleaning up and this beeping starts. Three shrill little beeps in a row and then a pause and then the three beeps again and again and again. I'm so engrossed in my writing that I didn't notice at first, then Rick hollers from the kitchen, " is that us? or is it coming from outside?"

"Outside", I say and continue to write and think, why is he bothering me?

So the beeping goes on for about a half an hour and stops. It really didn't bother me much because I was "involved" in something. We go downstairs to watch "True Grit", the old one not the new one (just in case you were interested) and promptly start to fall asleep, so we turn the TV off. Around midnight, there it is again, this incessant beeping. It's not really loud, but loud enough and in the middle of the night it was enough to wake me up. So, I get up go the bathroom, get back in bed and try to ignore it. Finally, I fall asleep but around 3AM, there it goes again, I groan, roll over and think I'm going insane. I say something to Rick and he snaps something back and then there is silence, except for the infernal beeping. Somehow we manage to fall asleep, but at around 5AM guess who's back. Now I'm crazed, I start mumbling about the beeping. I know Rick is awake, but he's ignoring me and this is only making me more crazy, so of course, I start on him, he gets up and goes upstairs. Next thing you know I hear the front door open and close and I think, I hope he's got dressed before he went out, but since the beeping is still going on, I really don't care much. Now Rick comes back in comes downstairs and tells me the beeping is coming from the condo next door. This is some good news, NOT, because the people who live next door have been out of town for a few months and who knows when they will be back. Again it stops.

Now I have the most horrific headache and an extreme dread, knowing that in 2 to 3 hours the beeping will be back. Lucky Rick, he gets to go to work today and get away from the beeping beeping! After slurping down some Alka Seltzer Cold Plus (just in case my headache is caused by my beeping sinsuses instead of the beeping beeping or maybe it's a combination of both) I lay back down to go quietly crazy. Rick is talking to someone, so I get up and hear that he is outside, talking to the General Manager explaining the beeping problem, when he gets off the phone he tells me the GM said "he would look into it". Now there's some good news, it only takes them about 3 weeks to look into anything around here. Seriously, I am wishing that I had brought my .38 from the states. I could go next door, shoot off the lock and then go inside and shoot whatever is beeping and come back home and get some sleep, or at least enjoy the quiet in the VI lockup, anything would be better than this BEEPING.

Well...I'm not exactly sure what happened between then and now, I must have fallen back to sleep, probably the beeping stopped first and then I fell back to sleep. It's after 10AM now and so far no beeping. Maybe the GM did look into it,, or maybe the beeping batteries died or the aliens left, or who really cares. All I know for sure is that, for now, the beeping has stopped. If tomorrow's post looks like this @#$**&^%##@! you can assume that it started back up again.