Borrowing Time and My Neighbors
The insanely loud family next door was at it again this morning, albeit with a bit more restraint. This time their three annoying kids didn’t begin running around in the street and yelling at the top of their lungs until 8:15. Perhaps even they sleep in on the weekends.
Am I all that unreasonable believing that kids should be kept indoors until at least 8:30 a.m. out of respect for other people? Yes, I know they were only out fifteen minutes earlier than that, but that’s an aberration. Most days my neighbors’ screaming wakes me at 7:15 and yesterday — one of only two days each year when I can sleep in without being considered a sluggard — they were out two hours earlier!
Right now, however, they’re nowhere to be seen. There’s an Open House going on next door, and their Realtor wisely makes them all pile in their car and drive to where prospective buyers don’t have to put up with them. This is their tenth time hosting an Open House over the past 13 months their home’s been on the market. I’m not sure who gets their hopes up more each time: them, so they can finally move, or me… for the same reason.
It’s reached the point where I’m actually giving serious thought to whether we could buy their house ourselves and then maybe rent it out. Can you use home equity loans for such things? I know we’ve got equity in our house, although probably not enough to buy theirs. I hear they’ve set their price far too high, and despite going through three separate Realtors now, none have succeeded in convincing them to reduce their asking price.
Perhaps I’m looking at this the wrong way, though. Instead of thinking about buying their over-priced residence just to get a peaceful morning around here, maybe I should be considering things we can do around our house, instead. I’d consider a loan tapping into our equity for renovations that tackled the problem: a fence between our yard and theirs and additional insulation in our bedroom walls to help block out their noise, maybe even a 3-month trip around the world for our family, during which time I could only pray their home finally — finally! — sold.
Because right now, I’ll be perfectly honest: I’ve been awakened by my insanely loud neighbors on so very many mornings that my sleep-deprived lawyer brain is starting to wonder whether I could convince a jury I’ve got a valid case for justifiable harm. In which case, well, I’d probably need that home equity loan to pay my legal fees… but at least my annoying neighbors would finally — finally! — be gone.
Monkey-wrenching your sponsored links into posts is ruining your blog.
YMMV, do with it what you will — it may well be worth the pay-off, only you can crunch the numbers — but that’s my opinion.
I’ll stop dropping by real soon if this sort of post is what I can expect from your site.
I’ve already given my reply to this here.
It’s very simple: at the top of each entry is a category listing. If it’s in “Sponsored Venom” it’s going to have a sponsored link in it. If sponsored links bother you, don’t read those entries or don’t click them.
However, if you look at the entries in that category you’ll see that you’re getting actual content, not just lame one-sentence posts. Of course, you can also crunch the numbers yourself and realize that since doing sponsored posts I’ve been writing tons more real content each and every day.
So I guess it comes down to why you read EV in the first place: do you read it for the content but believe it should only contain what readers want, or do you read it for the content and realize that sponsored links make it possible for that content to continue?
Incidentally, using a fake email address makes it far more simple to dismiss your comment as likely coming from someone who isn’t really a regular EV reader in the first place.
But thanks for stopping by.
And there I was about to say how cleverly you work links into posts. Perhaps because I do the same, and every sponsored post I write also contains real-life content, not just crap for the sake of a link.
Also: if those kids were really outside at 5:15 in the morning? That’s a little insane. Even 7:15 is too early. Perhaps if their home has been on the market that long, they’ll drop their price in desperation and the house will sell.
Well, I’ve since figured out who it is that left the comment and all I can say is that I’m sorry she feels that way about the sponsored links. After all these years preaching “Blog for your own satisfaction” I’d be hypocritical if I changed what I’m doing because someone didn’t like it.
As for those kids being outside, it was 6:15 not 5:15. I’d call the police if it were the latter, since I’d naturally have to wonder if something had happened to their parents.