a banjo does not a lullaby make

Yesterday was so awesome that I need to share it with you. It started out normal enough, with classes and work and all that hooey. The day moved quickly and soon it was time for my 2 1/2 hour voyage into the world of gynocology. No details necessary - those of you who know, know. After my loveless date, I met up with Rob and we went home for a quick run before dinner. On the back half of the run, we encountered a running police car parked in a driveway. "Hmm, that's weird. Cops always leave their cars running when they're responding to a call, so I doubt he lives there. I wonder what's going....OH MY GOD!" Two dogs, one bigger than the other, come flying out of the bushes of the house next door and right for us. I start yelling NO! at them while I'm running in circles trying to keep Greta out of reach of their teeth (which they are baring). I end up in the middle of the street somehow, still yelling and going round and round while the big dog tries to bite us. Rob realizes what's going on and quickly gets between the scary dog and Greta and I. I'm still yelling, Rob's offering the dog his forearm to keep him from biting anything precious like his face or his wife, and out comes the cop from the other yard. He calmly walks up and sprays some pepper spray near the dogs and they both take off back into the bushes. He said he was responding to a call of someone else getting chased by them (thanks to Billy Barty for that - what a noble citizen), and had lost sight of them when they found us. We thanked him for being there and took off running like maniacs. Greta was skittish and freaked (at one point at the end, she got out of her collar and went running in a panic straight towards where the dogs had gone), and both Rob and I were suddenly not as tired from our run as we had been about 3 minutes beforehand. Adreneline is some crazy powerful stuff. Thank goodness we all escaped without even the tiniest nibble taken out of us. Both Rob and I were preparing to get bitten, which is such a crazy thing. I was offering the dog my butt, being the meatiest part of me, Rob was giving him his arm in protection of his Business, and we were both just waiting for the dog to latch on. Weird. After a calming night of showers, dinner and homework we headed to bed around 11. I had just started to drop off when I start hearing this music. "where is that coming from? what the hell IS that?" As I start to wake up more, I realize that it's our downstairs neighbor Shank (no joke, this is what he introduced himself as) playing his BANJO and SINGING in the room directly under our bed. The maniac decided to have his special banjo practice time at 11:45 at night. I kept trying to ignore it, calm down my rage, and go back to sleep. Have you ever heard a banjo roll before? That shit is loud. And he wasn't just playing - he was practicing, so he would keep repeating the same little ditty part over and over and over, trying new variations and harmonizing with it at the same time. Oh kill me now. Suddenly, the banjo goes quiet. Oh thank god, he's tuckered himself out. No, wait.What's that base-y noise? Oh, it's his acoustic guitar. How penetratingly loud of him. Giving up on sleeping in the bed, I got Rob to put in some earplugs and went out to sleep on the couch. I'm sure you're asking yourself at this point "why haven't you pounded on the floor or his door or his head yet?" Well, at this point we were trying to wait him out, because 1.) We were too tired, and couldn't deal with getting up, getting dressed and going down there, and 2.) There's nothing more hateful than confrontation with stupid hippies who have made-up names. Regardless of all that, within seconds of my lieing down (and realizing that I could still hear him in the living room because the whole apartment floor was vibrating), Rob came out pulling on clothes to go and tell him to jam it somewhere else. By this time, it was after 1. We climbed back into bed and eventually fell back to sleep, where we slept off our crazy day in the luxurious five hours we had until the alarm went off. Ahhhhhh. Needless to say, I skipped my class and we made use of the snooze button a lot this morning. Stupid hippies.