I’m in big trouble. In January I bought a pair of jeans at my local boutique. Now I can’t stop wearing them. I want to wear them everyday. They make me feel great. They are comfortable and trendy. I can wear them to work or out for dinner.

One pair is not enough! However, when I started looking on-line for a second pair I found out just how much of a deal I got on my first pair. They are the Joe’s Jeans Socialite. The standard price? Oh, $158!!! Argh! I paid $50 or so for mine. What am I to do?

Can I justify paying so much for jeans?

Recently the New York Times had an article on finding the perfect pair of chinos. The author sampled lots of pants and came up with this brand called Vince. I would love to find a pair of chinos that fit me like my Joe’s Jeans. How much do Vince chino’s cost? $175!

What’s a girl in search of great pants to do? Would you pay $150+ for a pair of pants?

The downstairs noise has abated to some degree over the course of the week. It seems like the kids have been going to school once more, though not without a yelling match and a little loud TV between 7 and 8 am.

We have a three bedroom apartment and our actual bedroom was directly over the downstairs livingroom, more precisely, right over their speakers. Wednesday night we swapped my office with our bedroom (Wow, do I have a lot of stuff!). For the past couple days our bed has been over the far back corner of their kitchen. This has reduced our suffering greatly.

It used to be that our pillows were speakers, much like pressing an empty cup up to a wall, they would bring the sound right to our ears. Now, it just seems like there is a lot of loud noise happening in another room. It will be interesting to see what this weekend brings.

While I’m on the topic of our bedroom, a few weeks ago we bought a new mattress. After a year of pesting DWR employees, laying on their mattresses, thinking about it, we decided we deserved The Mattress. We couldn’t be happier. The minute I sit down on it I want to be sleeping and the minute I’m asleep I don’t move. I’m sleeping deeper than I ever have, which I think is translating into needing less sleep overall. Yay for the wonders of foam.

Ten days ago our new downstairs neighbors moved in. I had been looking forward to having neighbors, as we had been the only occupants of the four unit building since September. They’ve only arrived and already I regret ever wanting neighbors.

In their short stay here there has been a constant bass booming through our floors. The bass is only turned off for yelling and slamming doors. Already the police have been here to collect truant kids. It hasn’t even been two weeks.

The best I can tell the downstairs is occupied by an African American family consisting of a single mother and three children, two high school age boys and one younger child. Most of the time the mother is at work and the apartment is a high school boys den.

After the first week of constant bass, we decided that we needed to ask them to turn it down. It was 2 am and the bass had been unrelenting. Approaching the door I could see the biggest TV set imaginable, taking up an entire wall of the living room. On the floor were sleeping people, covered with blankets. I knocked and knocked until they woke-up and answered the door, looking slightly frightened. They were nice about it and turned off the bass, for that one night.

It has been better since we talked to them. Better being that our dishes no longer rattle in our cupboards, not better in that it continues to fill our house with bass.

Today has been almost constant yelling downstairs. I’m not sure what is going on. It is hard to tell if there is really a problem or if they are just “communicating”.

They seem to be doing a good job of living up to the stereotypical single mother black family that I’ve seen on TV, in documentaries and have read about. I’m disappointed, I’m angry, I’m frustrated and now we feel like our only option is to move out.

At least they don’t smoke.

At my last job I slowly increased the amount of screens on my desk, starting with the usual one, adding a second screen to that same computer to double the desktop space and then adding a laptop, for a third display. People would come into my office and wonder at how I could look at so much input. It seemed easy.

At my new job I’ve doubled my previous work screen number to six. I use the screens to gather and monitor all the information I need and to have enough “space” to spread out my work. The monitors are fed from a mac, a pc and two televisions. When I step back I wonder how I can handle so much information and yet, sometimes I wish I had more.

Last night I listened to a Wired podcast about HUDs (Heads-up Displays), which are used in action games to show the status of characters and events on the screen. They are little floating boxes that report things like health, ammo and location.

A HUD experience is exactly what my work space is trying to be, “Webmaster: The Game”. In the game version there would be additional screens displaying things like hunger level, tiredness, productivity and income and the ability to reconfigure all the screens at will. The problem with this game idea is that it lacks the fun factors of action and fantasy. There are no elves or the ability to fly and thankfully no shoot-outs. I don’t think “Ultimate Webmaster Adventure 3” will ever find a market.

Nano iPod how happy I am with you! If only your shiny silver back, all carefully engraved, did not scratch so easily. Maybe you need some clothes:

• iKitty – Rubber kitty wrapper
• iGuy – Rubber guy wrapper
• Legion – Rubber devil wrapper
• Tetran – Rubber monster ball that “eats” your headphones
• Sleevz – Felty, yet techy, in fun colors
• Crocheted Cuties – A mouse, bunny, or frog
• Monster – Furry, google eyes and big, big teeth
• DuoBand and DuoSkin – Glow in the dark work-out

Nano iPod how fun you are to listen to, especially all the great podcasts. Currently playing:

• Wired News
• NPR Story of the Day
• Tongcast
• Chris Moyles

Now if only I could find some more, some funky, more home made, yet still good podcasts. Any suggestions?