Friday Night Entertainment

Today was a pretty good day. We had seminar in the morning. It was our first "neighborhood visit." We met at a coffee shop, took a tour of Old Louisville, and then went out for lunch at a nice cafe. We are going to have these once a month. Since there was no school today here, we did not have the after school program. But I still had to come in to work for "staff enrichment." I enjoyed it though. It was a nice change of pace. We never get a lot of time to discuss and plan things without the kids around. So I got off work early (at 4:45 instead of 7) which was nice. After dinner, we were deciding what to do because we had no plans and did not want to spend any money. Andrea, Emily, and I ended up taking a walk to return a DVD to Blockbuster (exciting huh?) But who knew what chain of events that would follow this. Emily decided she wanted to find somewhere she could buy a basketball, so we wandered around CVS and Walgreens. Walgreens had a deal: 3 balls for the price of 2. So she bought two basketballs and a football. (by the way, most of my roommates are pretty athletic and played sports in high school & college) We returned home and ended up throwing the football around in the parking lot for some free entertainment. Emily told me I have a hidden athlete in me, although I don't agree. I have never been good at sports. My idea of athletics is Pilates and salsa dancing. But we did manage to catch the football over 50 times in a row between the three of us (yes we counted). After 15 minutes or so, a couple of the Bosnian teenagers who like to hang out in our parking lot showed up. They blared some music, sat on their car eating McDonald's, and stared at us while we played. (I still have trouble figuring out what is so appealing about our parking lot. I guess it is because it can't be seen from the road). After they stared at us for another 10 minutes or so, they asked if they could play. There were three of them at this point and we started throwing the ball to them. It was only a little after 9 so we didn't think it was a big deal. Plus we were excited to be bonding with our "neighbors." However, they started to get a little crazy. One of them threw the football extremely high, and it ended up landing right on the passenger mirror of Alisa's car and knocked it off. I felt so bad. Not only did her rear window get smashed & her radio messed up a couple weeks ago, she also had a mishap with her bumper when she went home this past weekend and it is currently taped on. I am almost positive the Bosnian boys were high or on something by their reaction to this. We told them it was our friend's car. They asked us if we had tape. So I went upstairs and got some masking tape, which they seemed to think solved the problem. I then had the pleasure of telling Alisa that something else had happened to her car and she came down with us to see the damage. The guys were still there. She replaced the masking tape with black tape and we went over to talk to them. I did most of the talking. They said they will get her another one. We are supposed to meet tomorrow, same time, same spot. Sounds kind of shady to me. They promised her they would "pimp her ride." We went back upstairs and they didn't leave. I decided to let it go because it was just a few of them, until I look out the window around 11:30 and there are at least 15 cars in our parking lot and around 40 people out there. We turned out the lights and Alisa and I pulled up chairs by the window to see what they were doing. A few of them were leaning on our cars and some of them were playing football again!!! (not with our ball though, we took it back). Due to past events, having a lot of people in our parking lot makes us nervous. And I have a feeling everything they are doing is not innocent. Plus...it is private property and they are not supposed to be there after 9!!! I had the pleasure of calling Edgardo again and I know I woke him up. We watched and waited for him to pull up. This time he got out of his car with a clipboard and I have never seen so many cars peel out of a parking lot so fast!! He started writing down the liscence plates of the cars he could. I am really getting sick of this. There are people hanging out in our parking lot every freakin night!! I usually ignore it, but when it's that many people I can't. If the three boys show up again tomorrow night with a "new" mirror for Alisa, we are going to have a talk with them. They seem like nice guys and I hope they listen to us. Maybe I will walk out with a clipboard. It worked for Edgardo. I'll let you guys know what happens.

I hope you enjoyed my detailed story. I am going to bed because although it is Saturday, I get to wake up at 8:45 in the morning to turn off the alarm and unlock certain areas of the community center for some groups that are coming in. Unlocking the building on the weekends was the main janitor's job, but he decided to quit with no notice on Thursday. So Edgardo decided it's my job until they find someone. I don't really mind, but the idea of having to wake up for that is annoying. I'll probably just stay up because I have some stuff to do and we are going to this huge art festival in the afternoon. I'll write more about that later too.