The Saturday Morning Post

Saturday January 23rd 2010 10:30am

Yesterday, shortly after we got to work, the electricity went out. Normally when it goes out, it comes back on after five minutes or so. An hour after the electricity went off, we decided to call it quits and head back home.

As I walked the stairs up to my apartment, I found out that I had a new next door neighbor. When I asked Lady what happened to the other neighbors, she explained that they only had the room for a couple of days, and stayed in the building as a hotel guest instead of as residents. This really explained why they thought I was weird for introducing myself as a neighbor. I would be weirded out too if the guy next to me at a Holiday Inn made a point of knocking on my door and telling me that it was nice to see new people in the building.

I grabbed some lunch, and spent most of the afternoon either napping or reading. Just before dinner, I headed up to the roof for some exercise, and stopped to introduce myself to my neighbor. Her name is Margo, and she is here on a grant to teach English at the local university. She is roughly 50 years old, and will be here for the next nine months (which makes it not so weird to introduce myself as her neighbor).

Dinner was a good new recipe from the cook book Uncle Russ got me for Christmas, and I spent the rest of the evening reading and waiting for Conan O'Brien's last show. It was a good one, and I was sad to see him go.

This morning, I had just finished breakfast, when my new neighbor knocked on the door to see if I had any plans for lunch later. She didn't really know the city, and wanted to know if I had any good tips. We ended up chatting for a while, and she is letting me use her computer for a little bit. She seems really nice, and it is always nice to be able to speak in English with someone.