Kim jumped through all the necessary hoops today and the house across the street was ours for the renting. It looked like an especially sweet deal; the rent was month to month and everything. But then Kim met the neighbor, a little old lady living in a nasty little shack in the back. Here, I'll let Kim tell the story:

I was showing Jenna [the German Girl] our soon to be cute little house digs, which was just confirmed ours by the realtor, when the little old lady who lives in the shaque in the backyard came out to rear her ugly head. I introduced myself nicely as the new tenant and she responded with the following:

"Is that your dog? No dogs are allowed here, didn't you speak to the landlord about this?..."

"No, there isn't space for another car to park in the alley..."

"I have a cat that is nineteen years old and is blind, I don't want a dog going near her...."

So I replied, "I am glad I spoke with you because I wouldn't want to live near a crotchety old lady like you." With that I walked back to our compound to inform John R. we would be renting the place for another year. I managed to get $10 off his $970 asking price. He was already preparing the sign which read, 2 bedroom apartment for 995.00. I hope this is ok with you. We have to sign the paperwork tonight.

I want to relax too. Will you be home for dinner? We have a spinach pizza if you want to share it. I want to watch the critically acclaimed Italian flick I rented on Saturday called, Life is Beautiful.

So we didn't get the place after all. It's just as well, really. Since there would have been a month of overlap, we wouldn't have saved any money even with the cheaper rent, and besides, we'd have to move all our stuff, and that's never easy. But all of that pales in comparison to the prospect of being stuck in the same yard with a horrible neighbor.

Perhaps because I wasn't drinking tonight, I actually managed to stay up for all of the subtitled Italian movie Life is Beautiful. It seemed like a campy, slapstick flick at first, the sort that would star an extreme cousin of Steve Martin. But it grew on me from there, preserving this weird comic energy all the way into the most horrifying of tragic circumstances. The juxtaposition of comic, manic energy with the horror of the Holocaust was creepy in a way affected me deeply. There was a phase of the movie when I actually felt like I could throw up the spinach pizza Kim had fed me. That's one way of saying I really liked it. Usually it's difficult for me to get that much out of a subtitled film.