1. I was at the pizza place less than a block from our apartment, waiting for them to finish our calzones, when I overheard an interesting conversation between two other locals.

Big Tall Guy: “Good Gracious, it’s cold out there!”
Brown Hat Guy: “Uhhhh huh!”
Big Tall Guy: “Too cold!”
Brown Hat Guy: “Too cold!”
Big Tall Guy: “Black people ain’t built for this weather!”
Brown Hat Guy: “I’m keeping my long johns on til it’s 95 degrees!”

I assume the conversation continued after I left with my food, but that was the excerpt I caught. I just thought it was a good example of the kind of characters one meets in my neighborhood.

2. At about 10:30 last night, someone knocks on our door, and it’s our new upstairs neighbor. It seems he’s accidentally locked himself out of his apartment and wants to see if he can shimmy the lock open with one of our keys. Always up for an adventure, we see if there’s anything we can do to help the poor guy, but to no avail. He also unscrewed the front plate of his doorknob and bent it slightly, but was no closer to getting back in.

Then Aryn has the brilliant idea of climbing up the fire escape through our window. Evidently, there’s no ladder or stairs on our building’s fire escape, so he climbs out of our window, goes over to the buliding next door’s fire escape, climbs up their ladder, and carefully makes his way back to the landing outside his apartment. He was eventually able to force his way in, and said later that if we ever need anything, he’s our man. It’s nice to know we’ve got someone watching our backs.