Tales from Studio 54 . . .

Its been a few weeks, so I figure now would be a good time to tell a few of the hopefully delightful but always hilarious tales Brian and I have been living here at Studio 54. Since before I left, Jenny, Cory and I had taken to watching “Are You Afraid of the Dark” on the awesome ripped off copies we received from Canada (thank you internet!) I will now proceed with the stories by titling them all with the “Are You Afraid of the Dark” beginnings.

The Tale of the Mouse in the Oven
Cheryl if you’re reading this, stop now. You can barely handle spiders, you won’t like this story. And when I get to the story of the spiders, don’t read that one either. That being said . . . late one night, Brian and I lay in bed drifting slowly off to sleep. It was our second or third night in Studio 54 and we were just beginning to relax and enjoy the place. I heard it first. A rustling. Something moving in the kitchen. Deciding to play the girl card for the first time in awhile I turned to Brian as I elbowed him and said, “You go check it out.” Brian proceeded to the kitchen and picked up a wine bottle on the ground. He pounded the trash bag laying there over and over again, which seemed to be the cause of the rustling. After a minute of silence he stated, “Must have been the bag collapsing.” He then picked up the trash bag and placed it in the oven, just in case. The next morning Brian took the trash out (that’s another story . . . see: Tales from College Road; The Tale of the Race Track in a day or two) and everything seemed to be back in order. That afternoon I went to make grilled cheese sandwiches for myself and Brian, but when I turned on the grill “POOF!” electricity went out. Hmm, I thought, very interesting. We called our landlord and continued to eat out for the next few days until an electrician came. If you haven’t guessed the end result of this story from the title then you’re in for a surprise right about now. The electrician told us that the wiring for the grill had been chewed apart, and then proceeded to pull a toasted little mouse out by its tail. Brian and I now take the trash out every night.

The Tale of the Hole in the Wall
After the first night in the apartment, we woke up to the bed being wet. Not “someone may have wet the bed” wet, but more like “fresh morning dew camping” wet. Odd, since we do in fact live indoors. As we walked around the apartment we noticed that clothes left out and other random objects also had this strange dewy residue that wasn’t present the night before. The other odd thing was that the walls were leaking. Well, not all the walls, just the back corner wall all the way at the top down to the floor. They were actually wet to the touch and paint came off on our hands when we did press our hands to them. Night after night it was the same predicament. We opened windows, turned on the heater, but nothing seemed to stop the walls from leaking. Brian and the landlord went upstairs to see if the neighbor had accidentally flooded her apartment, which did not turn out to be the case. Our landlord, Sean, decided to take decisive action. So that Friday night he came over around nine o’clock with a mallet and a drill. And Sean started to create a hole in our wall from the outside. Now, the very first day we moved in I went to hang up the collage (a series of photos I put together every year, and this year copied to take with us) and realized that tacks could not penetrate the walls. Maybe because I’m not strong enough, or maybe it was the tacks. Maybe it was the fact that the walls are entirely concrete. Sean didn’t realize this fact until he started to hammer the wall and realized he could not successfully get through. After breaking one drill and creating a hole about three inches in diameter, Sean called it a night, and went home. So Brian and I slept there, listening to the outside world, with the cool Irish air slowly drying up our leaking walls.

The Tale of the Smashed Spiders
To conclude this evening’s stories, I will end with The Tale of the Smashed Spiders. In the next few days I’ll actually get to stories from our adventures in Galway and our job hunt, but its late and most scary stories (as the Simpsons Halloween specials have lead me to believe) come in threes. So here we go . . . again, all of these events happened in the first few days of living here. Our apartment is now rodent, insect, and hole free. But in one of the first few days living in Studio 54, I noticed a spider. Now, after living with Cheryl for seven years, there are certain rules I hold to. For seven years I was in charge of killing and disposing of all spiders that dared entered our apartments in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, and in return, Cheryl was in charge of killing/removing any snakes that ever entered the apartment. Now I know you may consider this a ridiculous exchange, “When is there ever a snake in an apartment in San Francisco?” you might say. But believe you me, if there was ever going to be a snake, I wanted the right to hide as quickly as possible and know Cheryl would take care of it before it could do any harm. I was quite content with the arrangement. Well, Brian and I had no such arrangement, so when I saw the first spider (or so I thought), I immediately grabbed it up in a little tissue and let it go out the window (yes mom, all life is precious :). It turns out, Brian had a different policy with spiders, and had been taking care of them on his own so as not to worry me. But however subtle my policy was, Brian was the exact opposite. On sight of a spider, Brian would find the nearest heavy object and smash it. On the floor, on the wall, whether it be with a book or my laptop, he saw a spider and it was immediately smashed. After extensive cleaning I believe I have all the ravages of battle taken care of, and we’re still snake free!

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