So...guess what happened to me.

For those of you living in Halifax, you know there's been lots of construction going on in and around my apartment building. The whole street is torn up. And the new owners of Fenwick are renovating the exterior.

It was really early in the morning--8:30 or so. I was drinking some herbal tea and browsing the internet when I happened to swallow the wrong way. Ben was sleeping in the bed next to me. I didn't want to wake him up, so I hurried out of the room, coughing my guts up.

I was about to round the corner back into the bedroom when two guys on a platform outside our window appeared, tied to ropes with construction tools in hand.

Did I mention that I was half naked?

I quickly found my housecoat and proceeded to wake up Ben. The men--young men, my age or so--didn't seem to care that there were two distressed occupants behind the glass. They proceeded to blare their terrible rap music (not to say that rap music is terrible--but this particular musician was, and c'mon, at 8:30 in the morning?) and use loud scraping tools to work on whatever they were doing.

Then, it got worse.

They got stuck.

As if they weren't swearing enough.

They had a cell phone and were calling their supervisors. I didn't really know what to do, but apparently they said their bosses were coming to OUR apartment to get them out. When they got here, however, I was quick to inform them that our windows could only open a few centimeters, for safety reasons, since we're on the 27th floor.

So you know what? They spent the better part of the day, in my apartment, trying to get these boys out and trying to fix the platform-lift thing. I mean, does it really take 6 men in my bedroom to fix a lift? Not to say they weren't polite. No, they were fine. But they seemed to think the situation hilarious. I don't know about you, but I hate having a lot of bodies in my personal space. It changes the energy. It's like an invasion. It is an invasion.

I moved my computer to the living room and proceeded to work on my honours project. I did get quite a bit done, considering the constant interruptions.

I thought that was the end.

But I thought wrong.

The very next morning, I woke to loud rap music. I looked at the clock. 8:30am.

You would think that they learned their lesson. Or that they were finished outside our window.

Ben got out of bed and grabbed some clothes. I thought, no, they won't stop at our window, I mean, they were already there yesterday. Surely they must be done. They'll pass right by, and I'll go back to sleep.

How naive I am.

They started scraping the sides of the building. The music was loud, but I covered my ears and hid under the blanket, waiting for them to leave. Then one of them turned on this drill that was as loud as the bagpipes that used to wake us up at the Gaelic College. I sat up, startled.

"See, I told you she was going to do that," said one of them outside.

I was fuming. How dare they interrupt my sleep? Disrespectful! Not a lot of people live here. Go fix some other part of the building that's uninhabited and come back at a more reasonable hour.

I got up, got dressed and went and complained. I'm not sure if anything came out of it. They were there for like an hour. Fortunately, they didn't return this morning. And in case you were wondering, no we don't have curtains because we don't have curtain rods--and c'mon, we're on the 27th floor. Who would've thought we would have people looking in at us?

So, that's been my life for the past two days. How about yours?