Most of you reading this post are wondering how I could be complaining about insomnia at 5 pm Central time. \u00a0Wonder no more.<\/p>\n
I live in a nice quiet neighborhood. \u00a0I work overnights. \u00a0My nice quiet neighborhood was graced by the addition of a brand new hockey rink two years ago. \u00a0I went to the city meeting about the rink and voiced my objection. \u00a0Objecting to hockey in Minnesota is like objecting to The Virgin Mary in Rome. They put the thing in at the same level as my house just about 150 feet away from my bedroom. \u00a0And, because it’s not cold enough in Minnesota, they put in a chiller unit so they could maintain the ice sheet for an extra month on either end of the normal season. The drone from the city said it would sound just like a garbage truck at idle. \u00a0Picture that outside your window all day. \u00a0Because that’s when it runs. \u00a0It doesn’t need to run at night, no sunshine to melt the ice.<\/p>\n
When I bought the house there was a hockey rink across the street. \u00a0NO problem, it’s a public park. \u00a0It was the traditional Minnesota deal, throw the boards up in late October, wait for it to get cold and then flood it with a fire hose. \u00a0It was about 8 or 9 feet below the level of my house and shielded by the recreation center. \u00a0No problem. Kind of nice to wander over and watch the kids skate. \u00a0Nice days there’d be a few folks out there, some games at night under the lights, etc.<\/p>\n
But the new rink is right outside my window. \u00a0Every puck that hits the boards resounds through my house. \u00a0I know (because I keep track of such things) that the city promised it would only be open certain hours. \u00a0Yeah. \u00a0Sure. \u00a0And they’ll never, ever, lie about the planned enforcement. \u00a0Fact is that the thing is in use from around 6 am to 1 am many days. The street lights provide a lovely illumination for the people using the rink. \u00a0So all sorts of people come by for a bit of skating and stick work before and after work.<\/p>\n
Me? \u00a0I am legally disabled due to hearing loss from my time in the Navy. \u00a0I can’t hear much most days. \u00a0And yet I cannot sleep. Even in my lovely, calm, darked out room with extra sound insulation over the window. \u00a0And 33db earplugs. \u00a0And a fan. \u00a0And a CPAP hissing away. \u00a0Yes, the noise is sporadic and irregular and thus cuts through my sleep like a knife.<\/p>\n
Did I mention that during the summer they’re out there on roller blades with hard rubber balls? \u00a0Joy! \u00a0It’s year round!!!!!!<\/p>\n
And today, just to ice the cake, I did manage to fall asleep with the pucks a’banging. \u00a0That did not prepare me for the roofers showing up around 1 pm to rip off the roof at the back of the house and start the repairs to that leaky mess. \u00a0Not their fault, they have a job to do and vampires are not usually part of the scenery.<\/p>\n
Guess I have to just put on my big-boy pants and get ready to go tutor the kids. \u00a0The fact that I got a whopping 4 hours of sleep is not an issue. \u00a0Until around 5 am tomorrow morning I’ll stick to that statement. \u00a0All bets are off at 0501.<\/p>\n
But, I did do my research. \u00a0The city’s hockey rink is in violation of their own noise ordinance. \u00a0I’ll be talking to the city about that this week.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I hope you sleep well tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of you reading this post are wondering how I could be complaining about insomnia at 5 pm Central time. \u00a0Wonder no more. I live in a nice quiet neighborhood. \u00a0I work overnights. \u00a0My nice quiet neighborhood was graced by …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[167,238,239,237,162,241,242,154,243,240],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pure-blather","tag-commotion-in-the-pews","tag-hockey","tag-ice-rink","tag-insomnia","tag-joseph-courtemanche","tag-night-shift","tag-repairs","tag-roof","tag-tutoring","tag-vampire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}