Ah, autumn! The time of year when the air gets colder, and the leaves fall in a shower of red, yellow, and orange...

The temperature and leaves, however, are not the only objects subject to dropping during this change in seasons, as I got to experience first-hand.

I got home around 11 AM yesterday after spending the night at a friend's, to be greeted by my cat who was supremely pissed at my extended absence. ("Greeted" in this sentence thus means, "F___ you I'm not even going to come over when you give me food you've got to come to me to apologize bitch.") Taking care of my immediate obligations of cat-serving and tossing out garbage, I happily went to take a much needed shower, which I was enjoying quite thoroughly--

--until there was a LOUD (and I mean "HOLY SHIT!!!" LOUD) crash that scared the living hell out of me.

My immediate thought (other than, "What the [insert favorite expletive(s) here] was that?!") was that my cat had knocked something over as he's oft wont to do when he's pissy. So I got out of the shower to investigate.

Now, it should be noted that without my glasses, I am blind. Legally, comically blind. As in even if I've known you for years, if you're standing more than four or five feet away, you better say more than just one word if there's to be even a remote chance in hell of me knowing who you are. I say this because on my inital search I didn't notice anything. This and the sudden flurry of footsteps from my upstairs neighbors led me to think that maybe whatever fell was in their apartment. Plus even with a towel, it was friggin' cold and I wanted to get back to my shower.

It was only afterwards when I went into my bedroom (with my glasses on) to get some clean clothes that I discovered the front cover of my air conditioner was lying on the floor some distance from the unit itself, which was now tilted. Upon closer inspection, I saw that there was a large dent in the back end of my AC, which was pointing precarious downward. Something had obviously hit it, and only the screws holding my AC to my window had kept it from falling as well . . . and they were only barely doing so now. Needless to say, I was not thrilled at the prospect of my AC plummeting out of my window, so I called some guys to get rid of it. It was an old crappy AC anyway, so it was good to throw it out.

The guys came over and removed it, and looked outside to see what had happened. Guess what it was? Down in the alley below lay the crushed remains of another AC. My upstairs neighbors' AC (as there was an AC still in the window of the floor above). Remember the flurry of footsteps? Yeah. And did anyone come downstairs to tell me what had happened? And now I'm out about $100 to have my AC taken out? Uh-huh. They're good people, my neighbors. Real jems.

Oh, and there's one more bit to the story: pigeon crap. Tons and tons of pigeon crap that had been left by the birds roosting under my AC. I spent about twenty minutes with a scarf covering my nose and mouth, and armed with gloves, bleach, and the lid of a plastic container cleaning my window sill.

You know how many diseases are in pigeon poo? Sixty. (Thanks, Mike Rowe!)

I live a rich life.

EDIT: Turns out that it wasn't the fault of my neighbors (sorry!), but the morons doing construction work on the building next to me. They rolled up one of those nets used to prevent debris from falling all of the place, and apparently left it in such a manner that it fell from wherever it was stored and struck my neighbors' AC, then mine.

Good news: the managment group of building are refunding me the cost of having my AC removed. Huzzah!