Sara's Ridiculous Claim

Welcome to the 6^th floor. Today's contributors are: Sara, Frank

Subject: Sara’s Ridiculous Claim

Sara had just come home from work yesterday and we started discussing the upcoming baseball season. I bleed pinstripes, but for whatever reason Sara is a Mets fan. She made a rather unlikely prediction that I find necessary to mention here so I can mock her later.

“The first and last pitch of the 2007 baseball season will be a Jose Reyes home run.”

Nothing Doing

Welcome to the 6^th floor. Today's contributors are: Sara

Subject: Nothing Happening

Sometimes time goes by and none of us have done anything remotely exciting, much less worth writing in a blog about. We were all hanging out in the kitchen recently watching Ann make herself a grilled cheese sandwich and discussing how little we’d done this past week.

Ann managed to read two books she’d wanted to read, mainly because work had been so slow. As it turned out, neither book was very good. I had wanted to read one of them myself, but it was so bad; she wouldn’t even let me.

I had a lot of things that I wanted to do this week, one of which was pay my taxes, but I kept managing to put them off. I went to work, came home and spent most of my free time either watching mindless television or playing scrabble online. I didn’t even do very well in scrabble. To make matters worse, the project I’d been working on all week at work turned out not to be as needed as the clients originally thought, so my week was basically pointless.

Frank got a little stir-crazy earlier in the week and decided to take his computer to Starbucks and play poker from there. He started playing, and was doing okay when he overheard a customer mention Barista Brat’s blog about working at Starbucks, and ended up reading all the back entries while he was playing. His distraction was so complete that he didn’t even realize how much money he was down until much later. He spent most of his week after that playing just to break even from that day.

Tabitha came down with a little cold, and besides going to class all she did was watch television, play video games and eat chicken soup. She put off a paper she needed to write until the last minute, and is now rushing to finish it in time.

Scott was asked to pick up some extra shifts at a different Starbucks, and being separated from his usual crowd made the days drag on. He says that the regulars at that Starbucks are all pretty boring and gave him funny looks when he tried to be friendly.

The highlight of Billy’s week was when he wasn’t paying attention and got off at the wrong stop on the subway. He didn’t realize it until he’d walked out of the station, and saw a different pizza place on the corner. Turned out that that pizza place had slices for five cents less, and they tasted better. He went back there every day, sometimes riding 20 minutes out of his way.

Hopefully more interesting things will happen in the near future. Frank says he has an idea of something fun to do tonight, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Lunch with Frank

Welcome to the 6^th floor. Today's contributors are: Tabitha, Frank

Subject: Lunch at the cafe

Frank and I are often the only two that are home during the day. Sara has a regular nine to five job and the other three work enough that it's rare to find one of them home in the afternoon. Often Frank and me end up looking for food at around the same time most days although often for different meals. We've made a semi-regular habit of choosing one day of the week to get lunch out, rather than scrounging for leftovers in the fridge. At first I was reluctant, but Frank is very generous and we struck a deal. If he's had a rough week of poker, we choose somewhere cheap to eat; if he's done well, then he pays for both of us.

Everybody's always so busy; it's nice to have a regular thing going on. Sometimes, mainly because of the weird hours I often keep, Friday night comes and I realize I haven't even talked to anybody outside of a computer all week. Some of the others do join us if they're around, but it doesn't happen often. Tabitha and me get along pretty well so it's nice to have some time to just chat without distractions or other commitments getting in the way. Today we ate at a small cafe around the corner from the apartment. We both just wanted some simple food with some fries.

“So, What is new with you Tab? How's Robert?”

“Actually we broke up. It just wasn't working out. We actually broke up the day after our Anniversary party.”

“I'd wondered why he left early with everyone else. You okay with it?”

“Yeah. I'm fine. We'd only been dating a couple of weeks anyway. He was pretty boring all around. So, to change the subject, you planning any crazy trips?”

“Depends on what you call crazy now doesn't it? Would a trip even count as a crazy one if I planned it all out in advance?“

“I guess planned trips are never as crazy as the spontaneous ones, but either way you'll let me know right?”

“And ruin the surprise? Never! I don't have anything in the works though. I haven't felt like driving down to AC or up to Foxwoods. Maybe I'll take a flight out to Vegas one of these days.“

“Wish I could take trips like that. It's a shame all my professors seem to want me in class. Also, pleading at the airline counters at the airport hasn't gotten me a free flight yet.”

“You could always whore yourself out. Especially in Las Vegas.”

“There's a career move, drop out of grad school, move to Vegas, and pay off the debt by becoming a stripper. My parents would be so proud.”

“Aren't they always telling you to get out there and meet new people?”

“That's just because they don't like you guys and think I could find better friends. Besides, I doubt prostitution is what they had in mind.”

“Your parents don't like us? Why not?”

“My mother says I need to hang out with more people with smart jobs, and that you're all degenerates with AIDS. She thinks my life is exactly like Rent.”

“Smart jobs? Does she want us all to be doctors and lawyers? Ann's going to be a writer, doesn't that count? Oh, wasn't one of the characters in Rent a writer? I guess Ann doesn't count either.”

“Nope. It's all right though, this way they won't visit me. Which means they'll be like your parents, who never visit either.”

“They feel the same, that I don't have a real career. Probably more so, since my parents actually kicked me out of the house when I told them I was playing poker for a living. I made as much last year as my mother did, but that doesn't matter to them. What's with Sara's parents? They visit all the time and take her to dinner and love her no matter what. Did she win the parent lottery when I was looking?”

“She must have. She does have the most normal career of any of us though. Ann's parents are pretty cool too, even though she's basically working a dead-end job. They seem to have faith in her writing ability. Not that I blame them for that, she really is a good writer.”

“I keep meaning to read that last thing she wrote, but I don't even read the newspaper. I rarely even read the blog, but I feel I owe it to her to at least try to post on it once in a while. But I always try to make someone else write or transcribe what needs to be said.”

We finished up lunch and headed home after that. I actually had a class to get to in a bit. Frank was supposed to clean the kitchen and run the dishwasher, but when I got back from class Billy was home scrubbing molasses off the counter.

Celebrating One Year Together

Welcome to the 6^th floor. Today's contributors are: Ann, Sara, Tabitha, Frank, Billy and Scott.

Subject: 1 year Anniversary

We had a semi-impromptu celebration of our one year anniversary of moving in here on Saturday. The anniversary was actually earlier last week, but Frank's brother John being in town gave us a good excuse to celebrate. Everyone invited a bunch of people over, including our neighbors within the building. It was actually getting rather cramped in the apartment. We haven't thrown many house parties before, so we were vastly unprepared for this one. Coupled with it being mostly spontaneous, it was borderline disastrous. We ran out of diet soda, then regular soda, and then everything but tap water, beer and a bottle of pineapple rum.

Soon after that, the beer dried up. Before long, it was just the six of us and John. We had some generic horror movie on television that no one was really watching, and I was trying to find something to mix with the pineapple rum . By this point, John had actually passed out on the couch.

“Okay everyone, here's my new concoction. I call it Desert Island”

“Desert Island? What's in it? Did you find something other than pineapple rum?”

“Just try it; I'll tell you after.”

“That's never good to hear.”

“That's disgusting! Is that Hershey's syrup?”

“Eww. Yeah, definitely disgusting.”

“Vile Filth!”

“I don't know; I kind of like it.”

“And what do you think, Billy?”

“This may be the crappiest cocktail I've had since that bartender made me that watermelon vodka mixed with Kahlua.”

Billy rarely gets very emotional or has any exaggerated reactions. In fact, he stated the above like he was saying “It rained today”. Many people mistake it for sarcasm, but it's just the way he is.

“Shouldn't you have tried it too Ann? What did you think of it?”

“Yeah, Ann! You've got to taste it, too. Here, try mine!”

Ann chokes down a sip, “Yikes! I'm sorry guys. That's positively nasty!”

“Well that leaves only one option!” Frank slurred, “Shots!”

“Here! Here!”

Expectedly, the night degenerated pretty fast from there. It's always interesting to see the different ways people act when they are drunk, and we were all pretty wasted that night.

Scott's a caffeine-overdose hyper drunk.

“Over/Under time! How long for me to get to 42^nd street and back? Anyone?”

“20 minutes!”

“You're on! Someone time me.”

Scott makes for the door, trips over the corner of the couch and sprawls face down into a pile of empty beer cans. Then he leaps up, raises his hands in the air and takes a bow, receiving applause from the rest of us. Peeling off a can tab that stuck to his forehead, he says,

“Did I make it?”

Frank gets forgetful and incoherent. This could be partly because he has to get up to use the bathroom nearly every five minutes.

“Make what? What were you doing..? Mine!!”

Frank leaps from his spot on the couch and crawls into the bathroom ahead of Scott, who was headed there after his Olympic caliber dive.

Tabitha gets a bit of an oral fixation when she's been drinking. She's always either chewing on or playing with something.

“Time for another shot for me!” Tabitha says, as she gets up to pour herself another shot.

“Hold up! You know you're not allowed to pour yourself drinks anymore,” says Scott, who's standing in the kitchen waiting for the bathroom.

“Why not? I'll be good. I won't hurt myself really!”

“That's what you said last time, and then you somehow managed to cut your left shoulder with the corkscrew. While pouring a beer!”

“Plus, right at this moment, you are chewing on a broken shard of glass from the pint glass I broke.”

Tabitha blushes and puts down the shard. “You're such a klutz. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to make drinks either, Ann.”

“I am not! I'll make another drink right now and show you!” I start towards the kitchen and see Scott hopping around staring at the bathroom.

“Scott why don't you just use our bathroom?”

“No, I can wait. Your bathroom has cooties.”

“Cooties? It does not! What do you mean?” Asks Sara, but Frank comes out of the bathroom, and Scott bolts for it.

Sara may be the weirdest when she's drunk. She suddenly wants to get into intellectual debates. Depending on the day and the subject, we will engage her, but sometimes it's some obscure computer stuff that none of us understand. The lack of a debating partner rarely stops her tirade though.

“Did you guys hear about all the space junk that’s orbiting the earth? It's like a junkyard up there! We really need to do something about it. It reminds me of that Futurama episode where they encounter the giant ball of garbage from the 20^th century, and Fry has to teach them all how to litter.”

“I saw that episode! It was the one with the dog, right?”

“No Frank. I wonder what the solution is. Maybe we can knock it into the atmosphere and burn most of it up?”

“Billy can get very emotional when he's been drinking. It's funny because it's so out of character for him.”

“That's so sad; we even litter in space. Today I was so angry at these two twerps on the 6, leaving Starburst wrappers everywhere!”

“And then, there is me. I go into heavy-duty writing mode when I'm drunk. I start seeing stories in everything. I often wonder if I should attempt all the writing projects I have with a pitcher of beer. I'd be so worried about spilling stout on my laptop, though.”

“You don't drink stout. Stout is yummy, I love stout, I'd marry it if I could!”

“You're narrating all your thoughts again Ann.”

“Oops! At least I didn't insult Billy this time, right?”

“Nope, not yet. We're still good.”

Billy flashes me a huge smile, obviously happy I haven't insulted him yet.

I don't remember much after that. I must've attempted to write because I woke up at my desk, with 40 pages of the letter 'a' in Microsoft Word, where I'd fallen asleep on my laptop. John helped us clean up, and then Frank drove him to the airport so he could catch his flight.

Ann's Note

Welcome to the 6^th floor. Today's contributors are: Tabitha

Subject: Ann's Note

I got home on Friday and found a note from Ann. She and Frank had taken Frank's brother John to Starbucks and left a note inviting us to join them. Ann can be a little long-winded when she writes notes, and I got a good laugh at how sidetracked she got while writing this one.

“Hey everyone! Frank's brother John decided to come visit; Me and Frank are taking him out to lunch and then we're headed to Starbucks. You guys should totally meet us there and come hang out. Isn't it crazy how John just decided to drop in? He didn't even give any warning, just called for a ride from the airport. Speaking of which, I wonder when Frank drove his car last? I know he has it parked in a garage somewhere and I hope he remembers which one; It's been weeks since he's driven it. I just asked him and he said he actually took it out for a spin in the wee hours of the morning Tuesday night. He had a good night playing poker and decided to take a ride. He had to get gas though, and then he got a snack. He hurried home after that, because all the people getting coffee reminded him that he should get off the road before the morning rush hour really kicked into gear. Speaking of coffee; I could go for some about now...Oh! That's why I'm writing this note, because we're going to get coffee! We'll be at Starbucks if you want to hang out.”

What I enjoyed most about Ann's note is how it went full circle like that. It also took four post-it notes.

Frank's Brother

Welcome to the 6^th floor. Today's contributors are: Ann, Frank, Scott

Subject: Frank's Brother is in town

Frank's brother was in town this past weekend, and I had the whole weekend off. Frank has no set schedule which works out well when he has company. No asking for time off, no trying to find something for visitors to do when you have to work.

It's one of the biggest perks of having such a flexible schedule. Especially when my brother gave me so much warning that he was coming. This is basically how it went after I answered my phone Friday.

“ugnnhh..Hello?”

“Hey! Frankie! What's up? It's been over a year and I haven't even seen your place!”

“Can this wait Johnny? I'm sleeping.”

“Well it can, but it's awfully boring here at the airport, and It'd be cool if you could come pick me up.”

“Thanks for the heads-up there. What if i was away this weekend?”

“Well you're not away are you? So are you going to come get me or am I going to spend the whole weekend in this dump of an airport?”

I gave him subway directions and went back to sleep.

And that's why the first person John met was me. 90 minutes later when he knocked on the door it was me that answered it and Frank was still asleep. I woke Frank up, got John a drink and we talked while Frank showered. No one else was home yet so the three of us went out for a late lunch, or really late breakfast in Frank's case. After that we went to Scott's Starbucks.

I think Scott may have frightened Johnny a bit. We're from North Carolina and Scott's personality is not like anyone John would know back home.

“Hey guys! Who's this?”

“This is my brother Johnny, spontaneously visiting from North Carolina.”

John: “Nice to meet you.”

“Johnny boy! So me and Bruce over here have been having an argument, he thinks those two guys on the corner outside are up to something sneaky. I'm trying to explain that they're just old friends stopping for a chat. What do you think?”

Bruce is one of Scott's 'posse' members. He's a regular that often comes in and argues about something or another with Scott. Last week he was convinced Starbucks should change the name of soy milk to make it sell better.

John: “I uhh.. I don't know. They seem harmless to me.”

“See? What did I tell you Bruce? You're just a paranoid old freak, You have gotta get a handle on this. Hey Teresa, this is my roommate's little brother. Let them order whatever they like.”

Teresa (barista) : You know I can't do that Scott, You're not allowed to give out free drinks anymore. After you gave away 40 drinks to your groupies that time, George said that you can't give any more drinks away.”

“Those were all close personal friends of mine. I don't see what George's problem is.”

Teresa: “Close personal friends? One of them was a woman behind you on line at Walgreens who gave you three cents so the cashier didn't have to make change!”

“That was just because she was smoking hot!”

Teresa just rolls her eyes.

Scott tried to coax her into doing it, but she held fast. We're used to paying for our drinks now anyway. Scott's always been very friendly and the ever growing list of regulars and acquaintances he has that come into Starbucks is insane. I don't blame George for not letting him give away free drinks anymore, although I'd wager that if Scott ever left so would a lot of his group. That's probably why George puts up with Scott's antics and doesn't fire him. He's not what one would call a stellar Barista.

Welcome to the 6th Floor

Welcome to the 6^th floor. Today's contributors are: Ann, Sara, Tabitha, Frank, Billy and Scott.

Subject: Introduction

Welcome to the 6^th floor. This is the web log of six roommates living in New York City together. The blog was mainly my idea as I would like to be a writer one day, and decided to make a project out of this. The other five agreed after a variable amount of coaxing. I'm sure I will be doing most of the updating, so expect to hear a lot from me. To keep the confusion to a minimum, with six people posting to one blog, we figured we'd post in different fonts and colors to help differentiate. I'm Ann, and at the moment I am working at a local library. I figured that maybe being around all those books would motivate me to write on my own, but so far no luck, unless you count starting this blog.

Today is actually the one year anniversary of when we all moved in here, which seems a rather fitting day to start writing this blog. I'm Sara, a programmer for a software development company. My job is kind of a grind. I don't make quite enough to support myself, especially here in Manhattan, which is what led me to live with five total strangers. I'm glad I did because these five are some of the best things to happen to me lately. I'm also a bit of a spendthrift, so this allows me to support that bad habit and not have to worry as much about living expenses.

I'm Tabitha, the only student out of the six of us, so while the rest of them are earning an income, all I'm doing is accruing debt. It sucks sometimes when I have to turn down going out because I really cannot afford it. My name is Tabitha, and I'm in grad school getting my Master's degree. I'm the boring one that stays in on Friday nights to write a paper, while everyone else is out partying. I would love to have a clock like Mrs. Weasley's from Harry Potter that keeps track of where my five roommates are, especially Frank.

I dislike the term 'Professional Gambler' because what I do is not gambling. I am Frank and I play Poker for a living, despite my parents’ objections. In fact, that's why I'm living here, because my parents kicked me out a little over a year ago because they wanted me to go out and get a job, and refused to accept that I was going to be able to make enough money playing poker. The corporate nine to five world is not for me. Sara often gets annoyed with me when she sees me still up when she leaves for work. And I've received numerous calls from Tabitha wondering why I haven't come home, only to inform her that I'm in Atlantic City. It's actually become a game of sorts, trying to see whats the weirdest place I can be when she calls looking for me. Billy is often my co-conspirator in this; he gets a kick of Tabitha's rants when she finds out I'm 200 miles away.

'Lacking in motivation' is often a phrase used to describe me, Billy. People look down on me when I tell them I'm a subway conductor with no intention of doing anything else. I'm actually happy with my life, I enjoy my job, I enjoy my roommates, and I don't see what's so bad about that. Everybody else seems so miserable most of the time; still they judge me and think I should change MY life. Scott is one of the few that isn't like this and also seems to be happy.

Currently Ann is looking over my shoulder and won't let me get up unless I write this. She said I'm not allowed to even eat until it's done! I originally lived elsewhere, but my landlord kept giving me a hard time. She kept saying 'Scott, you need to pay the rent this week' and 'Scott, I'm going to have to evict you if you don't pay up soon'. Such a hassle and she wasn't even good looking. Frank’s been my bud since high school. He was crashing on my couch after he got kicked out by his folks. That helped with the rent, but ultimately when we met the other four, we decided to all move in together. Yes Yes, Ann says I have to mention work. I work at a local Starbucks with my pal George. My regular group hangs out there too; we have all sorts of stuff in the works on any given day. Okay, Ann, can I eat now?

If you're looking to contact any of us, the best option would be to email all of us at 6thfloorblog@gmail.com. We have a computer in our living room that we use as sort of a community computer, and we'll field the emails as, and if, they arrive. If you're directing it to one of us specifically, please mention that in the subject line. Stay tuned for more interesting posts.