en-light-enment; or, power to the people!

It's easy in this neck of the woods to feel like you're whacking your head repeatedly as you fall down the socio-economic ladder...but there's always someone worse off.

I don't know my neighbors. This is not Mayberry: no fruit baskets, no cups of sugar, nada. Even in the odd chance we spot one another entering or leaving, warm greetings are not exchanged. So I don't have a lot of basis to draw assumptions about them; I mean, other than the fact they live in my building, which actually says a lot about a person. None of us are slumming for the fun of it.

But yesterday I had to give one of them credit. It finally dawned on me that every night one of the units downstairs has an extension cord coming out of it; never thought much of it. Most of the units are being renovated, so construction paraphernalia is not out of the ordinary. But then I realized that every night it's plugged in to the hallway, but every morning it's neatly rolled up against the wall.

The tricky bastard isn't paying for electricity!

See, our main hallways have power, but each unit is separately run and metered accordingly. So instead of chucking the obligatory $20 or so dollars a month in to LA's coffers, he just plugs himself in every night and goes to town on the landlord's dollar. At first I was a little appalled...then I was just bummed I didn't think of it first.

Well played...well played indeed.

In the not-too-distant past, I would've been quick to criticize his thrifty nature...but people in broken down apartment buildings can't throw stones.

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