donald ducking it* and other things not to do on a street of curtainless windows

i now live in an apartment on the second floor of a five-story apartment building whose living room picture windows face the bedroom and living room windows of another five-story apartment building across the street. this is the first time i've lived in such a large buildling and one in which all the windows face out to the street.

and the best part is, no one closes their curtains, so in lieu of television (which we don't have), one can be entertained by the goings-on of the across-the-street neighbors.

it's kind of cool. these people's day-to-day activities range from the relatively normal to the quite strange. normal: the other day an older woman wearing a hot pink shirt leaned out her window in the morning to greet the day. today, a man two-windows up mopped his hardwood floors. strange: from a window on the fifth floor earlier this evening, every few minutes, a few bright camera flashes. we couldn't see any sort of photo shoot set-up - so either someone's taking mystery pictures or attempting to fix a broken strobe light.

but it's a double-edged sword. i reazlied only a few days ago, just after a shower, that if i can see into all my neighbors windows they can also see into mine. someone has probably been getting a free show for a week and a half.

i wonder what the neighbors think of us? if they spend any time gazing into our windows, they probably just see three girls glued to their computers. sometimes its hard to pull yourself away from online scrabble.



*"donald ducking it," to those unfamiliar, is wearing a shirt but no garment on the lower half of the body, like donald duck. the style is almost always completely awkward and therefore not advised.