Living in a Condominium (For 7 Days) is Hilarious

The sociological lessons are priceless

Every summer, we stay in a condominium for 7 days while on vacation. This year is no different. So here we are, responsibly enjoying the beach while retreating to the friendly confines of the condo every night.

It’s a sturdy joint — four strong walls, and a ceiling that could probably survive 25.1 seconds of jack hammering. So far as I can tell, the virus has not been able to figure out the deadlock on the door. My wife has a degree in engineering, and she still hasn’t gotten a success rate above 50%.

The property layout

We live in a single-family home in suburban Maryland. When I get home from picking up dinner from Wendy’s, I can park in my driveway, and stroll over relatively flat ground to get to my door.

At the condo? It is a sea of asphalt that the sun has heated to roughly 432 degrees Kelvin. In fairness, this has some physical fitness benefits. I have to park in a spot that is 50 yards from the building, and pass a group of people that are — inexplicably — drinking beers next to their small cluster of Ford F-150s. Then, I have to slog my sack of junior bacon cheeseburgers — or whatever else I have - up a series of steps. One step — and I can never remember which one until it is too late — has a protruding rusty nail.

Get your tetanus shots, kids.

Once inside…

Given the current societal situation, we packed more than usual in order to avoid having to go to a retail store and pick up emergency AA batteries. Thus, we tried to cram a week’s worth of supplies into a space roughly the size of a bathroom at Wendy’s.

Getting everything in, and stowed away, is a delicate dance fit for Broadway. Either that or it is someone with a box of towels and underpants crashing into someone carrying the board game Ticket to Ride. The end result being a bunch of towels with hundreds of tiny game pieces interwoven with them.

Jump rope for heart health

We stay in a unit on the first floor of the three-level complex. It is always exciting to learn about our week-long neighbors. The first night, we learned that the people above us are (likely) a family of kangaroos. There is simply no other way — I checked with NASA — that a human could jump that much, and run that loudly.

Rutherford Honwickly, a Phd in Hopping Mammals, and I briefly considered a herd of elephants, but quickly ruled that out due to spatial constraints.

At least they are healthy. If they had step/jump-counters, it would return a daily number of steps/jumps of 1.76 million. That equals 72,916.66667 per hour. I checked.

Waterfalls

The second day, we learned that the laundry washer in the unit two floors above us had exploded. The fellow who was up there came down to warn us of an incoming deluge. It never came — just a few drops — but while waiting I did some research. According to explodinglaundry.com, the industry experts, the leading cause of exploding washers, that are within 3.2km of a beach, is:

The Maytag self-destruct mechanism that kicks in when the washer has to run its 45th load of sandy swim trunks.

Apparently, the guy is the owner of the unit. He had to lug the doomed machine down three floors, and then a new machine up those same sets of stairs.

I would have loved to help even though the heat and humidity would wither most species of camels, but…social distancing and all that.

Team Kangaroo’s step counter would dwarf this guy’s daily total. But he burned more calories in one day than Lance Armstrong did in his cycling career.

Smokey the bear

We are able to be safe and stay away from our neighbors. The facility is roughly 25% full, and the beach has been a ghost town. Still, there are some things we learn about the (few) people around us.

One fellow is a smoker. Smoking, by all objective measures, is an unhealthy habit. I can’t throw stones though. I have an unhealthy habit: following the Baltimore Orioles. Nonetheless, even when baseball season is actually a thing, I do not spend my entire day trying to explain why the O’s team ERA is higher than 50.

This guy smokes all day. From the time we walk out onto the balcony to see the sunrise, to well after the random fireworks start at night, dude is puffing on something (he goes back and forth between cigs and cigars).

Smokey, if he had a fitness tracker — which is highly unlikely — would only register the aggregate distance to/from the bathroom.

When it is time to quarantine

We will quarantine ourselves for 14 days, per the guidance, when we get home. At first, that seemed like a real downer. I love my family dearly, but seeing only them for 21 straight days (a week + the quarantine) can wear thin the thickest of nerves. Now, I look at it like this (lemons into lemonade): I have ample time to conduct newly relevant research:

Do kangaroos travel to South Carolina? What insidious code has Maytag implanted into my washer that will make it self-destruct? What are the early warning signs of emphysema caused by second-hand smoke?

To quote Robert Frost, after navigating this thicket, even when we get home, I still have miles to go before I sleep.