The neighbors on either side are gone more often than they are here, both travel extensively for business. When they are around they are quiet and keep to themselves.
But the guy behind us is a piece of work. A while back he complained to us that our "lights are shining right into" his house. We said "oh, sorry about that" even though we could not recall leaving any of our outdoor flood lights on, or even using them recently. A couple weeks later he said the same, we apologized again and vowed to be hypervigilant (and were). A third complaint and we started asking clarifying questions.
The answers beggared belief. The lights "shining right into" his house? The indoor recessed can ceiling lights in our family room, which has a large window facing our backyard -- which he can see (a small portion of, above a 7 foot fence and through evergreen oak foliage) from his kitchen window which faces his back yard, at a distance of 100+ feet, maybe 150. He can't even see the light sources as they are recessed in the ceiling, just the fact that the room is lit makes it "shining right into" his house -- one window of an illuminated room, at 100+ feet, through branches, just the sliver above the fence, only visible from ONE window of his house, if he is standing at his kitchen sink.
When we realized what he was complaining about we shrugged it off. We have curtains, sometimes we use them sometimes we don't, but his complaint was nonsensical and unreasonable to worry about. We aren't ever allowed to have a room light on inside our house without closed curtains? GTFOH.
Well, the 7 foot fence between our properties wasn't tall enough for him, but we has built it just on our side of the property line. So a few feet onto his side he built a second fence. He bought 6 foot fence boards, so he built it 3 feet off the ground. A floating fence, 9 feet at the top, but doesn't touch the ground apart from the posts. Looks craptastic from his side, but at least he can't see the far away top sliver of our family room window from his kitchen anymore, I guess.
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