Monday, June 04, 2007

Not having a wonderful day

Two nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night because it was too hot. This almost never happens to me. I don't like the cold. I like A/C and ice cream and such as much as the next person, but I need to be warm to sleep. I often have a blanket even during the summer.

So it was odd for me to wake up in the middle of the night and feel too warm. Maybe I'm just getting old. Maybe I'm having hot flashes.

Or maybe I just forgot to turn on the A/C. But I decided that I was too tired to get up and check on it. I went back to sleep.

The next morning we a lot of rain and a bit of thunder. The lights flashed off for just a moment. Not even long enough to voice a complaint about it. Just long enough to make all the digital clocks flash 12:00. Not even much of an annoyance.

A bit after that I noticed that the A/C didn't come back on. Or maybe it wasn't on to begin with. I went and flipped all the switches and such, and nothing happened.

You cannot live in Texas without an A/C. Luckily, the extended warranty on the thing is supposed to be good til the end of the month. So we called to have someone come and look at it, and he's supposed to be here between 9am and 1pm.

This was an especially bad day for a guy to come and repair something in my living room. Besides the usual mess, I had decided to get a bunch of stuff out of storage and sort through it. So I put all the stuff in the living room so I could see all of it. Except for a tiny path to the next room, every square inch of the living room floor was covered with junk. So I had to take half of the junk and put it in the dinning room and kitchen. And I also had to empty a bookcase that was blocking the electrical outlet where the A/C was plugged in. So that took most of yesterday morning and a lot of the afternoon.

Almost 2:30 before he arrived, but he did at least call and say he'd be late. And an hour later, I have a working A/C unit. Life can go back to normal, or as close to normal as it has been here for a while.

Last week was interesting due to board member elections for the place that we live being held today and tomorrow. Most of the time, it seems like people don't even care about the thing. I'm not sure that I've voted in all of the elections since I've been here. I'm pretty sure that we were out of town for at least two of them. The first time we voted, we just voted for whoever already held the position. The last few elections, a few people made flyers, so I decided to only vote for people with flyers. If your opponent left me a flyer and you didn't bother, then you might not want to bother with other things, so the guy with the flyer gets my vote.

There are six people running for three spots. Five of them sent flyers, so I know one person who shouldn't get my vote. But then there were mysterious letters accusing current board members of not doing their jobs, and then there were more flyers disputing the letters, and then there were more flyers disputing things written in those flyers.

It's too bad that the two people I am most interested in are running against each other. If I could slightly re-arrange the ballot I'd vote for some new people and some old people. But it doesn't work that way. So I am still sitting here deciding who to vote for.

Space 1 is between a guy who has been here a long time and seems to know what he's doing, and a new guy who is retired from a job that makes him sound like he knows how to get things done. I don't really know either of them very well, but I like both of them well enough. Before each annual meeting, the old guy stands in front of the mirror practicing how to say things from Robert's Rules of Order so that the meeting doesn't quite take all day. But the new guy seems like a good guy too.

Space 2 is between the lady who didn't send me a flyer and an exterminator. So this should be a no-brainer, cause I don't want to vote for the lady who didn't care enough to send out flyers. But the exterminator wants to do a lot of work to the place that would probably cause an increase in the rent. He claims that we have some money left over from the pest control bill because he did most of the work himself at cost, but I doubt that is near enough money for all the stuff that he wants to do. Some of my neighbors don't believe that he did all of that work at cost. I don't know the man at all, so I don't know what to say about that. But I don't want a basketball court or most of the other stuff he wants to build, and I certainly don't want to pay extra for it.

Space 3 is between a nice old guy who has been here forever and a new guy who goes to my church. I don't know the new guy, but my brother does. The old guy is nice, but the flyer he sent around had a lot of misspelled words and just wasn't written very well in general. The new guy wants to build storage units. I'm not sure about the storage units. On the one hand it seems like a good idea, but on the other hand I would think that we'd have not only the cost of building the things but also added insurance and legal fees, and we'd have to raise the rent to do it.

The neighbors I am most friendly with did not bother to go to the annual meeting last time. Some of them haven't been to a meeting since I moved in. I don't know if I should ask someone's opinion when they don't even go to the annual meeting.

My brother has already voted this morning for all of the new people. But my brother and I totally disagree on what around here should be fixed and what is worth raising the rent for, etc....

I heard that the new guy trying to get elected to space 1 is pacing out in front of the office, trying to get people to talk to him one last time before they vote.

Well, I was thinking that I should just walk over there and get it over with. But it is raining now, so I guess it will wait til tomorrow.




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My old apartment never had that sort of thing. It was an expensive place but the iron-fisted ownership group ran the whole show. It would have been fun to vote on someone to take care of things.

You cannot live in Cleveland without AC either. It took one 70 degree night and a pool of sweat to get my AC in the window.

laughing said...

I own 1/300th of the place. I get a vote. I just don't know what to do with it.

I want to vote for someone who will mind their own damned business and not send people to "help" me clean the yard and then send me a bill for it. But it's not like anyone runs on the Mind Your Own Damned Business platform, and it's not like we get to vote on individual issues. We don't get to vote on whether or not to waste money on a basketball court; we only get to vote for a few guys who decide whether or not to waste money on basketball court.

It can be a bit frustrating at times, but it just seems a lot more stuff like this has come up this year than during the previous six years put together.

Tara said...

I have to cover up with something at night too. It could be a sauna outside, but I have to have a sheet on. I prefer a heavier blanket though, but sometimes I have to throw that off, because I'm too lazy to get up and turn on the A/C.

Mrs. Hairy Woman said...

I need blanket too.. We use to have central air in the house but the thing is sooooo old we installed a window version and keeps it cool on hot nights.. but I still want my blanket...

dmarks said...

Sometime in June or July, we dig the AC out of the basement, and put it in the window. Then in September it comes out.