It's Saturday, I'm sick,and theres a lot happening!

It's Saturday. How do I know that, you ask. Because I'm home not at work and I slept until 10am!!(It's been at least 50 years since I did that,seriously!) I'm sick. With what? "Creeping Crud or something. My head is completely stuffed up, I'm coughing like a five pack a day smoker, a smile or a kind word in my direction is met with a gurgling snarl and stuffy growl with the word "Shit!" But other than that life is ok.
It's got to be stress, one more Annual Meeting to conduct next Saturday and that's it until the end of January, just normal "day to day" shit to deal with. These "Annual Meetings" are an immense pain. By state law they must be done according to a specific ritual, starting 60 days before the meeting, mailing out specific documents to every owner, soliciting candidates to run for open seats on the Board of Directors, submitting "candidacy sheets" (brief one page bio's) I had one noted Surgeon who submitted his "Curriculum Vitae", all 27 pages of it! He may be well educated and well credentialed, but when the hell did he ever find time to even see a patient,...let alone operate on them!
Then 45 days before the meeting the nominations for candidates closes and ballots and candidacy sheets must be mailed to every owner, along with this animal called a "proxy" by which they can designate someone else to vote for them, or vote on a specific non-critical generality themselves. "Should the Association take any excess income over the expenses for last year and apply it against this years monthly fees?" Like "DUH!" Oh yeah, none of these meetings can even occur if thee is not a "quorum" of owners, and a "proxy" counts as an owner voting toward that. Now a quorum can be just about anything. I've seen some that are "50% plus 1" some 15%, some 30%, they are all over the place. So these "proxies" and candidacy sheets and ballots start flowing back at you by snail mail from the day you send them out. But guess what? For the most part , unless there is going to be a HUGE special assessment levied on each owner for something, no one gives a shit about any of it. BUT the State says you have to have a meeting. So from that point until the day of the meeting you are combing the mail every day for executed proxies, mailing out additional letters with proxies encouraging the owners to at least sign the damn thing and send it back, and otherwise seeing how high you can raise your blood pressure without that vein in your neck "popping" and ruining a perfectly good shirt!
Oh then there is the "Noticeing" phase. You have to post notices in conspicuous places on the property at 60, 30 and 14 days before the meeting. (Oh yeaah one more pain in the ass thing to remember!)
And on top of all that "someone" has to develop a budget for next year. Now I have some associations who spend monthes agonizing over it, meeting after meeting, analysis afteer analysis, tons of "what if" scenarioing, and the rest of the machinations. I love breaking thier bubble a week before the meeting and tewlling them it's time, I have to publish it, no more playing, put down your pencils and close your spreadsheet programs. Then I have the complete opposite, the Associations that simply look at you and say, "...ah, just go ahead and make one up for us, it's fine with us what ever you come up with."
About two weeks before the meeting you are frantically counting proxies to be sure you have a quorum, (no quorum, no meeting! State Statute, and God help your skinny butt if that happens cause we got to go through this whole exercise again, and again, until we get a quorum, and have the damn meeting! It always comes down to the last day in most cases, and then the "how many folks are actually coming to this meeting?" Well I did one a week ago and out of 120 owner/members, the entire head count at the meeting was ten! And to make matters worse only 27 people sent back proxies! By ONE, count it 1, proxiy I made the 30% requirement and we had the meeting. The day beofre I had another meeting and there were only two people who attended, besides half the Board of Directors, but we had enough proxies and agfain just "snuck it out".
There are only two questions anyone really wants an answer to, "Are our monthly fees going up next year and by how much?" and "Are our monthly fees going down next year, and by how much?" It cracks me up because the total apathy is astounding. And I'm talking properties that are for the most part "vacation" homes or "second" homes that are worth $2,000,000 to $5,000,000.
One more week and I can kick back and go back to the 1. "Why did't the landscapers trim my Azeala bush correctly?" and of course THE single most common comment, 2. "Can't these people understand English?" (Answers: #1 "So which horticultural school dod you go to and if you don't like it why don't you do it yourself!", and #2 "No none of them either speak, nor understand English because they are all illegal immigrants doing jobs that no American would be caught dead doing for less than five times what we pay them,....but they smile and nod very well and are very polite answering "Si, Si Senor" to every question or thing you say to them."
Don't get me wrong I love the job, but some major streamlineing has got to happen. This is 2007, not 1907. We have computers, high speed internet access, give me a break!! (I hate it when I have to consider running for Office in order to facilitate change. I have no patience for "concensus". In fact I've decided that "concensus" is the "smoking gun" that has killed leadership in this world.
(Oh, Oh, I feel a small rant coming!) Do I really care if Brittany is a "bad mom"? Do I want to "help her with parenting classes",...hell no. Just take away her kids, give them to some folks who would really love them, and fine the bitch $259,000,000 Million dollars. Treat her the way she would and has treated her kids,...as throw-a-ways.
Well better sign off for today, more tomorrow when (hopefully) I feel better.
Oh Yeah, number two son from Utah called and the Wife and I are going to be grandparents again for the second time. (All I could think of is that our other grandchild, a girl, will be 30 when this new one is 14. See,.." gaps in the synapses", why does the mind think wierd thought like that.
-30-