I explained yesterday that our annual meeting of the Condominium was occupying my thoughts.  I wrote about what I knew.  I was dreading causing self-inflicted wounds because I really have no qualifications for the job of President of a Condominium.  I used to get mad at misinterpretations of my motives, pressures of dealing with technical matters I did not understand and having no familiarity with the ways of doing things in a Florida that seems like a hostile and violently different part of America from the part I came from. I am writing this before six in the morning because I could not sleep despite last night’s meeting turning out to be well run and successful with all of us last year’s Board of Directors reelected for 2004.  This is a not so rosy a picture for many of that board make it difficult to do the work we must do because they are old, tired, and have no skills to lighten my load.

Now, Carol would be a better President than I.  She has already sort of agreed to replace our Treasurer who is in constant pain due to age and no resources to find medical assistance that she is willing to trust or can afford. We were lucky that a woman, a licensed manager of condominiums, was in charge of the technical part of the proceedings. I had prepared a printed agenda that explained our situation somewhat and the fireworks I had dreaded did not eventuate. The “spoiler” was there. He received only 8 votes while the rest of us scored twenty to thirty.  He was, however, quite clearly a thinking person, for the questions he asked were intelligent.  We, meaning mostly me, were able to answer his questions and I used an old device of telling him that what I could not answer I would get the accountant who set up all our finances to answer when she recovered from her operation. (This last is complicated because, with Carol being the navigator, we drove to the accountant’s home in order to have her hobble around and type stooped over in an uncomfortable position to type on the computer making checks to pay our bills – she will basically be unavailable to deal with this fellow until six weeks from now.)

My tape recorders did not work.  I brought my old Wollensak reel to reel to record the event because it had a slow speed and could tape over an hour of our proceedings. I rewound it and somehow messed up – I hope I can recover what went on although I can simply use the detailed agenda to give the structure of the meeting.  I also serve as the Secretary.  The other recorder is a small cassette machine that died and I think this was caused by a faulty cassette.  I tried.

Somehow, some things work out despite worries.  I worry about details that many people do not care about. The Annual Meeting is over but work to keep our Condominium sound must be done. I have been reelected to do just that.