October 29, 2008
Dear Everyone:
Lordy, will this
Election ever end?
Seems like it’s been going on forever.
And I don’t mean just the Presidential part; there’s no less than
ten state initiatives on the ballot, plus some local stuff and a quite
lively race between two
Actually, the election
is over for me.
I love voting by mail.
No stumbling around in the dark after work, trying to find some
obscure polling place.
Instead I sat in my living room last Sunday and went over all the
literature, made an informed decision and (generally) voted Yes on Odd
and No on Even. Sealed it
all up in the special envelope, signed it, added extra postage (they did
warn us that two ballot sheets added up to $0.59) and dropped it in the
mail. Done.
Of course, that doesn’t stop all the brochures and
pamphlets flooding my mailbox, but they just go directly into the
recycle bin. Don’t even make
it into the house.
In other news…
A few years ago, I bought a new bed.
It didn’t fit the headboard from the old bed (nothing did, but
that’s another story) so I put the old headboard out on the patio.
It was too big to fit in my car, so I never tried to take it to
the local dump. Just left it
out by the fence, slowly disintegrating from the weather.
A few months ago, our
Homeowners’ Association
Board, of which I am a member, voted to replace the fencing around and
between the patios. We got a
very nice bid from a fencing company that has been around for a long
time and does very good work.
At the end of last month everyone got a notice that work on the
fences would begin around the middle of this month, beginning with the
group of townhouses that had most recently been painted.
Almost every evening, when I get home from work, I
check the front porch just to see if anyone has left anything there.
(I almost always come in through the patio because it’s closest
to my carport.) On Monday
evening, I found a notice taped to the screen door, informing me that
work on my patio fence would begin on Tuesday.
Not much notice, but I went out on the patio (which
is approximately 10 feet by 18 feet) and moved anything that was leaning
against the fence, including the old headboard.
When I got home last night, the fence was completely gone.
And there was a guy filling his plastic bucket with water from
the faucet on my patio.
I said, “Hello.”
He said, “Hello.”
I asked if they would be hauling away all of the
wood from the old fencing (which has been around 37 years.)
When he said they would, I asked if it would be possible for them
to add the old headboard to the pile of old wood.
He said sure, they could cut it up and add it to the stack.
When I left for work this morning, the headboard
was still leaning against the side of the house.
I noticed that I could see all of my neighbor’s patio since their
fence was also gone. Their
patio is slightly longer than mine because their unit is three bedrooms
to my two bedrooms. Not that
I’m suffering from patio-envy.
I was just curious as to what they had out there.
When I came home this evening I found that I had a
brand new redwood fence, a spanking new gate with an easy-to-work latch.
And, not only had the workers hauled away the old headboard, they
had even swept my patio. It
hasn’t looked this good in years!
I’m even tempted to clean it up some more, but
we’re expecting rain this weekend.
And
Love, as always,
Pete
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