Hi threaders, finding a comfortable rhythm among self-time, condo yuck, and friends. The last week of December I attended a meetup to preview the year and determined that friendship would be a higher priority and code named it: Oasis. I have lots of files and folders now scatters about with Oasis on the title. As my paid working time shrinks, social time expands. Ah, this could be happiness.
Condo muck and yuck.
Some semi-good stuff we're doing with a siding upgrade. Decided that our vetting from 4 years ago was thorough enough that we would continue with our chosen vendor. They came out on Tuesday, had a proposal yesterday, and am now drafting tweaks and getting the written summary ready for a board vote. We had $30 k set aside for repairs and painting. They proposed replacing it all, and the tab dropped in at $68K. BUT, on our Reserve Study for future upkeep we had $110K, which we no longer will need to worry about. So, for the long run, we're $42K out front and thus can afford this. It also means that we will be "fully paid up" on paper, the holy grail of 30-year reserve study work.
The yuckpit is that we finally sent a 2nd Notice of Violations to our Noxious Scofflaw (NS). Sent the first one in February. NS total fines came to $950. There are a couple of emails pending about all this which I will steel myself to look at after 1.31 pm today. 92 minutes from now. Note to self: Breathe. Remain calm and silent and let him vent and rant and tantrum at the hearing.
More fun, I've used one of the notetaking/recording/transcribing AI apps (grain.com) to make quick notes from Patricia Highsmith's diaries because I had to return them to the library and I didn't have time to type them all out. This was a couple of years ago. So since I had to pay for the premium service on grain this month to work through a grant, I used the extra features to download the transcript and then Claude (an AI chat) stripped out the timestamps for me.
Had about an hour of recording and the transcription was less than 50% accurate. Yuck. But then, I found that I could borrow the ebook from my public library. Ha! A chore became fun! All I needed to do was to use my page and date references to find the quote and take a screenshot to copy into my quotes file. Finished this morning. Feels great.
On that positive note I bid good day. R