Tuesday

My bear quota is not working out. I thought by setting a pace, I could get more bears done more easily. What I got was no more bears and a fair amount of stress. While I was swimming I was thinking 'I really need to cut this short so I will have more bear knitting time.'

Really? NO! Swimming is fun and good for me. Fewer bears and dolls will still be more bears and dolls than is expected of me. This is not a sales job for which I will be punished for not making quota or rewarded for overachieving.

So I am going back to spending my time the way I want to. I will continue to make dolls and knit bears but if something else comes along that I want to do I will do it, instead.

Weeks ago, I picked up this cat scratch thing from the free shelf in the garage. It turned out to be pretty tacky looking but Zoey fell in love with it. She loses interest in things quickly so I figured she'd star ignoring it pretty soon and I could take it back to the free shelf. I'm still waiting. This is her right now:



I watched some of the synchronized swimming last night and holy crap. I cannot believe what those women can do. Without even wearing goggles. It's exhausting to watch. I think I'm going to refer to my lap swimming as solo synchronized swimming practice. Only with goggles and without nose plugs. Or heavy sparkle makeup or spackled hair.

I'm making great progress on my restaurant mega map. I'm going through each selection and categorising with notes as well as mapping. I have now transferred all the info from my various lists in Keep and Evernote. It's going to be magnificent when I finish it which will be soon.

On with my day which will be whatever it turns out to be.

Here's the bear I finished last night:

My tweets

• Mon, 15:49: Photo https://t.co/IIqFtSSySR
• Mon, 15:49: Photo https://t.co/kCmT1vS6bp
• Mon, 15:49: Photo https://t.co/14Ez8NHrHm

More

I got one doll done and then worked on and finished my restaurant map. I can now use it - instead of notes all over the house, the computers, the cloud - to keep track of restaurants I want to try, or try again. I'm very delighted with it.






It's getting warm in the sewing room but I can move a fan in there and maybe squeak out one more doll before it's just not fun any more for today.

All I have to do is pay the bill...

My Home Owners Association is getting ready to take on three major projects - fixing the 100+ year old brick on the front, redoing the roof and fixing the 100+ year old brick on the back. All three items are desperately needed and enormously expensive and a royal PIA to coordinate, manager and get done efficiently and correctly. This is an historic building and the outside is subject to city design review so this adds a layer of politics, too. All I have to do is pay and I am very grateful.

In the next couple of days everyone who owns a unit will be getting a letter telling them that they will need to pony up $6-$8K this year. (The units are various sizes and the bigger ones own more of the association and so pay more.) This will come as a giant surprise to most of these people as they pay zero attention to what goes on around here. Honestly I'd be in mostly dark if I didn't attend the board meetings and generally they draw an audience of about 1% of the population.

We have no good way to easily communicate - no forum, wiki, or mailer. The management company has a VERY crappy website and posts the minutes of board meetings about 6 months after the meeting. So really attending the meetings is the only way to find out stuff. I've made suggestions, past board members have made suggestions, common sense says communications is really good. The board does not disagree, they just don't do anything about it. So while they are all good people and smart and run a tight, efficient ship, doing it in the dark is not going to end well, I don't think.

When 108 unit owners get letters saying they need to pay $6,000+ now with no warning, the board is going to get the shit kicked out of them. Maybe it will help them understand that surprising the populace isn't a good thing.

I knew this info was coming out soon but I wanted to know my exact number so I sent an email to the treasurer and he was kind enough to tell me. I have a meeting with Tyler, my financial adviser next week and I wanted to have all my $$ ducks in a row. I'm going to see if now is a good time to pay off my mortgage. I have only 10 years left on it and a not terribly high interest rate (3.8%). I'd love to be out from under. Thankfully, I have someone who understands what makes the most fiscal sense in my case so all I have to do is ask.

More dolls from today.