roaming the hallway

Maybe this time last year in the newsletter I saw that they were forming a new committee on rules and regulations. and I wondered what is up with that?  Are they going to change the rules on us?  When you move in you are given this huge document of rules and regs.  You page through it briefly to see if anything goofy hits your eye and it doesn't, so you set it aside and don't look at it again for the next twenty-five, thirty years, and outside of the rule of the evil queen, who the Clean Slate rose up and defeated, nothing too bad has happened.  Rules and regulations probably just some of that tedious detail that kept me from showing up at the board meetings.  I felt a bit uneasy about some mysterious group remaking rules, but I didn't think that any of that would have anything to do with me.

Then last year maybe a month before Christmas an announcement appeared in the elevators (the main avenue of information) that henceforth colored Christmas lights were banned\, and only white lights would be allowed on the balconies.  What?  By what authority?  Who do they think they are?  I went outside that night and the towers were ablaze in many colors.  Hah, the good citizens of Marina City are ignoring the stupid edict.  Good for them. 

The only way the board has of enforcing its rules is by fining people (Not long after I moved in I was fined five or ten bucks for letting my cat roam the hallways of our floor.), but nobody was fined for lights, so I relaxed, wiser heads had prevailed on the board, they were going to let this stupid rule die a dusty death.

But then last month the announcements started reappearing in the elevators.  Well for Chrissake.  I went to the next board meeting.  There is a time period right at the beginning of the meeting where the audience is allowed to bring up matters related to the day's agenda which mine wasn't, but sometimes they let you speak then anyway.  But they wouldn't let me that night, they made me wait until the board did its business until the period after that.

Very well I waited  and then I opened up with what right did the board have to tell people what kind of lights they can put up on their own balcony?  Oh it's hard talking to the board, there are about a dozen of them and only one of you, and each one has a different slant.  I was chided for not paying enough attention, didn't I get the notice that was sent out about this?  I vaguely remembered getting some fat sheaf of legalese that I had scanned through and not found anything of interest, perhaps the thing about lights had been buried in there. 

My ruckus went on for awhile.  Earlier in the meeting there was as a report from a design committee involved in redecorating the downstairs lobby and they were planning on taking some kind of survey, well, why the hell didn't that committee do a survey?  No real answer.

So Tuesday and Wednesday I was down in the lobby prowling between the east and west tower entrances and to the mailboxes.  The mailboxes are the best, people are stuck there fiddling with their keys and can't blow past you in their earpods with their important person in a hurry stride. 

I've got  a little over a hundred signatures.  There are nine hundred apartments in the tower, but a hundred just for maybe three hours of roaming the balconies is pretty good.  I estimate that about seventy percent of the people are for colored lights, and the remaining thirty percent is half can't be bothered and half don't want colored lights, and there are a few soreheads who don't want any lights at all. 

I may go out and get some more signatures.  Tuesday is city election day and I wonder if I can hang out just beyond the polls and catch people who have just voted and are in a mood to do the right thing.


I may have misspoke with that line about Trump trampling the constitution, though if you google that you get a lot of articles listing them.  But when you consider the phrase trampling the constitution it sort of can't happen, if you go against the constitution it goes to the court and is overturned which has happened to a lot of things Trump has done, but the constitution itself is not damaged, so maybe it can't be trampled.  On the other hand trample is kind of an imprecise word.  If something is trampled is it permanently damaged?  Well I don't know.

I haven't noticed any changes in my tastes.  I think not being hungry even if you haven't eaten and losing weight, is maybe something to see a doctor about.