Door to Door

This afternoon I finished the second three-hour walk-through of my townhouse community.

There are 72 houses in my neighborhood, so for the past two Saturdays Susan and I (the home owner's association President and Secretary/Webmaster respectively) have gone door to door meeting neighbors, telling everyone about the new community web site, collecting email addresses, and documenting violations of community covenants (it's a thankless job, but it needs to be done).

After reviewing my notes of the two sessions, I've come up with the following superlatives for these expeditions.

Most Likely to Cause an Eye Roll
"I haven't paid my water bill because I thought that was automatically included in my association fee. I used to be a property manager, and I know about these things."

Afterwards we pondered why no explanation was offered on what this chap did with the water bills he'd received in the mail. I think Susan nailed it when she said, "he's full of it."

Most Likely to Result in an Adrenalin Rush
One ESL neighbor from India greeted us at the door in his pajamas. The conversation relied heavily on hand-gestures, and finally he motioned for us to follow him back into the house. We entered the kitchen, where the pajama-clad host grabbed a large kitchen knife and began waving it around. After a few perplexing moments we realized he was motioning with the knife towards the back door. It turns out a tree had fallen across his property line, and the owner from who he was renting had not helped him to resolve the problem -- so the old guy had done what pruning he could with the kitchen knife.