Saturday, March 30, 2019

I prefer my drama on the diamond

As I write this, the Cubs are playing the Rangers. It's a sloppy -- albeit highly watchable -- game. While I love a good, tight pitchers' duel with heroic defensive plays, I can get with a game like this, too, where nothing seems to go right for either team and I have no blessed idea what can possibly happen next. It's only the fourth inning and our #2 starter, Yu Darvish, is already in the showers. He gave up just 2 runs, which isn't bad in and of itself, but it took him 75 pitches. By contrast, the average Cub starter throws less than 100 pitches in a game. Still, it's not like the Rangers are having a stellar night, either, and the score is still 5-3 Cubs.

So while I am enjoying a little more drama than necessary within the Rangers ballpark, I could use less unnecessary drama in real life.

For example, there's Hanna. She's my neighbor at the end of the hall. A tall, imposing lady who immigrated from Poland. Her English is admirably fluent but her accent is very thick and she's hard to understand. She also always seems angry. Maybe she isn't (let's assume good intent), but her manner can be abrasive. She is very much against the condo deconversion and wants to write to the Board about it (I'm a board member). OK, so write to us, Hanna. You know our names (they're in the minutes), you know our addresses (the same as yours). Buy a stamp. Knock yourself freaking out. We've also set up a separate gmail account, specifically for emails to the entire building about the deconversion. Why not post your questions, objections and suspicions for all to see there?

Oh, no. She's spoken to her lawyer. Who tells her she has a right to our unit numbers, email addresses and phone numbers. Our lawyer tells us that, strictly speaking, that isn't true, but questions whether this is worth the legal action. Our lawyer recommends we give her our email addresses, phone numbers and unit numbers (have you never looked at the mailboxes you pass every day, Hanna?) along with a notice that if she uses email or phone to harass any one of us, she will be fined $500.

Really? We're neighbors. There are only 22 unitowners. Why did she have to call her lawyer about this?

Cubs lost 6-8. Oh well. There's always tomorrow.