Stupid Tenant Tricks
Here is another installment of real-life "stuff" that has happened in the building(s) that I manage, or what I like to call "Stupid Tenant Tricks".
- A parker in the garage left his car in the fire lane instead of using a parking spot. The parking staff stuck an orange sticker on the car advising the parker that we have recorded his license plate and if he does this again we will have him towed. The parker called our office, irate that the sticker was too hard to peel off the glass and we better not put another one on his car again. Our parking manager was very understanding and gave him the number of the tow truck company that will tow his car next time he parks there.
- After sending a memo advising our tenants of an upcoming power shutdown, a tenant called to ask me if their computers would need to be turned off prior to the shutdown. I told him that if his computer is left on, the building would automatically turn off his computer when the power is turned off. He asked how we did that.
- A group of foreign tourists stopped me in the lobby asking me, in broken English, why the observation area was closed to the public. I told them that there was simply nothing to see.
Water is the secret ingredient.
- While I was standing in line at Starbucks, we were informed that their water filtration system was not working and they could not make any coffee for a few hours. A tenant further up the in line asked why they could not use the building tap water to make the coffee. The Starbucks employee replied "Have you tasted the building water?"
And finally...
- A tenant called me one morning to report that the water in her bathroom was brown. It took everything I had not to tell her that the little silver handle above the commode is designed to remedy that problem immediately....
Sitting on the Hurricane Sidelines
Much to my wife's dismay I spent a lot of time this past weekend watching Hurricane Irene coverage on the Weather Channel. I don't live anywhere near the east coast as my website name implies, but I cannot resist good hurricane coverage. It was far more interesting to sit in my easy chair in the cool air conditioning, sipping a beer, and watching the weather guys talk ad nausea about storm surge, flooding, rain and wind than it was to prepare for a storm like this. Hey, I deserve to sit this one out. After all, I am veteran of three hurricanes in my lifetime so far. I rode through Ike a few years ago, Rita a few years ago before that, and then Alicia back in 1983.
Hurricane Irene
I think what is lost on folks about hurricanes is not so much the storm itself but the time it takes to recover from it. Once the rain and wind is gone it takes a long time to get life back to normal, mainly because of power outages. Power outages suck, especially in Texas during the months of August and September. It gets hot - damn hot, and add a bunch of humidity to that it can make the time after a hurricane much more painful than the storm itself. The roads usually get cleared in a day or two, your yard gets cleaned up, trash piles form along the street, but the power can stay out for a very long time. Add to the fact that many of your regular conveniences such as grocery stores, gas stations, etc., are without power and are closed just adds to the misery.
When Ike threatened Texas a few years ago I was proactive and spent the money on a generator. What a life saver that was! I remember what a blessing these little noise makers can be from my experience with Hurricane Alicia in 1983. My dad ran out a few days before the storm and rented a generator. He ran that thing during and after the storm to power our refrigerator, freezer, television, and a fan in the kitchen. It sure as hell made it a lot more bearable as we were without power for a week. I remember spending hours upon hours on the living room floor playing board games with my neighborhood friends. I had a "boom box" that was tuned into the local top 40 station where we listened to "Electric Avenue" by Eddie Grant. To this day when I hear that song I think about playing board games on the sea-foam green carpet in our living room waiting for the power to come on. (Yes, sea-foam.. That's a different blog entry all together).
So, when you read all of these stories of damage and heartbreak from Irene, and then the statistic of "1 million people still without power" pops up on your screen, say a little prayer for those folks. I am sure they are thankful to be alive and survived the storm but their true trial of survival is just getting started until the power switch is flipped back on. =)
Share your hurricane stories with me - I'd love to hear them.
My Father’s Day Blog Entry
It's been a while since I have written because, quite frankly, I have been stuck. You see, with Father's Day coming and going I read a lot of good and not so good articles on the subject. I read about abused children, loved children, children with fathers, children who didn't know their father, children that took their dying father to a baseball game, and a myriad of other light articles on the topic. So, being the good blogger I am, I wanted to write a Father's Day article too! Heck, I felt I qualified as someone who could write on this subject. First, I was a father. Check. Second, I can write. Check. Lastly, I have something great to share about father's day! Um.. No.
My first real case of writer's block. I didn't have some great revelation or story to tell that made me a better father than others. My father didn't abuse me (well, except for a corny sense of humor which he still contends is my mother's fault) and there are no experiences that I have had as a father (yet) that might be overly enlightening for others to read about. So what pearls of wisdom could I possibly share?
My son and I at Gulf Shores, Alabama, 2001
Then it dawned on me as I looked around the room. My son made something for me when he was a very young man back in 2001 and I have it proudly displayed on the wall in my study. It is a piece of construction paper with his little footprints on them and a poem glued to the center of the page:
"Walk a Little slower, Daddy." said a little child so small.
I'm following in your footsteps and I don't want to fall.
Sometimes your steps are very fast, sometimes they're hard to see;
So walk a little slower Daddy, for you are leading me.
Someday when I'm all grown up, You're what I want to be.
Then I will have a little child who'll want to follow me.
And I would want to lead just right, and know that I was true;
So, walk a little slower, Daddy, for I must follow you!
When I look back at my life I am reminded just how much my father's morals and guidance impacted my life as a child and as an adult. It is an awesome responsibility for me to set that example for my son both now and in the future. Sometimes I forget that a young man is, in a sense, following in my footsteps.
Can you make Father's Day resolutions? I think I will make it a point to slow down a little more and remember who is following me.
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Men Behaving Badly
As I have mentioned in previous entries, my son plays on a select baseball team of 12 and 13 year old boys. We do weekend tournaments every other weekend that bring together teams from all over the area. We see a lot of different personalities in the players, parents, and the coaches. Usually everyone at these tournaments has a great attitude and cheers their kids on in a friendly way. However, every now and then you run into a coach or a parent who has a different attitude. This past weekend we saw two examples of baseball coaches that I would never allow my son to play for. Quite frankly, I was amazed that the parents sat idly by while these coaches made complete asses of themselves on the field in front of their boys (and ours!). Here's what happened:
Coach #1: We played well this weekend and ended up being the #1 seed for bracket play. This means that you get the team that finished the worst the day before as your first opponent, which we will call the purple team. Well, this purple team really had no business playing in this tournament as they really were no match for anyone so the game moved quickly in our favor. We reached a point where one more run would have ended the game via a mercy rule. We had a runner on 3rd but our coach did not let him run home even though the next few batters managed to get hits and get on base. Why? Well, he wanted to make sure all the boys got a chance to bat in the game and he had one boy left to hit - his son. His son came up to bat and got a hit, scoring the final run and ending the game. The coach on the purple team came unglued at that point and started yelling and cussing at our coach. He was upset that our coach delayed the end of the game and kept his players in the sun for an extra few minutes instead of letting them go home. The other team's parents also started chiming in and yelling at our coach about his game play all at the astonishment of our parents. All our coach was trying to do was to be fair and give every kid on the team an at bat, and it just so happened his son was the last batter (his son being the last batter says something about our coach as well, don't you think?) Cooler heads prevailed eventually and everyone calmed down as our parents had to remind everyone that it was just a 12 year old baseball game and not the Mega-Championship World Series of the Universe.
Setting an example?
Coach #2: We continued to play well and made it to the championship game. We learned the coach of the other team had been ejected from a 10 year old baseball game earlier in the day for cussing out the umpire, so he decided to jump in and coach the 12 year old game instead since he was part of this club's organization. He was a hot head, arguing with the umpires on many calls and getting several warnings in the process. He didn't get ejected, but he managed to demonstrate his assness regularly during the game. At one point, he tried to steal home and sent a runner in while our pitcher had his back turned. He did not succeed and the runner was easily called out, but he then promptly started yelling at the umpire for not calling the pitcher for some sort of balk or whatnot. Essentially, he was trying to cheat. This went on and on after our kids left the field and there was a 5 minute delay in the game while the coach continued to yell at the umpires. He was about to be tossed when another coach pulled him off the field.
Now, I will be the first to admit that I am no saint on the baseball field. When I see a call go the wrong way or something happen that I don't think is fair I have a tendency to be vocal about it. However I think the coaches that volunteer their time to be mentors to these young boys have an obligation to always take the high road on the baseball field. So many of them seem to forget that their team of young, impressionable boys are watching them and in some way they are shaping how these boys will act when confronted with similar situations in their lives. The coach of my boy's team gets mad for sure when our team makes a bonehead mistake or gets a bad call but he never berates an umpire or a player during the game.
I guess the thing that keeps me grounded is that my son's future in or out of baseball has nothing to do with what happens on the 12 year old baseball field. I think that many parents have a hard time remembering that. I know we all are very protective of our children and want them to be successful, but their success is influenced more by the adult's behavior around them than the scoreboard at the end of the game.
(I welcome your comments on this article)
Maritime Ghost Hunting
I enjoy photography and consider myself an "amateur beginning photographer" if that makes any sense. I also like history and visiting old naval vessels. I have been on the likes of the USS Alabama, USS Texas, and the USS Lexington. So, when I saw this article my interest was peaked! Here is a photographer, Mr. Scott Haefner, slipping onto old warship relics currently at Suisun Bay, California, in an effort to take photographs of them. Judging from the articles on his website, this is par for the course for Mr. Haefner as he has repeated this method of operation before in other areas.
After reviewing his body of work, I found myself a little puzzled as to what his goal was for this adventure. He and his team risked federal prosecution to carry out this task on multiple occasions yet there was really no "mission accomplished" moment. Instead, we have a website with a few good photos of the relics and a lot of bad photos of decay, at least in my opinion. Many of the readers of his website seem to like his work so perhaps my eye for photography needs a lot more training. You guys tell me what you think.
There is a a fairly detailed account of the team's exploits on the website which leaves no real doubt that they broke federal law. I will have to add Mr. Haefner's name to my daily Google news alerts and watch to see if some young, hotshot federal prosecutor decides to discourage future trespassers and make an example out of Mr. Haefner.
Guns on the deck of the USS Iowa (Scott Haefner Photography)
I guess the biggest disappointment though is that Mr. Haefner had an opportunity to do so much more than just take pictures and publish his story. He notes in his story the deterioration of these vessels and the pollution they are causing. Also, some of the vessels also have some very historical significance yet are wasting away. Why not focus on the pollution issue or one or two particular vessels and tell their story through photography? Instead, we get random shots and and some maritime covert operations that will likely end up with Mr. Haefner facing some legal troubles.
I applaud the work and the ambition but wish the author had not stopped just short of the finish line.
Recent Posts
- Stupid Tenant Tricks
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- Page 2: Designated Passenger
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