2.26.2005

More on One of the Supers

The 70 something (probably closer to 80) year old man who works in our reception office downstairs showed me a neat picture from his days as a waiter in an exclusive restaraunt in Fukuoka in the decade after WWII. Amazingly, I was able to recognize three of the five people in the photo. In addition to a much younger, tall and handsome version of our superintendent in his waiter's uniform and another person from the staff, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were seated at an elegant dinner table with another guest. He asked all three of the patrons for their autographs and I could decipher "Joe DiMaggio" and a shaky "Mariylin Monroe DiMaggio" (the DiMaggio part was a little cramped, I assume because it was their honeymoon and she wasn't used to writing it yet). A few months later, a TV crew was in our lobby filming for a five minute segment on our superintendent, his life now and then and his treasure, the photograph, and twenty minutes more on the celebrities in the photo.

Management Crisis

The company which has managed our apartment building for the past 33 years went bankrupt at the end of January, making me sorry I agreed last year to my two year appointment to the management committee. It looks like they embezzled lots of money from most of their clients. I've been running around all month getting signatures on various banking documents and making sure that the nice people who perform the daily superintendents duties (a live-in couple and a 70 something man who rides his scooter over every day) get paid.

The committee invited three new companies to offer bids on the job and we've chosen a new company but need to hold a formal vote among all of the owners before we hand over everybody's bank account information. Tomorrow is the "Emergency Owners Meeting" as opposed to the annual owners meetings held to report the usual goings-on. It will be a relief to hand over the accounting to the pros on Monday. I'm glad that the new company has agreed to keep our superintendents and the various monthly businesses which polish floors, maintain the water tank, maintain the elevator etc.; these businesses don't lose our business and we can enjoy the same good service we've been getting.

2.14.2005

This is our lucky week.

Another free ticket to the circus arrived via an old man downstairs who thinks L is cute. We ought to clean L up more often.

2.12.2005

The Circus is Coming

At this morning's building management committee meeting, I was given 5 free tickets to the circus which will be here from mid March until early May. The tickets are valid for free admission on March 28, 29, 30 and April 1. This is perfect for a family trip to the circus on April 1 when Mom and Dad are here. I'm glad that Tokyo is at the end of their Asian trip so they won't sleep through the circus from jet lag.

In a few weeks, if more free tickets don't fall into my lap, I'll buy 2 children's advance sale tickets for 1,700 yen each and use the free tickets for the rest of us. What could have been 17,000 yen at the gate for 3 adults (3,000 yen each) and 4 children (2,000 yen each) will only cost 3,400 yen. S said he'll probably stay home that day to enjoy our home while the "circus" is away.

2.05.2005

S's brother was nice enough to play dodgeball with the kids on the pink bump in the local park when he visited in January. Posted by Hello

2.01.2005

Computer Savvy...not!

I learned that our account was bouncing e-mails recently and couldn't figure out why. I check my mail daily so messages shouldn't be bouncing. I got sick of all the junk mail that we'd been getting and, not wanting S to accidentally open any virus attachments while I was in the hospital, I set up a number of rules forbidding certain types of messages from being downloaded from the server (messages containing certain words like mortgage, finance, cheating wives and enlarge). I assumed that the messages would disappear from the mailbox after being refused. This was not the case. I removed all the rules to see if that was why my downloading was so slow these days and over 900 messages dated from early November arrived in the mailbox, about 60 of them with dubious attachments...Duh!

I waded through and found a few messages from family (yes I received the book Elizabeth, and thank you for the messages I wasn't ignoring you on purpose.) and friends (you wanted to get together when and where for coffee?). The other 900 plus messages were junk mail. Now that the pop mailbox is empty, downloading is almost instant. Ya lurn sumpin everday.