Josh and Anna took our car down the road to the Santa Fe casino to spend some time (and money I expect) playing, while L and I worked.

This evening we had our Home Owners Association annual meeting, which was held in the living room of one of the model houses, which happen to be over our back fence. During the meeting we kept looking through the windows at the tops of the trees in our back yard, which were poking their heads up and waving at us.

The meeting was tedious, although we felt like we had to go because otherwise we have no idea what is going on and someone has to keep the board members in line. For a start, most home owners in the development don’t go (I guess it’s not important enough to them to remember) so it’s usually just the “active” people who attend. It’s important, though, because things can get voted on at the meeting that can affect everyone.

L and I have an agenda of our own, which is to get the street lights converted from gas (they’re on ALL THE TIME, produce heat, high maintenance, use expensive gas that the asssociation has to pay for – when they remember to put it in the budget) to low-voltage electricity (can be run off each house’s ‘lectrics, and put on a timer, etc…) but it’s been confusing for everyone because the board members keep coming back for quotes that have nothing to do with our proposal.

Bottom line: We found out the “approved” mechanism for getting an item on to the board meeting agenda, and we will prepare something in writing and present it to the board, because apparently this is all too complicated for them to understand.

We’d go ahead and convert the street lamp outside our house as a prototype so that people could see what we meant, but some people might get upset about that. See http://www.charm-lite.com/charm-lite/ for more information about the kind of conversion we’re talking about.

When we got back from the meeting, Josh and Anna had just arrived home (about 8:10pm) so we all jumped back in the car and drove to Montesano’s Deli and Italian restaurant for dinner (making sure to pick up a cheesecake for later desert) and also did some shopping.