Noticed the sun coming up a little later everyday lately, and this a.m. there’s dew on the cars parked around the building. A lot of people say “hi!” in the morning now when I’m out with my litter pick-up stick, Vancouver isn’t exactly like living in a big city sometimes when that happens. The “garbage strike” isn’t making much difference in this neighbourhood as our bins are picked up by a private refuse company and the other buildings around have their own caretakers too that between us all keep it fairly clean.
The caretaker thing for me just gets weirder every day. Where once there was a gazillion things that the manager wanted done, this week it’s just the normal day to day cleaning up and no “extra” or “just this one time” projects so no complaints from me. Not that there isn’t a lot going on, as usual she’s spending hours and $ getting something fixed almost every day and being Home Depot’s best customer; but someone else that’s willing to work for peanuts is taking care of her needs.
There’s also the paint stripping for the outside of the building going on too. It’s a big project taking off an elastomer coating that never should have been done in the first place. Things were going slow but well while it was my turn to keep a tab on things, and the painter/strippers had a good system working by the time the inner courtyard was finished.
Not so good now though. About the same time as the manager took over the strippers turned the corner of the building and started power washing the north and south walls, and the new windows that she had put in a while ago leak. Not just a little leak from the sounds of it either, at one point overheard a comment “I should have worn a bathing suit!”. So it was a full day for her doing damage control on the painting project she started last year, and again here early in the morning today.
Glad I’m mostly immune to the ups and downs of the painting and other extra projects now. Up until this afternoon anyways, the manager had a weird way of almost running the other way when seeing me coming, and didn’t look me in the eye anymore. She really needed someone calm around to get a few things done for her though this afternoon, and I also took care of a tenant that needed help and insisted on me being the one to do it, that was pretty nice.