Say hi to Miguel!  Miguel is one of the maintenance people at our complex.  

 Here are some photos of the front of our complex, the gate was broken for a few weeks and was just recently fixed.  I'm a little disappointed because I would fantasize about telling the management off and demanding a lower rent for the month since we were contractually paying to live in a gated apartment complex and they were failing to keep their end of the contract.  I often fantasize about telling off the management for things like this in order to get lower rent.  I have never (rarely) given into these fantasies, though.  The people I would be complaining to have no real power; I was a secretary once and while I couldn't help bad stuff from happening, I could very often do nice things for people who were nice to me.  The lesson: always be nice to secretaries.

The maintenance people are very friendly.  Most of the people who live here are gone during the day, so Willa and I stand out a little bit since we're home every day.  The maintenance people always say hi and try to get Willa to smile.

The main plus about being friends with maintenance workers is that they keep you in the loop and help you out.  One day, a large package came in the mail.  I went to the office to pick it up, and Miguel offered to drive it back to the apartment in his little maintenance golf cart so that I wouldn't have to carry it.  So nice, and actually - I really didn't even know him then!

Sometimes I've tried to stop by the front office only to find it locked; if I run into Miguel outside, I can ask him where everyone is and he will tell me they might be in a meeting and when I can check back.  A few days ago I got Willa dressed up for the pool, isn't she cute?  But when we got there, the water was a little greener than I like to swim in.

Luckily, I saw Miguel that afternoon and asked him why the pool was looking like this:

He told me that they were out of chlorine, then he also added that maybe the apartment complex hadn't paid the company who ships the chlorine.  Or, he said something like that.  He has an accent and sometimes I don't always understand.

Thankfully, the pool is better now and we had a nice swim yesterday; but it's so nice having Miguel around to keep us in the loop!