Trouble Finding the Silver Lining

I'm definitely down, bothered, and distracted. There were some okay and even good moments over the weekend. Last week is over, and that's probably the "worst" of what this period of work has to offer. But it's just hard to feel positive about things.


Last week mostly sucked due to overlap in training scheduled for the advertising/accounting system and the go-live week for our newsroom system.
Now that we've successfully published with the new stuff in the newsroom for several days, people should be settling in. Because it's remotely hosted, we're still horrifically vulnerable to any disruption in the internet between here and there. I believe it was Thursday night we lost our connectivity for about five minutes. Previously, we could get through that without anyone even noticing. Now, it disconnected everyone from their work right at deadline, had us worried like crazy, and set people back some in unlocking files left in-use. All this for an outage that didn't even last long enough for me to get a good guess where something might be wrong.
But now we have a couple weeks of a lull before more advertising stuff, and the newsroom can get accustomed to what they're using. I'm still a little busier than usual with getting new laptops to reporters, but otherwise work should be more normal.

Saturday's WoW raid was more productive than I expected (our guild leader was back early). We cleared to the upper spire in ICC in under an hour and a half, even with some delays such as a drama-y roster change. Festergut was down in one, so we seem to have found our pace on that. Rotface took three or four attempts, I believe, but we managed to get him down, too. I'd like to think we can finish him off in one or two shots next time, but we'll see. We tried out Blood Princes and Valinthria a few times each. In the former case, we need to figure out how to safely tank Keleseth, since things fell apart when he splattered the warlock designated to that role. I'm not sure what we need to do to make Valinthria work - my view of the fight is literally very one-sided as I watch incoming adds from one wall.
I hit exalted with Ashven Verdict (earlier than I expected), so I've got my last ring upgrade there. I also picked up the Corroded Skeleton Key finally, which marks the last Emblem of Frost upgrade I really care about (there's a libram that's potentially a very small upgrade over the one I have, but it really doesn't amount to much. So short of that libram, a couple sidegrade-ish drops from Putricide, and anything I might be lucky enough to snag from the Lich King himself, my tanking kit is "done" until Cataclysm.

I was able to borrow and play Heavy Rain over the weekend, too. I enjoyed it, though it's more interactive story than game. Quick-time events for everything! The heritage from Indigo Prophecy is apparent, though the story is less supernatural. I'll probably have more to say with spoilers another time.

It appears gaming offline this week isn't going to work out due to scheduling - at least for me. So it goes sometimes. The group is (mostly) chomping at the bit to play Dresden Files, while I haven't been able to fully form an idea for the system/setting. I haven't been stricken with any real inspiration and trying to force myself into thinking about a character and story hasn't worked. I think that's partly due to everything else in my head currently, but I don't know. Creativity hasn't been a high point in my life for a while.

And chief among those thoughts has been worry and anxiety over the state of affairs with the good ol' Homeowners Association.
Angry emails have been going around left and right, it feels like. A couple people are blaming everything on our property manager. One is even trying to rally support to sue her/the company. A couple others want to sue somebody for the money we paid the contractor. Relatively little of the ire has been directed at the board, but I still feel it all. Ugh. I want to reply to the message, but at the same time I feel anything I say is only going to piss people off.
It may be the ranting of those few people, but I'm reassessing all my thoughts about our property manager myself. I very much wanted to get through the repairs before worrying about that, and I was hoping she would show herself to be more reliable in the process. I'm not sure that's the case. It still takes a while to get information back and forth from her. I still see behavior I'm not entirely comfortable with. And yet I don't have any solid grounds to accuse her of anything either. I just don't know. I need to talk to the other board members and see how they feel at this point.
Mostly, those of us on the board just want to push to get the work needed on the buildings done this year. I am willing to take the financial hit to do so. I don't see much point in suing anyone, as I don't see it as a clear case. Against the contractor, I fear it would boil down to our word against his, with little documentation to substantiate either side. Against our property manager - I'm not even sure what we'd be suing her for. Nevermind that I hate the thought of being involved in a legal battle either way.
I've seriously considered resigning from the board several times in the last few weeks. So far, I've concluded that it would be a fairly selfish act that wouldn't make things better for the association. But that holds some weight even so. This chaos and negativity creeps into my thoughts at any spare moment, making it hard to concentrate on much of anything. I've felt physically ill after reading some messages. Overall, I feel I'm taking things too personally and I don't have the sense that I'm really helping by being here - I just think it might be marginally worse if I step down. Grand.
I don't have the time or experience to handle full treasurer duties. That's part of why we have a property manager. I sure as heck don't want to drop them without having another company lined up to help, and we're not there.
So I don't know what's going to happen. One moment, I might convince myself to feel okay, the next I might see another ranty email and feel instantly overwhelmed by it all. I definitely need to talk - or write a letter to - the other board members soon, but even if they feel as messed up as I do by this all, it doesn't make things better.
Mrrf. Headache just thinking about it all now.