Things you never want to seen made: laws, sausages, HOA bylaws...

So tonight was the homeowner's association meeting and Christmas party for the HOA for the community I bought my townhouse in a couple months ago. It was an, umm, interesting experience.

First of all, trying to understand what's going on, the politics of a new place that you've never been involved in, is like being plopped in the middle of a country you've never been to and being expected to vote in the election. Imagine if you were plopped in some random South American or African country and expected to know what was going on with politics, with only the rumors of random people on the street to try to figure out what's going on. Well, that was tonight.

Evidently, there was some bad blood between the acting president and one of the other people who live on my court - during the meeting, the guy accused the president of having spent time in jail, being responsbile for a fire, and not cleaning up after his dog. Acting president responded by pointing out that said guy wasn't actually on the deed to his house, and thus the resolution that he had gotten passed was not valid.

What made the meeting kind of pointless was that if a resolution got to a vote, it passed no matter what the people at the meeting voted - because if someone is not at the meeting, it counts as a yea vote. Out of the 94 houses, 13 houses were represented, so it was kind of an exersize in futility.

It also made me want to never serve- at one point the treasurer asked me if I wanted to volunteer for a position, and I think the look of horror on my face was pretty apparent. I wasn't planning on volunteering for anything this year - I want to get my MBA wrapped up before I put anything more on my plate - but I thought it might be something I would want to do in the future. But having people accuse me of stuff at meetings, having people call me at all hours of the day about illegally parked cars, and all the other stuff that board members have to deal with doesn't sound like my idea of fun.

Will I go to the next board meeting? Probably, if I don't have anything else better to do. It's a good idea to know your neigbors, even if some of them seem a little, um, interesting. Plus there was free food. But what they've said about laws - like sausages, they are something you don't want to see be made - applies to homeowner's association meetings too.