Cut Loose

Lightning McQueen: Doc, hold it! Seriously, your driving's incredible!
Doc Hudson: Wonderful. Now go away.
Lightning McQueen: Hey, I mean it. You've still got it!
Doc Hudson: I'm asking you to leave.
Lightning McQueen: Come on. I'm a racecar, you're... a much older racecar, but under the hood, you and I are the same.
Doc Hudson: We are not the same! Understand? Now, get out.

—Cars (2006)

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Sometime in the last month or so, the Morrell Park Community Association decided to cut me loose.

I'm not sure of the reason (or reasons) why, but I've got a couple of guesses which I won't share here.

For the last couple of years, I produced the Association's monthly newsletter and, for a slightly longer time period, I ran their website. Getting the material for the newsletter was problematic at best, and I often found myself sending emails begging for things like the President's monthly message. Then I'd be up until 2:00 AM the night before it was due, getting the whole deal laid out correctly and the pagination straightened out. I drew pretty heavily on my experience at the newspaper group in New Jersey right before I moved down here, and I think it showed. The newsletter had a clean look and contained a lot of good information. And, because I was also doing the website, everything dovetailed neatly. There were plenty of times I didn't have the space to do something in the newsletter and I could just refer people to the website.

Last month I got some of the information I needed; it came in dribs and drabs but I didn't get everything. I did the best I could and put a newsletter together. The next morning I delivered it to the Association's Vice-President. She told me that she didn't think I was going to do a newsletter because of GF's illness, so she'd asked someone else to do it.

Wow. Glad I stayed up late for THAT one. It really irritates me, because I have never been late for a newsletter, no matter what my personal circumstance. Even if I went incommunicado, I delivered--in fact, HAND-delivered--every issue on time. The single time it was late was because I'd gotten information late. So anyway, my newsletter was never published, and since I still hadn't received updated information, I couldn't update the website. So the website is still stuck in the past.

This month, I haven't heard anything from anyone. I've received nothing. I have to assume that they don't want me to do this for them anymore, which is fine with me. You have no idea how tired I am of chasing down stuff from everyone, correcting their dreadful spelling and grammar, formatting everything to match everything else, and doing the whole layout routine. Even with the shortcuts I'd built into the project it was a monthly pain in the ass.

The domain I'd purchased for the Association expires pretty soon, too. I haven't decided whether I'll renew it and park something else on the space, or what. But the Association hasn't paid me for the domain renewal, nor the past year's webhosting fees (I split with them because I store Baltimore Diary materials in a directory, along with the redirect page).

One less thing--two, actually--to worry about.