Local

It looks like Tropical Storm Katrina (which may become Hurricane Katrina) is going to hit Broward County late tomorrow or early Friday. If it becomes a hurricane, it probably won’t go above category 1 (about 75 MPH).

Today is the first day of school in Broward county. This is the earliest start date ever, a full week earlier than last year. Everyone hates the early start. It’s disrupting vacation plans, hurting summer camps, vacation spots, and other businesses which depend on kids out of school during the summer.

Why? So they can have more time to prepare for the FCATs.

The FCATs in their current form need to be eliminated. Schools no longer teach the students, they just prepare them for the FCATs. FCATs aren’t about learning – they’re about school funding. The schools scramble to raise FCAT scores for their own rating & to keep up their funding, not so the kids will learn. As a result the kids don’t learn anything other than what they need to pass the FCATs. This is why Florida’s school system is one of the worst in the US.

Today’s top news on TV & papers is Ricky William’s return to the Dolphins, something I couldn’t care less about. They seem to think everyone is a sports fan and is more interested in their team than any other occurrences. I’m not a sports fan because I think it’s a monumental waste of time & money.

I can’t understand getting so worked up over something so insignificant. Ten years from now, or even less than a year from now, it won’t make one bit of difference who won a game or who played on the team. It’s just a game. It’s ok to just play for fun, but when it becomes big business and people obsess over player & team stats, it’s gone too far.

There was a fire in the men’s room at the pool over the weekend. It seems to have started in a trashcan. The pool & gym are closed & without electricity. The restroom was completely wrecked, but thankfully it didn’t spread to the rest of the clubhouse, although there was some smoke & water damage. We had to take out most of the carpet which was soaked.

On the third Wednesday of each month, we have the screening meeting for prospective buyers. Last night we had 15 people but only two of them are buying units; the rest are leases or roommates. We’ve also seen more leases & roommates than purchases the last few months. This doesn’t look good. We’d like to keep the number of rentals low and have more owners living here.

Perhaps this means people can no longer afford to buy. Prices are still going up – 3/2 units list for over $240,000 and 2/1 or 2/2s list for over $190,000. I don’t know how long this can continue if people can’t afford or won’t pay those prices. I’m not sure if this is unique to our condo or reflects the area in general.

Tropical storm Emily has formed and it looks like it’s aiming at is, although it’s still much too early to tell. I don’t think we’ve ever had this many storms so early in the season.

UPDATE: the current tracking map shows Emily moving further to the south of us.

We dodged this one. All we got was some strong wind (about 20 MPH) and lots of rain. A few branches down but no damage. My patio enclosure held up nicely and stayed dry.