Two nights in a row, we’ve gone to meetings. I really hate meetings. But these are important, so we go.

Tuesday night was the monthly meeting of the St. Croix Recycling Association. This is a dedicated group working for almost a year now to find and/or create alternatives to filling up the already overtaxed landfill. The FAA has threatened to close out airport if the landfill is not moved yesterday. For some reason, the airport is still open even though the VI government missed the FAA deadline for moving it. It’s good to get together with people who are committed to make things happen in a positive way to improve the quality of life for all of us here. Even though I hate meetings.

Last night was the St. Croix Environmental Association’s Annual Meeting and Awards Banquet. I was stressed going in for a couple of reasons. One was that we’d already gone to this meeting last week, but it didn’t happen. There was a mix up in scheduling and the newsletter I got a couple of months ago said it would be held on November 8. So I immediately put it on my calendar and prepared food for the pot-luck. We got home from work and I arranged the food on doilies (thanks to Reggie) and we set off.

When we got to the Buccaneer, the Mermaid Restaurant was dark and empty. No one who worked in the vicinity knew anything about it. As we drove home, I hoped beyond hope that I hadn’t gone off my rocker and put the wrong date on the calendar.

We checked the website and found that the meeting would be held on the 14th. The nesletter received on the 13 in the mail had a green insert saying the date was the 14th. I started melting down. I was having senior moments in my forties. I was crushed. My world would soon fall apart. We’d be like the couple in Nicholas Sparks’ “The Notebook”, only much younger….

But then I found it! The old newsletter! Don Diddums’ article DID say November 8th! I wasn’t totally losing it! What a relief! They’d just had to change it because the keynote speaker would be at a conference on St. John on the 8th. But it would have been nice of them to e-mail us a special notice or something, now wouldn’t it?

Well, we still had time to get to town for Luncheria Night! I’d freeze the food I made and serve it the following week.

The other reason I was stressed was that I had to get the food together, yet again. I rushed home from work hoping Michael had gotten home and fed the dogs and cats so all I’d have to do was heat the food and arrange it (yet again!) on doilies (thanks again, Reg). But no, Michael had to work late and the hungry dogs were all waiting for me at the gate drooling and doing their “feed me” dance.

So I did all the stuff and Michael helped once he got home, and we were a bit late, but so were a bunch of people. For some reason SEA is anal about getting the meeting started on time and getting everything done in a timely manner. Which is good in some ways, but they really should not expect people to come from work, get food together and get there by six. I’s impossible. We could get there by six if we didn’t have to bring a dish.

Anyway, we got to sit with boardmembers Jen, Philippe (new to the board), Ryan (just elected to the board) and Claudia, who we hadn’t met but only knew to call her if we having turtle poaching issues on our patrols. I felt better sitting with friends who got there as late as we did and talking about the important issues facing our island environment.

The keynote speaker escaped before having to face questions (how conVEnient!). She’s in charge of the Waste Management Authority which has come up with the idiotic plan to tax everything everybody buys on the island to help eliminate the landfill problem (rather than providing incentives for reusing and recycling). Anyway, we will be talking with her in the coming weeks about our new business venture. Our plan will help provide proper disposal options for waste vegetable oil which not only fills the landfill, but ends up clogging the sewer system resulting in health-threatening overflows into the streets and seas.

We’ll see what she has to say about it….

Tags: St. Croix

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 9:54 am and is filed under St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.