Climate Changes

Sunday morning I was up early, again staring at the weather radar and forecast. I wanted to do the training ride on the Northshore. Outside, the streets were wet. The temperature across the lake was 38º F. The chance of sunshine was Zero. I decided that I was desperate enough for a ride in the country to do it alone if necessary, and considering the weather and the fact that there were a bunch of mardi gras parades scheduled starting at noon, it was entirely possible that nobody would show up. So I was glad to see Mark D., who has finally returned along with the rest of Chevron, to offices in N.O., waiting at the Morning Call when I arrived. Over on the northshore it was cold and a bit windy, and we had only five riders, but it was good. Considering the wind and the small number of wheels, we kept the pace relatively slow but very steady for most of the ride, and after throwing in a few miles of harder efforts I felt like I got in a pretty good workout of 3 ½ hours under the circumstances. Later in the day my recent shortage of sleep finally caught up with me and I took an unscheduled afternoon nap that I guess I must have needed.

I had an unplanned 9 am meeting Monday morning, and since the streets were still wet and the weather rather nasty I decided I'd better skip the morning ride today. It seems that on Friday some of our omniscient state legislators on the "Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget" decided to throw a monkey wrench into a carefully constructed allocation plan for $95M in relief funding for higher education that had been worked out by all of the university presidents. Of course, they must have had some help from some defectors. Now, distribution of the badly needed funds is up in the air again. It is very frustrating, and it's not like every university around here isn't having major cash-flow problems right now. At the President's Advisory Council meeting this morning he remarked that in this state you are always punished for being successful. True indeed. The fact that Tulane got its act together quickly after the hurricane and rebuilt and repaired much of its campuses in time for the Spring semester is now being viewed as proof that we don't need as much relief money as other universities. One of the VPs said "next time we have a disaster, I guess we'll just sit on our hands."

Anyway, we have a lot of pots on the fire right now and very few cooks, and I'm pretty backed up all-around. Maybe tonight I'll find some time to work on the LCCS rankings and LAMBRA website, but I suspect that the 5-year analysis of the School of Medicine's research portfolio, broken down by department, faculty member, and research theme, might take precedence since I need to finish it in time for a Thursday meeting and just got the data I need for it yesterday. And yes, the NOBC website is still down and I don't know why.