Zinc

Yesterday evening we hopped on the clunkers and pedaled through the traffic to see the Bacchus parade and, hopefully, Endymion that followed. The weather was great and we locked the bikes up to the iron fence at Sacred Heart and walked down St. Charles Avenue, eventually meeting up with Realdo and his family around 3rd Street. The crowd was pretty good but not overwhelming, which made for some pretty good parade watching, much of it done with one of Reo's kids on my shoulders. We were having a pretty good time when all of a sudden we noticed that there was this huge gap between floats. Looking up St. Charles, we could barely make out the lights of the next float, which seemed to be at a standstill. I heard later that there had been a problem with one of the floats hitting a power cable or something. Anyway, it was starting to get late and The Wife was already uncomfortable with the crowds, so I reluctantly headed back to the bikes. Things started rolling again eventually, and I saw the first of the Endymion floats just before I crossed Napoleon Avenue at the edge of the parade zone. Along the way I first lost my camera case, which I suppose is now in the belly of one of those big street sweepers that follows the parades. Then I lost The Wife who was practically in a neurotic dead-run to get out of the crowd and back to the bikes. We reconnected back at the bikes, though. I was kind of disappointed not being able to stay for more of the parades.

Today was "Staff Appreciation Day," at Tulane, which is really just a kind of floating holiday that they wisely decided to give the day before Mardi Gras. Since I had a good ride yesterday and my legs were a little sore, I took the chance to sleep late and didn't get out of bed until almost 7 a.m. However, I spend most of the next seven hours working on the LAMBRA website, the NOBC website, some writeups for work, and the LCCS results. Naturally, once they were posted, people started emailing me about how they should have gotten points. I wasn't surprised. There were a few people that I suspected had bought annual USCF licenses on race day, but since I didn't know that for sure, I couldn't give the team points. Anyway, I guess things are about settled now. The LAMBRA site still needs some cleanup, but most of the important things are there now. The NOBC site still needs to have a ton of stuff uploaded to the new server, but that will wait until I'm back at the office where the connection is faster and where I hopefully have most of the files.

The whole time I was working I was aware of an irritating post-nasal drip that I know is going to turn into a sore throat. Finally, around 4 pm, I made the trip to the drug store for some of those Cold-Eeze lozenges with zinc. Hopefully the viruses will have more trouble with the heavy metal poisioning than I will. Anyway, I am fully expecting to wake up tomorrow morning with a sore throat at best and a fever at worst.

The U.S. Postal Service continues to drop the ball. You know, for a branch of the Federal Government, and a very visible one at that, you would think they would have their act back together by now. They don't. Laura mailed me a reimbursement check (for the new website) on the 22nd. I got it today. Distance from the Metairie post office, where it was mailed: maybe five miles. It wasn't even postmarked in Metairie, though. It was apparently sent all the way up to Baton Rouge where it is postmarked, and then sent all the way back to New Orleans for delivery. Now that's efficiency, isn't it?

Weather tomorrow is looking very good. If this sore throat by some miracle doesn't get worse, I should be able to get in a few miles in the morning before making my annual pilgrimage down to the French Quarter.