Colliding Deadlines

I'm glad I got in a nice ride on Wednesday, because there will be no riding for me today. A cosmic multiple deadline alignment of astronomical proportions has kept me in front of computer screens pretty much nonstop since early yesterday and it's not looking like there will be a deus ex machina dropping down to rescue me any time soon. Truth is, Deus is probably laughing his celestial head off at me. I was up till the wee hours last night making scant progress on a very squishy proposal that demands large helpings of unlikely justifications, budget figures pulled out of thin air, and impossible projects held together with masking tape, all neatly sandwiched between numerous government forms like the ever-popular SF-424b and equally famous ED-524, not to mention a few unintelligible documents regarding assurances, certifications and, my personal favorite, our response to the General Education Provisions Act. This is a lot like trying to nail Jello to the wall - Frustrating, messy and liable to stain your pants. All of that to meet a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Friday. Now tell me, just what is the Department of Education doing setting a submittal deadline for midnight on a Friday. How many federal employees do you think are going to be there on Saturday morning? Just to emphasize their incompetence, despite multiple emails reminding us of the deadline on the 11th, the website to which they refer us to for the forms and guidelines clearly states, in more than one place, that the deadline is the 15th.

At least I finally got the OK to send off the $13M proposal that for the last two weeks has been bouncing back and forth between me and a bunch of paranoid contract analysts up at the state's Office of Community Services.

Looks like the roof will finally be wrapped up some time today, so I can finally check that one off my list. It was just last week that I finally took the thick "Katrina - Allstate Insurance" folder that I'd been carrying around since last October out of my messenger bag. Eleven months and counting. It sure doesn't feel like it's been that long.

I'm hoping to make it to a couple of races in Mississippi this weekend, although right now I feel about as sharp as a soggy burrito.