Curve Balls

I was out this morning for a smooth ride on the levee with just a few of the guys today - the usual Friday ride. Just after we started I switched the computer over to cumulative miles and watched it roll over another thousand miles - it was either 56 or 57k, I forget. Mark was out this morning so we made plans, such as they are, to head up to Meridian, MS on Saturday for the Meridian/Cuba Challenge. I'm not expecting to be lighting any fires up there, as my head's been elsewhere the last couple of weeks and the legs are clearly showing the effects. But hey, it's a race within driving distance so we're there!

When it comes to grant proposal preparation, I always fully expect everything to come down to the last possible minute, and the one I've been working on will be no exception. I had planned to work on it last night at home, but the phone company threw me a little curve ball. No phone service. Nothing. Nada. Dead air. Since I use DSL at home, that meant I was completely incommunicado. So naturally I called them up from the cellphone and went through the voice-recognition menu tree torture to report it. Did you know that if you get angry and use four-letter words the sweet female synthesized voice calmly tells you "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that?" Anyway, I finally got though to a human, albiet one with a heavy foreign accent, who politely told me that I could expect someone to take a look at the problem "some time between now and 7 p.m. on Saturday." Saturday?? I laughed when I heard it and from across the room The Wife added "I want a refund for the three days of no service." I didn't need to repeat the four-letter words this time, I think she got the picture anyway, not that it was likely to help.

So this morning I'm in a conference call with the senior VP, who is away on vacation, and my VP, who is leaving town this morning, and the President, who is away on vacation, and the Prez throws another curve ball and now I get to make a bunch of fairly significant changes to this proposal that has to be submitted, thankfully via email, today. Oh well, Situation Normal (or as they say in the Army, SNAFU)! C'mon guys, it's been over eleven months now. You'd think that, at the very least, the phone company and the U.S. post office would be back to normal. Well, they're not, and BTW normal wasn't so great to begin with. Then again, we're in New Orleans, and as a friend who had moved here from the midwest once said, "It's easy to excel here."

Meanwhile on the home front, the big dumpster containing my old roof and lots of the neighborhood trash was hauled off this morning, so the roof project is officially fini just in time for the new hurricane season.