Deadlines

As I have each morning, I rode less than an hour and a half today up and down the same road and reminding myself that I’m supposed to be on vacation. It was more windy this morning, but I compensated by riding more slowly and doing a little sightseeing down some of the side streets. It was strangely reminiscent of New Orleans. There are some sections with vacant lots where houses used to be, along with homes that have obviously been boarded up for a long time. Alongside are homes that look like new or are in the midst of repair, and everywhere are pickup trucks and construction workers. There was one little street on the “Bay” side, however, that looked a lot like the Pensacola Beach I remember from years ago -- older cinderblock houses surrounded by those small oak trees and sea oats that are the only things that really keep the island together. Anyway, it was an easy ride today. Yesterday I spent much of the day in Shopping Mall Hell, way over by Sandestin. Luckily, the girls got tired of the shopping experience fairly quickly.

Tonight I’ll head back into New Orleans so I can make it over to Baton Rouge for the Saturday morning Team TT. The “TT” stands for “Team Torture.” Hopefully I’ll end up feeling more like an engine than an anchor tomorrow. After the TT I’ll have to zip right back to Pensacola. Should be there by early afternoon.

A couple of hours ago we finally got the funding allocations from the Department of Education for the Hurricane Education Recovery Awards. Tulane was allocated $7.5M, so we are all very happy about that. The only little problem now is that I need to write up the full proposal and submit all of the application materials by 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday. I won’t have the budget numbers and other details until some time on Monday, so it will probably be kind of tight, but what the heck? Won’t be the first time! Should be fun!