Comin' at Me from all Directions

When I went out for a nice quiet Monday morning training ride, I thought it would be a typical Monday -- sort of a warmup for the rest of the work week. The 24 miles on the levee were done at a sub-20 mph pace amid esoteric discussions about university faculty, tenure, graduate student programs, and those sorts of things. The first hint that things might go awry came a few blocks before I got to work. Just ahead of me a bicycle commuter crossed, followed closely by a big SUV that was angrily blowing its horn. It didn't look good, so I turned and rode in their direction just in case something bad was about to happen, but the car slowed and turned, probably leaving behind a few expletives for the cyclist, who didn't seem too concerned about it. So I turned around and continued on my merry way. I wasn't at the office long before I got an email with the final version of some congressional testimony that we'd been working on (about medical resident programs in New Orleans). Now, that was all great, but the problem was that I was informed that they needed 150 copies, in color, in Washington DC, by 3pm. -- Eastern time. That little task was fairly easy to accomplish via FedEx Kinkos, although the cost was over $1,000 which, in my humble opinion, is ridiculous. Well, anyway, I got that all set up and arranged for it to be picked up in DC and delivered to the appropriate committee, and next thing I know there's the news about Mayo. Maybe I'm just dense, but why exactly would you want to risk your entire career just so you can come in something like 60th in the time trial? I guess it was around that time that I heard the FBI was raiding Senator Ted Stevens' house in Alaska. Meanwhile, back on the farm, our city tax assessors decided this was just the right time to make up for maybe forty years of underassessments by raising property assessments an average of 68%, all in the same year. As if people needed some more reasons to move out of Orleans parish. Shouldn't we be rewarding people for NOT leaving town? Shouldn't we be providing incentives to move here rather than disincentives? Go figure. Of course we won't know what the actual taxes will be until later in the year, probably after it's too late to contest the assessment.