Friday, March 31, 2006

Springtime in Cancun may be some folks idea of a picnic, but not mine. I'd rather be back home clearing brush. Of course, Vicente was there to meet me at the airport, but he had this new squirrelly looking fellow with him. His name is Steve, and he's the president of Canada. Looks kinda like an Aussie, I think. He's the only one who didn't wear a white shirt. Steve had this crazy idea about visiting the pyramids. "Vincent," I said, "tell our new friend that we've got a summit to do. We can't go off gallivanting to Egypt." Seems like Mexico has built some pyramids of their own. They look pretty small from here, but looks can be deceiving. Get a little closer and they grow on you. Those little black thing are people. Oops. I meant to say little brown things. I have to admit it was pretty big as pyramids go. It has about a million steps and these nutballs wanted to walk all of them. At this point I started to realize that I was not going to get to ride my bike today. Round and round we went, walking on those damn stairs. I didn't even mention my sore knee. And the sad thing is, this looks like fun compared to what we have lined up for tomorow. 4:30:50 PM    comment []

When the Levee Breaks... Bush administration officials revealed today that the cost of re-building  the New Orleans levees would not be 3.5 billion, as previously was announced, but would be more in the neighborhood of  9.5 billion, give or take a few bucks. "Whoa," said Donald Powell, the administrations rebuilding guru, "Looks like we sure pulled a boner on this one. Guess I just better tender my resignation." Powell grinned before adding, "Or look for a place to hold my promotion party". "Good lord," said NO mayor Ray Nagin, "that's a lot of money for a levee. How much can I get for three and a half billion." Nagin was told that he could get an entire levee, but that it would probably fall down. After unleashing a string of obscenities, the mayor noted that he might not be running for another term. "This monumental miscalculation is an outrage," Gov. Blanco sighed. "This means that, just two months before hurricane season, the Corps of Engineers informs us they cannot ensure even the minimum safety of southeastern Louisiana. This is totally unacceptable. I don't think I'm going to run for another term." "Oh, it's not so bad," said Powell, retuning with his spin cap on. "The Governor and the Mayor are just over-reacting, like they've done so many times before. It's really a matter of insurable verses safe, and the government is not in the insurance business. Oh, we are? Okay, but we're getting out of it real soon. It's got an atrocious bottom line. Honest to goodness, all we are saying is that if a big storm like Katrina were to hit New Orleans again, there would be manageable flooding. Not catastrophic flooding. Well, certainly no flooding of biblical proportions." 12:41:12 PM    comment []