Tuesday

Another beautiful Spring day in River City.

I've had the IRS in the office yesterday afternoon and this morning.  A gal from C-town had drawn a Rock Island client for an employee benefit plan audit on a pension plan that our firm has administered for many years.  I lobbied her hard upon original receipt of the audit notice last month that the Service should spend their time and energy elsewhere: a companion plan at the same employer had been through a detailed audit (with no changes) less than five years ago.  Obviously, my arguments fell on deaf ears.

The long and the short of her examination?  No changes, but the agent looked where she needed to (I had the Under on the bet as to whether she was with-it enough to catch the weak link), and I need to send her a supporting schedule to back up one of the client's calculations.  Little damage, and it's always good to see the IRS go home.

I also have a favorable follow-up report on the surprise Direct TV billing last month for the auto-renewal of the NCAA Tourney package.  A call to D-TV Customer Service today eventually got me to a representative who lent a forgiving ear to my plight.  My plea was basically that I didn't know that I was on auto-renewal (since I obviously didn't didn't read the fine print a year ago), and the bill is also on auto-pay (and was in fact paid before I even saw the bill).

The long and the short here?  I didn't even have to go to Argument (Plan?) B before I got a $15 per month discount on my existing service over the next 12 months.  (I would've settled for three months of an HBO package.)  Some days things work out better than on other days. Suite.

The Direct TV matter came up today after I found my over-due AmEx bill buried in a stack of pre-April 15th junk on my desk. (I remember saying to myself, "Self, you need to call DTV to protest that bill".  What that had to do with AmEx is an example of my early-April synapses disconnections.)  I still have un-reviewed stuff in the same stack that I need to go through tomorrow.

A little excitement on my 16+ mile ride on the bike path tonight.  I went down for the first time this year.  Rule #1 lives.  No damage, except to my ego.  I went a little hot into a slightly down-sloped curve near Middle Park just as an oncoming rider was hitting the same curve.  That forced the apex of my line onto the dirt edge of the path and I just couldn't quite keep the bike upright.  With nothing but grass on my right, and a somewhat controlled lay-down move in mind, I instinctively unclipped my left foot and executed a perfect reverse-shoulder-slide.

I was down less than 30 seconds, didn't even lose the chain, and was rolling before I had to answer the inevitable, "You okay?" question from concerned (laughing?) passer-by's. No blood.  No torn clothing.  And most importantly, no broken bike parts.  The lesson?  Slow down, even (especially) on the bike path.

Then, just a couple of minutes later, I had the presence of mind to check my rear shirt pockets for my phone and the mini camera.  Yes for the camera.  No for the phone.  So I beat feet back to the scene of the crime, and luckily found the phone in the grass a few feet off the path.  Also undamaged.  (Now I'm considering shirts with zip-pockets or putting the electronics in the seat-bag.)

If you do the math, the fall/crash has to go in the bucket for negatives, but just about everything else came out positive.  For being careless, this was about as good as you can get.

Shifting gears...no pun intended...

A final point to ponder.  From baseball.  If there's two out in the inning, and the eighth-place hitter is up, is it better for the team in the field for the batter to make an out and therefore make the pitcher lead-off the next inning?  Or is is okay if the hitter gets on base, and makes the pitcher get up off the bench and take his licks?  (Of course, this question only applies to Real baseball as played in the National League.)  Confidence is high that I could write a pretty long blog on this question by itself.  And they say baseball is boring!

So have a great Wednesday.  But...

BCOT