Tuesday

For the record, Sunday was Mother's 103rd birthday.

One of the dangers of advanced ticketing on airlines is the propensity of the airlines to tweak their schedules.  My May trip to San Antonio has had three alterations since I purchased the ticket a month or so ago.  And our trip to Spain has already had a minor adjustment.  Does the trip insurance that you can buy protect you from airline initiated changes?  My biggest concern in these kind of things is whether they dink around with connections times to my disadvantage.  So far, not.

I have the IRS in tomorrow to audit a very complicated 2008 return of a now deceased client.  The Service has been extremely hard to deal with on this particular return, and we have lost out to procedures on every issue that has been discussed.  The audit is just another back-of-the-hand treatment to this taxpayer.  I've felt that this has been a case-study on how the Service sticks it to taxpayers in certain situations, just because it's "going by the book", and the agents involved have no incentive to go otherwise.  TARP was not designed for upside-down Main Streeter's.  And the agent decides to do the field-work in late March.  Like I don't have anything else going on right now.

I'm trying to decide how disingenuous it is for Barry "I didn't take steroids" Bonds to offer up the rope-a-dope, "I thought it was flaxseed" defense.  Interesting that the first witness for the prosecution is this guy Novitsky who is the guy digging in Lance Armstrong's trash.  Which, incidentally, is the exact protocol that Novitsky followed in his investigation of the BALCO performance enhancing drug deal of a few years back.

We've had a couple of fairly nice, warm days this week.  But the forecast is now for cooler temps, rain and storms for the next few days.  I'd say that that is right on schedule for those early Spring outdoor high school competitions in track and field.  Other than under the overhang at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames in November, high school track ranks up there for bone-chilling, can't-get-warm cold.

So off to bed to get my beauty rest for the old Eye-Are-of-ESS.

BCOT