We ended up with nearly 5 inches of rain in one day yesterday. For a few minutes this morning the sun broke through the clouds, but by the time I got to work and fired up the computer to make this entry, it had clouded up again. While I was gassing up the car, I heard the weather forecast for more rain today. Oh joy.

Who needs a landscaper to make a backyard pond for you? Just wait for an El Nino year (I'm assuming that this is such a year, hence all the rain, and that those worries about radioactive fallout rain were just so much superstitious panic.)

On Friday I had cleaned off my desk, filing away items which have (presumably) been resolved or completed, and lining up neatly on the left hand side those which remain to be worked on. Looking at them now--

Some issues seem to be intractable. I'm not sure why, but there always seem to be one or two or three that will.not.go.away. no matter how many times they are addressed and no matter how thoroughly they seem to have been researched and fixed.

The top one on the pile this morning has been on and off the list since October. Each step of the way, the parties involved have had rigid demands, and on our part the response driven by lack of budget. Regulations can be adjusted, waived, bent, whatever--but if the money isn't there, I can only do so much.

Part of everyone's frustration is the contrast with previous years when we were awash in funds and could accommodate any reasonable request, just by filling out a simple form. Now any request that involves money has to go to the highest levels before receiving an implacable "No" followed by the inevitable, "Research this, find a solution, and get back to me."

What do they think? That I haven't researched it already? That if there were a solution I wouldn't have implemented it already?

Gah.