Home again

Back to work after a few days of tax conference in Chicago.

Having the conference close to home is always nice; I took the train down and back, avoiding both the traffic and the horrific parking fees the hotel charges. My round trip ticket on Amtrak cost exactly $1 more than one night of self-park at the Drake.

Speaking of the Drake...I like historic buildings on principle, but not so much in reality. The hotel is lovely, but weird. Multiple half stories in odd places, back door kinds of ways to get around the meeting and public places - it's a wonder people didn't die while wandering around, trying to find the place they needed to be.

While the content of the conference was great as always, the organization left a bit to be desired. The meeting room was a bit too small for all of us. The ladies' rest room, always a busy place during breaks, had three stalls. Does no one check this stuff ahead of time?

Back home. I managed to avoid the debate last night, but will not be quite so fortunate next time. I wasn't paying enough attention, and didn't realize the next debate is here in Milwaukee. We'll have two weeks of nonstop local media snarking at candidates, running "polls", drumming up faked controversy.

Why the heck are they coming here, instead of going to Chicago?

It may be that they expected Walker to still be going strong at this point, I guess. No matter the reason, it means tied up streets and lots of inconvenience, I'm sure. Sigh.

They announced the location of next year's tax forum...Baltimore. The only saving grace is that they moved it to September, rather than late October. Besides, by then the candidates should be set, and somewhere out in the rest of the country, campaigning, right? Just have the usual East Coast craziness to deal with.

The (tentative) plan would be to take a few extra days before or after the conference. I've a dear friend who moved to Maryland a year ago, who very much wants me to visit. We'd do the dreaded tourist thing in D.C. and generally run around and have fun. We'll see.

Time to dig out from under what's piled up while I was gone. I was able to check email and clear a few things while I was in Chicago, but sometimes I swear our email server deliberately holds back a bunch of missives, and delivers them to the box overnight instead of instantly.