Hello Burque! Been busy this week doing the K-12 education thing, and when I last wrote the Dow was at 25,750 or so, and I wrote a piece praising the Albuquerque Journal.

Anything happen since?

Despite tumult around the world’s financial markets, our local paper of record, a football coach who would have been fired if he were anything other than a football coach, we’re actually a bit in the “dog days” of roadway infrastructure languor here in and around The Duke City.

• We have a new Mayoral Administration, with lots of new and Marty Chavez-old faces, understandably futzing around the bureaucratic attic that was two terms of Mayor Berry, looking under the cobwebs and through the memorabilia to figure out where to go from here. We’re starting to see some action, but it hasn’t stretched much into issues pertaining to how people get around town, A.R.T. included, yet.
• Despite the absurd warmth and dryness, it’s too early to do any roadwork other than tearing up things, like the entire South Valley. My two-mile commute to work is now a 4.5 mile adventure through three, count em’, construction zones. I’m not complaining though, not nearly as much as I’ve been complaining ever since I moved down here in 2000 about the road surfaces, water drainage, and water/sewer system. Every day is a winding, orange-cone filled, road toward the 21st Century down here.
• And the reason I’m driving through all this construction instead of riding my bike along the acequia from my house to school is that I, like seemingly 98% of Burque, have this lingering cold/flu/crud which has moved, over the past month, through various parts of my respiratory system like a 70s arcade game. “Pac-Man” has also chomped its way through many entities around town; for instance, I’ve been told that personnel shortages caused by illness have slowed down reporting of traffic fatalities at UNM’s Traffic Research Unit.
• One would hope the fatalities, too, have slowed, but that’s likely wishful thinking. Still, maybe a healthy percentage of us have been stuck in bed each day sick, and I’m sure there’s at least one eager, resourceful social scientist out there who would LOVE to get a research grant to study the possible inverse relationship between influenza and traffic fatalities.

And on those upbeat subjects (influenza, traffic fatalities, world’s financial markets, our local paper of record, and a football coach who would have been fired if he were anything other than a football coach) Better Burque wishes you and the world a speedy recovery, and a Hell of a lot better weekend that has been this undeniably hellacious week.