Thanks for the response. Selecting the trace in question and issuing the slide command on the command line allowed the bubble menu to stay "on" to allow changes to the bubble setting. I'm not typically a command line user - to be honest I didn't know there was a "slide" command - so I would just grab the trace and start dragging (which does not allow the bubble menu under the options window to persist once I would finish moving the trace). Anyway, thanks for the useful tip.
For the record, a non-commandline way to solve the same problem is to right-click in the workspace, select Quick Utilities -> Design Parameters... Select the Route tab in the Design Parameter Editor window and select the Slide folder in the Commands window. That gave me the ability to edit the setting that was giving me trouble, although now that I know how to fix the issue (multiple ways), I am more puzzled than ever as to how the setting was changed in the first place. Oh well.