On the drive back to my office, I suddenly had a huge blowout. I was able to limp my car back into our office parking lot. The back left tire was completely shredded. I set the matter aside until I could deal with it at the end of the day. Then I found that I could locate neither the tool that permits me to remove the wheel, nor my AAA card. My wife came and picked me up, and last night provided me with my copy of the new AAA card.
This is my second flat tire this year, which is at least twice as many as I have in the average year. I'll deal with it this morning, after my morning appointment. I'll soon be a regular at the Discount Tire outlet.
In other news, I see that our local state comptroller has reversed herself and agreed that Unitarian Universalists are a religion for tax purposes. The reversal came after her staff counsel attorney reviewed the situation for her. I am glad that a foregone conclusion was reached early in the process, but amused/puzzled that she went to such lengths to argue about something so obvious.
I visited the Hypnos.com record label message board yesterday. Hypnos.com is an ambient label which puts out a fair bit of stuff that I like. Like many such labels, it is run essentially by one fellow. He does an amazing job, with a top flight catalog in his own label, and a strong on-line store of other labels' artists. His jewel case inserts feature his own cover art, which is a pleasure to view. I noticed that the new releases have really slowed since the middle of last year. He had a message post up explaining various challenges he'd faced--nothing startling, just the routine stresses of life and romance. Predictably, one message board poster felt the need to harangue him that sometimes orders take five or more business days to process instead of one. Sometimes I think that some people work hard to release ornate butterflies into the wild, while other folks just sit around and try the pick the wings off butterflies. If you pick all the wings off all the butterflies, then the world will become a colorful-wing-free zone.
I think that running a small time record label would be great fun. I'd want to focus only on experimental music of one form or another. But I think I'll focus on the job I have right now, and leave such daydreams for another time.