In today's mail—full-postage letters from a lawyer, and the IRS.

From the lawyer, just a note about his changing address. But—

0) It's always a bad sign to receive an IRS letter with full first-class postage.

1) They give you 10 days to schedule the audit appointment.

2) "Their goal is to drag it out. My goal is to finish it off quickly." [our accountant]

3) "It is to your advantage to respond quickly." [IRS]

Not having cheated even in the slightest, I'm not worried.

Should be interesting.

Jazz obsession, reprise

For example, buy this, listen to the Freddie Hubbard trumpet solo near the beginning of the first track, "Watermelon Man," and then pause to ask yourself the following question:

Might it not be a good thing to immediately listen to that solo again? Right now?

You will find that the answer to this question is, in fact, "YES."

The answer is still "YES" after one rehearing.

And again, "YES," after the next.

You get the idea.

Jazz is too good

I play the same jazz recordings over and over again, and then finally decide, "OK, maybe I should listen to something else." But I don't do this because I'm tired of what I've been listening to. I do it the same way I might decide to put on a clean pair of jeans—for hygenic reasons only.

Then I dig to the bottom of the jazz CD set, and pick something out at random. Then I listen to that one endlessly.

My kids often say—"that's the same thing, put on something else."

To which I reply, yes, but—hold on, listen to the next eight beats of this Dexter Gordon solo, hold on, just a moment..."

At some point I realized—wait—no one is going to throw me in jail if I listen to the same Lee Morgan solo 100 consecutive times as I drive around Palo Alto. It's no crime.

But then again, the thought has often occurred to me—someone is going to wise up and declare the jazz music of the late 1950s illegal. It sure would make sense—"Look what this guy is doing—he's listening to this stuff OVER AND OVER AGAIN! HE'S CRAZY."