We had a pretty good rain today, for the first time in a while.

The day started with Amanda telling me that the front driver-side tire on the Jetta was flat again, so our plug and Fix-A-Flat had not worked. She took my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme to work and called a few minutes later, suggesting that I call Volkswagen and talk to them about the tire. As you may recall, we couldn’t find the tool to get the lug nuts off the tire to change it.

I got tired of waiting for the answering machine beep every nine or ten seconds (I wasn’t sure which, as I was groggy and still trying to sleep) so I finally got up. The first thing I noticed when I lifted my head was Bruce sitting curled up on a pillow at the foot of the bed. He was adorable.

I went downstairs and called Amanda then called Volkswagen. They said they were short-staffed and if I left the car they could get to it by 6:00 this evening. I didn’t want to have to wait on a ride back to the house then have to go out to pick it up this evening when Amanda and I would want to be picking up around the house in preparation of our small group meeting, so I decided not to do that. I talked to Amanda again and she suggested that I call our neighbor, Dave Narron, who just recently opened up a shop.

I talked to Dave and he said to bring the car on by and he’d take a look at it. Well, the first thing I learned is that the lug nuts we couldn’t get off were actually just decorative snap-ons. Then Dave found a new nail in the tire. It was in the outer tread so he wasn’t sure if a plug would work, but he gave it a try anyway. It held on the way home and by the end of the day the tire still seemed fine, so the plug seems to have held.

Let’s back up just a bit to the nail. The flat we had a couple weeks ago was the result of a small, headless nail. This one was also the result of a small, headless nail. The building where Amanda works leases some space to a flooring company that uses small, headless nails and apparently a number of people there have had issues with flat tires. She made sure to mention it to her boss. I mean come on, two flat tires in as many weeks? The flooring company had been warned and they said it couldn’t be them, but I find that a little hinky.

Work was pretty busy, but manageable. Tim showed me the progress that we’ve got just about all of our resources working on right now, and we’re all really excited about it. Tim laid out a really hivvy scenario for me with this new tool of ours. I could walk into a business or a meeting, set up a demo site in a matter of minutes, using my iPhone even, show the person the site, get a payment from them and make the site live as I’m walking out the door. How frickin’ sweet is that?

After work Amanda and I picked up a bit around the house a bit, as I alluded earlier. While doing that we heard on the news that a guy working in a restaurant somewhere in some shopping center saw a carjacking going on outside. He went out to help and waited around to give the cops a statement then at the end of his shift he got fired for leaving the restaurant unattended. How crappy is that? I bet the guy won’t have any trouble finding a new job, and probably a better one at that.

That reminded Amanda of a story about her boss, Jen, from this morning. She was on her way to work when she saw a boy lying on the sidewalk with his head hanging over the curb and some other kids looking at him. She went over and tried to figure out what was going on and finally got the boy to wake up. The kids wouldn’t talk, but one girl finally said she knew where the boy lived and went to get his mom. Long story short, they finally got the kids to say that they had been running and the boy had fallen and skidded on the sidewalk and hit his head on the curb, or something like that. He was bleeding and had a big knot on his head and, as I’m told, was completely out of it. He probably had a concussion. The kids were all elementary school age.

Small group was nice. Amanda made brownies (using apple sauce, which turned out nicely), Lorin Van Zandt brought a salad and Rob Peterson and Kristen Barriner ordered some Papa John’s. We ended up talking a lot, but we finally got into some good conversation. I think the talking is good anyway- it helps us grow closer and warms us up for the deeper discussions.

The phone rang during small group. Caller ID showed that it was someone looking for money for a police fundraiser, so I didn’t answer. But Bruce, as he sometimes will when the phone rings, started howling a little. I looked for him to comfort him and keep him quiet and found him sitting on the blanket folded up under the end table between the couches. It wasn’t on the floor, mind you, but on a sort of under-rung of said end table. It’s the one he was trying to hide his rawhide chew in recently. It’s so cool that he found that place just recently and has decided he likes it there. I guess it might become a new lair for him. He’s got under the bed in our bedroom, under the papasan in the office and now on the blanket under the end table. That dog is so damn cute. Everybody says so.
Amanda had to go to sleep to TMZ tonight, as she said that The Office wasn’t on TBS tonight. I really don’t like the new WSFX Fox 26 late night lineup.

I just saw that Samuel L. Jackson was cast as Nick Fury in the Iron Man movie. Nick Fury is generally a white guy in the comic books (and was played by David Hasselhoff in a bad Nick Fury movie I haven’t seen all of), but in The Ultimates, a sort of offshoot side-world of the Marvel Comics Universe, Nick Fury is a black guy, and it’s obvious (I think) that Sam Jackson was the inspiration for the character. The fact that they’ve got him playing that role is just great. I’m really starting to look forward to that movie.

Zach Dotsey
.