I am hereby bummed because neither R.E.M., Counting Crows, Tori Amos, or any of my favorite groups have new albums on the immediate horizon. The Crows have one track on the Shrek 2 soundtrack, Tori has another B-sides collection coming out, and apparently R.E.M. just released some new live DVD, but I want albums, dang it.

I was sitting in the car in the rain, listening to the B-sides from Tori's Under the Pink, remembering high school and my favorite stuff, and feeling myself coming back to that old mindset. It was like slipping into a pair of comfortable slippers. The tooth-and-nail competitiveness of D.C. was gone, the smell of spring rain was everywhere, and I found myself daydreaming of the farmhouse in the country where I could write and monkey with media ideas again, instead of constantly running against deadlines and hounding deadbeat clients and trying to make ends meet and becoming necessarily alpha and so nasty.

I love days like this. I need more of them.