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This may have set some sort of record.

I wrote April 25 about how fast and efficient the Merced DMV office had been that day when I went in to replace a lost license. Twenty minutes in and out.

The Lovely Sarah (she has now become a local icon) told me, pro forma, that it could be three to four weeks before the new one landed.

I got it sometime last week (while I was out of town).

In other words, from time of application to my mailbox was A WEEK OR LESS.

In the story I wrote last week about the American Lung Association’s "State of the Air" report, quite a few California cities -- including Merced -- measured high levels of ozone. Ozone or smog is a summertime air pollution problem, extending from May through September.

Spokespeople from the lung association said those numbers would have been portrayed even higher if the Environmental Protection Agency's new, more stringent ozone scoring system had been taken into account. Now, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District has adopted that more "health-protective" scoring standard.