Perhaps there's a more relaxing place to be than sitting on the front porch of one's new home, braced against the unnaturally cool breeze with a freshly-brewed cup of coffee, and listening to a slow rain soak the landscape, the smell of freshly-laid cedar mulch from the adjacent flowerbeds filling the air, which is itself filled with barn swallows playing the aerial equivalent of kick-the-can. I'm just at a loss to figure out where that place might be.

These are the times that make the spirit exhale a deep sigh of contentment.

Remember yesterday's post where I mentioned the delivery of 1 1/2 tons of flagstone? Well, I was wrong.

This morning's delivery turned out to be 2 1/4 tons – 4,500 pounds – of Arizona sandstone, a beautiful reddish color, some of which contains fossilized plant material (I'll try to post a closeup photo of a prime example later). And by 12:30 p.m., MLB and I had laid every piece of it into two walkways and a 50-foot flowerbed border.

Here's a short video of the unloading of the pallet of rock, delivered to our house by the exceptionally courteous manager of Scully Stone, Lan Powers. And a pleasant surprise was the waiving of the normal delivery fee. Good folks out there on the Rankin Highway, if you're in the market for a load of stone.

Wouldn't you love to have one of these little forklifts? Lan told me that the weight of this pallet actually slightly exceeded the rated capacity of the machine, but it got the job done.

I can also guarantee that the weight of the flagstones exceeded the rated capacity of those who carried and laid it, but like that little forklift, we got 'er done. And the most interesting part? We ended up with about one square foot of unused rock. Not too bad for a project that had about the same level of planning as a trip to Starbucks.

Here's a pretty good example of irony: I may have to buy some sand.

More about that in a minute. But first...

• I challenge anyone who doesn't believe in the existence of teleportation to provide an alternate explanation about one's absolute inability to smack a hovering gnat.


• Unintentional Juxtaposition or Astute Political Commentary? - I had to laugh at the sequence of stories on Fox News Channel yesterday morning, as they first showed the robot directing the symphony, followed immediately by a report on Hillary's victory in the West Virginia primary. Why was that funny? The piece played by the Detroit orchestra was The Impossible Dream from Man Of La Mancha.


• Have you seen one of these tooling around town?
  
  
  
  It's a Can-Am Spyder, made by the Canadian manufacturer, Bombardier. Midland Powersports is a Bombardier dealer, and I understand the owner and/or his employees are showing it off. I spotted it last week and did a double-take; it's a funky-looking vehicle. It's powered by a 990cc liquid-cooled V-Twin engine turning out over 100 horsepower. It's 30 pounds lighter than a Honda Gold Wing, and $100 less expensive (MSRP) than the latter model equipped with anti-lock braking. I've never been a big fan of three-wheelers because of their inherent instability, but the design of this one - with the two front wheels - and the addition of computerized stability control probably mitigates that concern. If nothing else, it'll turn heads.


• I offer the following sure-fire, can't-miss, guaranteed method for finding the exact location of previously unknown sprinkler system lines and buried electrical cable. First, buy a big honkin' tree. Second, let your wife decide on the sole spot in your entire yard where said tree can be placed without throwing the feng shui of the entire universe out of kilter. Third, dig a hole. The lines and cable will be located in the dead center of that hole, at a depth that's approximately two feet shallower than the required planting depth.


• Got Photoshop? Want a free "tips" book? For the next 29 days or so, you can download The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques in PDF format from the SitePoint website. Even better, it's free! No catch; no strings attached* – a 278-page, $29.95 book for free. Hard to beat a deal like that. Be forewarned, though; the print-quality version is 63mb; there's a low-bandwidth version that's about a third that size. (*Well, you have to give 'em your email address.)

The sand I mentioned at the top of the post? I need to spread it under the one-and-a-half tons of flagstone being delivered tomorrow for some pathways down the sides of the house. Where's a 12 Barrow windstorm when you need it?

No, the title does not refer to your small children. Probably.

2008 may be the Year of the Rat in the Chinese calendar, but Mother's Day in Fort Stockton will be remembered as the Day of the Skunk, as my parents awoke to find that my dad's suspicions were correct about the identity of the animal that had been coming into their backyard and digging holes in the lawn, apparently seeking tasty grubs and other insects. He had set a trap but hadn't succeeded in catching anything – until sometime Saturday night.

Catching the invader was, of course, a "good news/bad news" thing, because while he did succeed in trapping it, he also had a trap full of skunk, and how do you deal with that? Dad wanted to shoot it; Mom was properly concerned about the side effects, and so they instead called on the city of Fort Stockton's Animal Services folks. Of course, they weren't working on Sunday, and so the skunk spent the day in the backyard, and we used the front door of the house.

Fortunately, it was a cool day and the trap was in the shade, so the animal wasn't unduly discomfited. It spent a lot of time continuing to dig in the lawn between the bars of its cage, or curled up in a furry ball, napping. (Something I usually try to do on Sunday afternoons, by the way.)

They're quite cute, actually. The only problem – besides the smell – is that pesky carrier-of-rabies thing.

We weren't around for the eventual hauling off of the varmint, but I understand that a certain member of my immediate family chose to ignore advice from a certain other member and suffered some olfactory fallout during the episode.

We signed a sales contract for our old house yesterday, after just over three months on the market. Those of you unfortunate enough not to live in the Petroplex might be thinking, "wow, are they lucky to sell their house that quickly," but if you live in Midland or Odessa you're thinking, "wonder why it took so long to sell?" The housing market in these parts may have cooled ever-so-slightly, but for every house that takes a few months to sell, there are probably two that sell the same day or week they go on the market.

Anyway, this is actually the third sales contract we've signed since March. The other two – plus one acceptable offer that never made it to the contract stage – fell through when the buyers discovered that the house is situated in a flood plain, and they would be required to purchase federal flood insurance (if they were financing the purchase).

That's right: we live 500 miles from the coast, 60 miles from a river, and 30 miles from a lake big enough to put a bass boat on, and yet the government has determined that we're at risk for serious flooding.

It wasn't so when we bought the house, back in '82. But a few years later, when development around Loop 250 and Midland Drive took off and dirt was covered by concrete, the 100 year flood plain was redrawn and most our neighborhood was brought into its boundaries. I don't know if we'd already paid off our mortgage by then, or if our lender was just clueless and didn't pick up on the change, but we were never required to have flood insurance. We've also never come close to being flooded (but, then, there's still 74 years left on the clock, right?).

This wouldn't probably be a big deal even today, but in the post-Katrina world, flood insurance premiums have gone up considerably, so that those of us who live far from high risk coastal areas are helping to subsidize everyone else. We've had a difficult time nailing down exactly what the premiums are, but in any event, they've been high enough to cause several buyers to look elsewhere.

Here's the really ironic thing. We also just experienced our seventh (7th) plumbing problem at the new house (third since we moved in). They've been caused by a variety of problems ranging from incompetent sub-contractors to plain old bad luck. Go figure. The house we lived in for 26 years never had any significant water problem, but it has to be federally insured against flooding. In our brand new house, sitting many feet above the flood plain, you can't swing a dead cat without finding water in places it's not supposed to be.

Life's funny, sometimes.

Every now and again, we get email from Gazette readers that's too interesting not to share. Even more rarely, more than one of those messages comes in a single day. Like today, for example:

• Steve Miller (no, not that Steve Miller) graduated from Andrews High School back in the 70s (they used to routinely kick our Panther butts in, well, just about everything of a sporting persuasion), and he's seeking information about the Rose Theater. Here's his request:
  
  The Rose was a small theater (probably seating around 300) on Main Street right across from the courthouse and closed in the early 80s. They changed the show three times a week, and were known to kids for a drink we all called "A Suicide" which was pretty much Coke combined with Dr Pepper, Orange and Pickle Juice. Like many small theaters, they often had live events on the small stage as well (dog shows, gimmicks to accompany the Castle Horror Films, etc.). I'm just looking for any vintage printed material, posters, or photos.
  
  If you have any information or memorabilia related to the Rose Theater in Andrews, Texas, let me know and I'll get you in touch with Steve. He might even send you one of his CDs. Just kidding. I've already told you that he's not that one.


• Steve's email was cool, but the next one blew me away. A nice young lady named Lisa wrote to tell me that she ran across the Gazette while googling Midland in preparation for a possible transfer here from the Metroplex, following her husband's job. Moving to Midland was apparently at the very bottom of her "want-to-do-before-I-die" list. Oddly enough, after reading the Gazette for a while, she began to feel a little differently about the prospect. Her words (Chamber of Commerce folks might want to take note): You’ve introduced Midland to me as a place that I could see myself living. Quite a departure from a few months ago, when I never thought I’d even entertain such a notion. You’ve softened the potential disruption of status quo, and even carved out a place in my mind that might be a little disappointed if we didn’t get a chance to live there, even if it is just for a little while.
  
  As luck would have it, the project assignment didn't pan out and Lisa and her family will remain in north Texas. But hers was some of the more gratifying feedback I've received from blogging in some time. Heck, I might even keep doing this for a while longer now (and for those who take that as a threat, so be it).

This Mother's Day is a particularly special one for two blogging moms, and I think it's worth calling attention to them, as it's the first for each since they added to their families via adoption.

Beth lives somewhere on the Atlantic Seaboard, and I trust that she will be pampered and spoiled as she celebrates with her new son, Joshua, and husband Tim.

DeDe is a much closer Gazette neighbor, as she and husband Rob are just a few miles away in Odessa, and they'll be enjoying the company of their new son, Liam, whom they traveled to Russia to adopt just after the first of the year.

Happy Mother's Day to all who enjoy that special title, but especially to those who have chosen the loving option of adoption!

Leisurely breakfasts in small towns are great places to pick up interesting trivia. For example...

• The recent wildfires south of Fort Stockton devastated thousands of acres of ranchland, but one of the more costly losses is that of miles of fence. One rancher estimates that it will cost him $10,000 per mile to re-fence his land, and another is estimating a loss of $40,000 just in fencing. The insurance companies (for those few who were insured) are settling fencing claims at $2.18/foot, installed.


• I can think of few jobs that would involve harder work than building fences across some of that Pecos County acreage.


• Certain wealthy Pecos County landowners continue to aggravate their neighbors with their use of hail cannons intended to disperse thunderstorms before they have a chance to damage crops and orchards. The problem is, of course, that while they may indeed be thwarting hailstorms (the actual effectiveness of such techniques continues to be hotly debated), they are also preventing badly needed rainfall that would accompany those storms. The reason that the cannon-shooters can afford to bypass that rainfall is that they own vast amounts of water rights and can irrigate to their heart's content. That's good for the crops and orchards; not so good for Fort Stockton's legendary springs.


• Along those lines, rumor has it that someone has developed an airplane-mounted hail cannon that can be fired at cloud level, thereby eliminating the noise on the ground that tips off the neighbors that the technique is being employed. Interesting concept. There was much active speculation about the type of person who would volunteer to fly a small plane near a thunderstorm in order to detonate explosive material.


• And speaking of airplanes, the Fort Stockton airport is literally buzzing with activity. Airplanes and helicopters of all sizes and types are using the field as a base for oilfield activity and firefighting efforts. The first is a good thing; the second not quite so good. National Forest Service firefighting crews are common around town, and finding them places to live is a real challenge. It appears that every space in every campground is occupied by a trailer, and they don't belong to tourists. There are reports of people living in motels for months on end while they wait for a house to come on the market to buy or lease. There again, evidence that a booming economy does have its downside.

I was going to post this yesterday, but then I got a letter from the city that rocked my world and I spent the rest of the day curled in a fetal position, trying to wrap my head around the impending change that will affect every important aspect of our lives: trash pickup in our neighborhood is changing from Monday and Thursday to Tuesday and Friday.

Sure, they're giving us three weeks notice, but they may as well have said "in three weeks you'll have to start putting your rolling carts on one of Jupiter's moons for pickup."

• I want to introduce you to my new meteorological measurement for assessing the severity of a West Texas windstorm: the Barrow Scale. As in, the number of wheel barrows of sand I have to shovel from my back drive following a windy day.
  The worst I've seen this year was back in early March when a storm rated 11 on the Barrow Scale. Last Wednesday's blow wasn't nearly as bad, but it's still rated a 3. Trust me, you don't want to have to sweep and shovel even that amount of sand.


• The National Weather Service reports that the first four months of 2008 rate as the ninth driest on record, with just .92" of rain recorded at the airport. I don't think they keep records for windy conditions, but I'm thinking 2008 ranks even higher in that category.


• But, the weather in our area can be funny, as the preceding article points out: Not that starting dry means anything. The driest start of the year in Midland came in 1986. Some may remember 1986 finished as the wettest on record with 32.13 inches. So, there's still hope. I'd love to shelve the Barrow Scale for the rest of the year.


• George over at Sleepless in Midland has devoted the last two weeks to in-depth coverage of the Midland arson trial. He did a fantastic job of summarizing each day's testimony and presenting it in a logical and objective fashion, and his extended post represents one of the more remarkable local blogging achievements in memory. That trial resulted in a not guilty verdict late yesterday afternoon, by the way, ending a couple of years of what must have been agonizing uncertainty for the defendants.


• Snake season has arrived, in case you haven't thought about it. Our next door neighbor killed a small rattler in his backyard last week. We're now adopting the Thousand Millimeter Stare whenever we let Abbye out after dark.


• This space reserved for your own important trivia. No need to thank me; it's what I do.

OK, that's enough. I now have to plan my new trash strategy. I'll let you know how that works out.

How not to treat your customers:

• Refuse to give out your telephone number.


• Accept email, but only if the originating email address is the one in your database associated with the original setup of the customer's account. As we all know, no one ever changes email addresses, so this is bound to be a good idea.


• Have links on your website to AIM chat accounts, but make sure you're always offline.


• Once the customer finally makes contact with you via an old phone number that he found in his file and used out of desperation, berate him strongly for doing so, and state that you never use this number for support, and warn the customer that he is to never use it again.


• When the customer explains the problem, tell him that it's his fault, not yours.

Sounds pretty bad, huh? Welcome to the wonderful world of HyTek Hosting, LLC, a Connecticut-based webhost apparently run by a group of doofuses that seems to prefer playing with their Xeons over pleasing their clients.

I'm not exaggerating in anything I wrote above, as I've had a client experience each one of those things over the last couple of days in an attempt to get their website back online after their credit card expired and their account was deactivated.

The account has finally been reactivated, but I assure you that it's only temporary, until another account with a host who at least puts on an act of valuing its customers can be established. Unfortunately for HyTek, those aren't very hard to find nowadays.

Bicycling Magazine runs an annual "Best of..." feature in its print edition where the editors pick their favorite bikes in various categories (e.g. Best Commuter Bike, Best Trail Bike, Best Racing Bike, etc.). This year their choice for the "Best Dream Road Bike" (the criteria for which is nebulous but apparently requires that the bike carry a wider-than-usual tag on which the price is written, IYKWIM) is the Crumpton SL Road, a hand-built carbon fiber-framed machine crafted by Nick Crumpton in Austin, Texas.

This jewel of a bike weighs just over 15 pounds and there's one with your name on it – or at least containing your detailed specifications – if you have the patience (one guy can turn out only so many bikes each year) and almost $9,000*.

You'll also have to provide some very specific information about your body, including the length of your femur and the distance from the middle of your sternum to your crotch. Crumpton provides a quite jocular skeleton on its order form to help you figure out your anatomy, if you're challenged in that regard.

If you have the patience and the money, you'll be rewarded with a bike that rides as smoothly as a "wait-list-only cabernet," whatever that means. And, you'll likely be the only person on the block to have one.

*Before you gasp too strongly at the price, consider that the runner-up in this category is the Parlee Z1 which lists for $12,800, and the third place bike, the Seven V-II goes for $10,900, making the Crumpton a relative bargain.

No one ever accused me of being on the cutting edge of anything. I'm behind the curve in all areas of life, slow on the uptake. I defend myself as intelligently cautious; those who know me would say that I'm just clueless. Anyway, I offer that as an excuse as to why I'm just now posting about a book that was published in 2003 and which has been mentioned many times by many better bloggers and writers.

First, I have to give credit to Jim over at Serotoninrain, who was the first to get my attention about Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. Jim is pretty much the antithesis to me when it comes to books, as he's always the first to find the good stuff, and you'd think that by now I'd learn to just immediately go buy and read whatever he recommends instead of waiting, like, five years. (I'd link to some of his posts that referenced the book but I think they were pre-Wordpress and therefore not searchable.)

But, then, it occurred to me that not everyone I know is as cool as Jim and it's entirely possible that some of you haven't read Blue Like Jazz either. This post is for you, especially if you are a Christian (or if you're curious about what it means to be a Christian).

Listen carefully: read this book. It takes just a few hours – a Sunday afternoon works great – and I promise that you'll come away with some new ways to think about Christianity. More to the point, you'll be challenged to look at your own flavor of Christianity through a new lens, and particularly if you grew up in the Bible Belt in a mainstream evangelical church.

Miller opens his heart and allows the lifeblood to spill onto the pages of his book as he describes what it means to be a sinner held fast in the arms of a loving God. His witness and testimony isn't powerful because of his theological or hermeneutic prowess; it's powerful because he tells what Jesus has done for him.

Along the way, he also manages to entertain the reader; this is no dry and somber work. It's often playful, even juvenile in a Dave Barryish kind of way. One of my favorite passages is taken from a chapter about money, where he describes what it's like to be a poor writer (this passage could, by the way, apply to bloggers, with the exception of the overstatement of how much they get paid):

Christianity Today describes Miller as "Anne Lamott with testosterone" and compares Blue Like Jazz with Lamott's excellent Traveling Mercies. I wouldn't disagree; both books are now in my "read again every so often" collection, both for the writers' skill and for their messages. (Miller shares Lamott's dislike for Republicans and corporations, although he's not as rabid about it. The strength of my recommendation for this book is directly proportional to the negativism with which you assimilate this observation, as it gets right to the heart of what Christians should be about.)

You may be wondering about the book's title. The phrase comes from an almost-throwaway line in a passage about the beauty of the Grand Canyon at night, where Miller describes the stars as "...notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz." He writes about jazz a few times through the book, beginning with the introductory author's note, where he relates how he never liked jazz until he saw a man on a sidewalk playing a saxophone for fifteen minutes, and the man never opened his eyes. After that, he liked jazz; the musician's love for it was that infectious.

That, my friends, is how we are to be about Jesus, never taking our eyes off him. Because that's the surest way to show others how to love him, too.

Summer is fast approaching, and that's prime novel-reading season. I've read three novels in the past month or so, something of a record for me, and wanted to share some observations in case you're getting summer book-buying fever. (Note: There are no plot spoilers in these mini-reviews.)

The Blue Star - Tony Earley
A review copy of this book arrived, unsolicited, on my doorstep in late February. I knew nothing about it or its author, and the jacket blurb telling me that the writer was also responsible for Jim the Boy did little to work up my enthusiasm for the thin volume. I finally threw it in a suitcase and determined to work my way through it during a trip, more out of a sense of obligation than anything else...and ended up kicking myself for ignoring one of the more delightful books I've had the pleasure to read in a long time.

There's nothing particularly dramatic or edgy about The Blue Star, which is set in a small North Carolina town during the run-up to America's entrance into WWII. Tony Earley has crafted a character-driven novel that's beguiling in its simplicity, and soothing in its pace. If you're a fan of Jan Karon's trillion-selling Mittford series, I think you'll find The Blue Star has the same ambiance. I recommend it highly for a stress-free warm weather indulgence.

Ant Rating:

The Good Guy - Dean Koontz
Koontz's novel is almost a year old, and so all of his fans have already read it. But if you don't fall into that category, and you're looking for an edge-of-the-seat "action/suspense" novel that grabs hold and doesn't let go, you won't be disappointed in this one.

Koontz creates one of the most creepily competent bad guys since Hannibal Lector, and pits him against an enigmatic-but-just-as-competent – are you ready? – good guy. The result is not art, but it's a perfect poolside page-turner.

Ant Rating:

Blasphemy - Douglas Preston
Then we come to this waste of paper by another well-known creative type who seems to be just phoning it in. Preston has authored (or co-authored along with Lincoln Child) some very good novels, but this isn't one of them. He's pulled in every stereotypical character and every lame plot twist you can imagine and concocted a big mess. My advice is to avoid it like the plague. Try Tyrannosaur Canyon if you want some of the same characters in a better setting.

Ant Rating:

• From the "Time to Get a Life" Files: By now, you've probably seen the AT&T GoPhone ad featuring future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Meat Loaf, 80s teen diva Tiffany, and actor Adam Cagley (playing the couple's progeny – no, it's not Meat Loaf's actual child; he has no sons, according to Wikipedia). The short version is what plays most often, but the long version is more entertaining (choose "Paradise by the GoPhone Light" on the preceding link), especially if you're into obscure rock references. However, judging by this thread about the commercial [naughty language warning] over at Stereogum, some people are having a difficult time divorcing advertising from reality. Rev. Jeremiah Wright could take a lesson in bombasticity from these folks.


• I started to devote an entire Usability Hall of Shame post to this, because bad design isn't limited to websites. Anyway, am I the only one who can't open a bottle of H-E-B brand Half & Half without bringing in a toolbox from the garage? The foil seals on those containers are so tight that researchers investigating the strongest sub-atomic bonds would do well to include a bottle in their next experiment.


• Mother's Day is just around the corner. If you're stumped for a special present, why not give the gift of fish eggs? Just be sure to tell her that the $2,000/pound Caspian Sevruga caviar isn't bait.


• Speaking of upcoming events, we're only about two months away from the start of the next Tour de France. Race officials have reportedly been working overtime to ensure there's no embarrassing repeat of last year's fiasco when they ran short of subpoenas and disqualification letters. In fact, they're ahead of the game in that they've already prepared a full list of allegations against Lance Armstrong.


• From the "Flying Pigs in Frozen Hell" files: Only through the magic of RSS could you find the Gazette sharing billing with The Huffington Post on the New York Times website. I'm not sure who should be more offended. Click the teensy pic below to see the sordid details:

In closing, I wanted to share this tidbit with you weather fans. I switched on The Weather Channel yesterday afternoon around 5:00 p.m. and its report on the conditions in downtown Midland showed the relative humidity to be 3%. Three percent! I've never seen a reading that low, and you know it's dry when the record low humidity in Phoenix is 2%.

Over the years, I've built hundreds of websites. However, I sometimes worry that what I've really done is build one website hundreds of times. Such is the nature of any recurring creative endeavor, especially when working for a client. There's a continual struggle between trying to keep things fresh while keeping the customer's wants and needs at the forefront. There's also a tendency to fall back on the approaches and layouts that have worked in the past (not an altogether bad thing, of course, assuming that they'll continue to work into the reasonable future).

Which brings me to the current hoohaw around Annie Leibovitz's photograph of Miley Cyrus* for Vanity Fair. If you've just emerged from a cave after years of seclusion, you still know what I'm referring to, and it's not my intention to hash out the details of something to which millions of words have already been applied. There's no lack of culpable parties to which blame can be easily assigned (although I'll say that the one party who shouldn't be blamed is, oddly enough, Vanity Fair, any more than one blames a rattlesnake for biting the foot of someone who steps on it. That's what rattlesnakes do, and everyone knows it. Vanity Fair also has a natural and reliable role in lowering the bar for public decency and decorum).

What I want to focus on instead is Leibovitz's unimaginative photographic work that resulted in the Lolita-ization of a fifteen-year-old girl. The photographer claims that her work was "misinterpreted" but no one is buying that. You don't become that skilled at celebrity portraiture without knowing precisely the reaction the shot will engender in its viewers.

But, in the end, regardless of the moral or ethical implications of the photos in question, what Leibovitz did was clichéd and smacks of someone trying to collect a paycheck as quickly as possible. What was she thinking? "Oh, here's a cute and perky girl whose reputation is wholesome and charming. What kind of picture should I take? Oh, I know...let's make her pouty and sullen and have her throw a knowing look over a bare shoulder. That's never been done!"

Leibovitz may have been working an agenda at the same time, but that doesn't make the result any less disappointing from a creative perspective, especially for an artist whose prior claim to fame was the ability to capture the true personality of her subjects in a photograph. Miley Cyrus deserved better than that, and Annie Leibovitz can do better than that.

*I know...two posts that include mentions to Miley Cyrus in one day. But look at it this way: that averages out to one reference every two years.