Joyce and I were in Oxford over Memorial Day weekend for two events. One was a mini-reunion for my high school graduating class celebrating our 60th birthdays. Of course the birthdays are scattered from January to December, but for most of us, it will happen sometime this year. Mine happened in January. I don't feel 60, don't act 60 and neither do most of my classmates.

The second reason for being in town was for a book-signing for my memoir book, Oxpatch and the Hill - Dixieland Memories, at Square Books. It's a great place to have your books sold, right there along with John Grisham, Larry Brown, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Willie Morris and other Oxford authors. I can't say that my book signing turned out the same kind of crowd that Grisham's does, but it was fun for me. Several classmates dropped by, as did family members and a number of old family friends. I had a great time. I also left behin ...

I am always reading a book, sometimes two or three. There will be one in my upstairs bathroom for bathtub reading and one in my downstairs bathroom and perhaps another on my desk. I generally read 2 or 3 pages at a time unless I'm really hooked on something, then I might read for 20 minutes or so. I don't have the time for long reading sessions, especially since I have to use my eyes so much in my work.

When I finish a book, I generally look around for something else to read. That something else showed up courtesy of UPS yesterday and it was by an author I know fairly well--me. The book was Eagle Behind the Curtain, a novel I wrote many years ago, then forgot about. Now that we have print-on-demand capabilities and a full blown publishing company, I decided to put it into print. 

I picked it up and put it down several times throughout the evening, not sure if I could stay interested. A ...

Have you ever noticed how our children (now grandchildren to me) love to show us their boo-boos. It's just a part of life. Actually, it's more of a need than a want. I think we grown-ups have that need, too. This morning I was mowing and I got too close to one of the locust trees and it scratched my arm. No big deal; it happens every week. But when my wife Joyce came out to move the platform the grandkids use to reach their zip line so I could mow in that spot, I had to show her the scratchs in my arm and let her fuss over them a bit. As I drove off the mower apparently picked up a rock and hit her in the neck. It didn't break the skin, just stung a little and she could have gone inside and I'd have never know about it. Instead, she waited until I looked her way and pointed at her neck and made a face that said, "that hurt!"

As we mature, our boo-boos, or "owies", usually come more in the way of emotional hurts rather than skinned knees or&n ...

The media sure is trying to create a recession! Have you paid attention to this? Every election year in which there's a republican in office, the media tries to create a recession. They want people to believe a) it's the president's fault and b) it's only because it's a republican president. They're so full of it!

This week the financial announcements have been positive, at least 7 out of 10 of the leading indicators. Jobless claims were down, unemployment up, stock market up, higher-than-expected profits from numerous major companies. Then right after the financial news in which these things are almost begrudgingly reported, some announcer comes on with a report about some survey in which "seven out of ten Americans believe we're either in or headed to a recession."

Please, make your own decisions. Don't let the media lead you into believing what they want you to believe because of whatever their agenda happens to be. If you're a lib ...

I sometimes listen to a local AM news station during my morning drive to work, primarily for traffic information. I got really amused the other day when their lead story wasn't a story at all, yet they had nothing else so they refused to let it go. They built it up -- "Fire in a Senior Assisted Living High Rise in Dallas". They kept us in suspense. Yet when they finally got to the story, it was nothing. One guy had gone to sleep in a chair with a cigarette that had burned some of the upholstery and made a little smoke. He was fine. There was no evacuation - nothing. But it was their lead story, so they had to make us think something terrible had happened.

Do you know that about the media? They feed on sensationalism and controversy. They want to get you upset AND often they want their message told, whether it's true or not.

Take the Iraq war. All the news about it is bad. Yet those of us who have friends or family members there receive all kin ...

I make my living with computers, so it's all right for me to hate them sometimes, okay? Last weekend, probably Sunday night, somebody hacked our servers and took our websites down with a worm. It couldn't have been easy. We're in a professional hosting environment with all the latest security measures in place, and we don't use email servers, or allow any posting by unauthorized people

Fortunately, I had current backups. To make sure we had eliminated any of the threat, we rebuilt two of our servers. It's never so simple as reloading the software, then reloading the data. Over the course of several years, there's a bunch of customized software and settings that goes into place. We have client logins, server SSL certificates, special dll's to perform certain tasks and who knows what else. Sometimes we don't catch it all until a customer complains about some feature not working. I know, I know, we should know and keep up with all of that stuff, but you try it and let me know how to ...

It was cold last night. When I got home, the house was dark. A box of books had arrived from UPS that I needed to autograph and ship to the bookstore in my hometown.

When I went out to greet the dog, I noticed a pile of firewood on the deck. "What a nice night to build a fire, sit at the table in front of it, sign books, then do some of my computer work on the laptop," I thought. So, I built a fire, hauled the books into the kitchen and opened up the laptop. Except for the fact I wasn't drinking coffee and don't look like a TV model, it was a scenario worthy of a TV commercial.

Except:  It took all of five minutes to sign the books, even with me trying to be careful and sign my name legibly. The laptop power cord wouldn't reach any outlets and within 10 minutes, the 6 hour, fully-charged battery was drained and the screen was telling me to save my work or else.  Then the wife came home. "Wh ...

It was my birthday. Saturday night, 1/5/2008, we were at Nathan's house, sitting at their dining table eating pizza using paper towels for plates. The table is one of those heavy, rustic jobs with benches instead of chairs.

There was a motion at my left side. Grandaughter #2, Abby, who will be two next month, was scooting her paper towel, with a slice of pizza and her spillproof cup sitting on it, inch by inch toward me so she could SIT CLOSER!!!

She wasn't doing it to be noticed, because nobody was really watching. She really wanted to be closer to Grandaddy. Talk about capturing a grandaddy's heart!

I was talking with daughter-in-law, Joanna, later about the seven grandchildren. I love seeing the differences in their personalities. From the oldest to the youngest (ages 8 to 2), they all have distinctive personalities. Great kids with great parents.

I turn 60 this month. It doesn't feel like I thought 60 would feel. My mind is still young and full of ideas for the future. My body has a hard time keeping up, but that's because I've abused it more than because of age. Getting back into shape is sure a lot harder than staying it shape. I should have paid more attention years ago.

One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, wrote something about aging. He said if your life was a book, when you get to a point where you realize there are more pages in your left hand than in your right, you start paying more attention to the pages that are left. And you become very conscious of not wanting the story to end. In some ways I'm like that. I can look back and of course I have a few regrets, but all in all, it has been a pretty good ride. I look ahead and there is still so much I want to do, I don't even think about if I have enough years left or not. I just plan to keep on doing as long as my mind and body will let me.

The first copies of Oxpatch and the Hill - Dixieland Memories are shipping this week. We didn't make it in time for Christmas, but at least we got them out during 2007. This book has been a long time in the making. I think I first started making notes about it fifteen or twenty years ago. When it did come together, it wasn't without a lot of help. I won't review the acknowledgements here--they're all in the front of the book--but I am grateful to a lot of people.

Now, I'm on with more projects. Eagle Behind the Curtain is a novel I wrote back in 1995, but didn't publish. It's a story about a retired super-spy, now in business, who embarks on a mission into Soviet Russian in a stealth airplane to bring out a doctor who has discovered a remarkable and effective cure for cancer. The story explores Soviet culture during the last days of communism. It has plent ...