When we were in Vegas last year, Chris told me about a book that he was reading called “Amazing Grace.” He was finding it immensely meaningful, to the point where he bestowed a copy on me at Christmas. I’ve been gradually chewing it up since, and have found it quite a read.

Kathleen Norris was brought up in church, but decided upon reaching maturity that she didn’t buy into what was taught there. Twenty years later, as much to her own surprise as anyone else’s, she found herself returning to Christianity. She had a difficult struggle with that return, largely due to “scary words” — the vocabulary of the church which, as a poet, she took very seriously.

The book consists of a series of meditations on various words associated with Christianity. They mingle reflections on scriptural texts, stories, poetry, and her own experiences and thoughts into some excellent, thought-provoking reading. Since she has spent a lot of time both in and out of the church, her matter-of-fact, straightforward writing is very accessible both to those who watch TBN and those who cringe at churchspeak. Though I wasn’t always comfortable with everything she had to say, I found the book a consistently challenging and enjoyable read. Highly recommended.

I’ve been continuing to adhere (more or less) to the Testosterone Advantage Plan, and have now dropped to 199 pounds — 19 pounds lower than my starting weight. I’ve been less and less rigorous about the diet plan, sticking less to the prescribed meals and just generally trying to eat a lot of protein and healthier fats, but am still making steady progress.

Though the book promises higher energy levels and better health in general, one of the effects that has very much surprised me since being on the program is that my chronic reflux has all but vanished — I haven’t reached for an antacid in weeks, even though I often drink most of a gallon of tea a day. I continue to be suprised and delighted with how well things are going, especially after the poor luck I had with the low-fat diet/aerobic exercise approach I’d been using before.

I’m planning to visit the doctor soon to check and see whether all this meat has done unsavory things to my cholesterol levels. It should be interesting to find out if there are any negative side effects to this otherwise positive program.

A few months back, I read an article in Texas Monthly entitled “Willie Nelson’s Favorite Clean Jokes.” My favorite of them was this:

A duck walks into a bar and says to the bartender, “Hey bartender! Have you got any grapes?” The bemused bartender replies “No, we don’t have any grapes.” The duck, unfazed, walks out.

The next day the duck returns and says “Hey bartender, have you got any grapes?” The bartender, recognizing the duck from the day before, says “Nope. We don’t have any grapes.” Not having any luck, the duck leaves.

The third day, the duck returns. “Hey bartender! Have you got any grapes?” The bartender is, by this point, fed up with the duck’s constant requests for grapes. “NO! We didn’t have grapes the day before yesterday, we didn’t have them yesterday, we don’t have them today, we won’t have them tomorrow! This is a BAR! If you come in asking for grapes once more, I’m going to nail your big duck feet to this bar!” The duck, a bit taken aback, leaves the bar.

The next day, sure enough, the duck appears again. “Hey bartender! Have you got any nails?” The bartender, surprised by the change in routine, says “No, I don’t have any nails.” “Well, in that case,” replies the duck, “Have you got any grapes?”

Emily quickly decided that this was one of her favorite jokes too, and started telling it to anyone who would listen. She does a good job with the joke, and I always find her joke-telling charming. I didn’t have any idea what effect it was having until this week, after she’s been off in New York for a week and a half, Liam started trying to tell the joke. He mangled it horribly, which made it funny enough, but the capper is that he has started to suddenly, apropos of nothing, blurt out loudly at random moments:

“HEY BARTENDER! HAVE YOU GOT ANY GRAPES?”

Monday morning, Emily and I both got up at 6:00am to head for the Austin airport, where she would be catching a flight to Buffalo to spend several weeks with Kathy’s folks and Martha. Emily was far too excited to eat, and I far too tired, so we hopped directly in the car and drove to Austin.

As we approached the security checkpoint after getting Emily’s bag checked and shelling out the $75 extortion they make unaccompanied minors pay, I realized that I still had my Leatherman with me — an accessory that would surely not go over well with airport security. I candidly told the security workers of my predicament, and asked if they could hold my knife for me for a few minutes while I escorted Emily to her gate. “You either have to take it back to your car or check it into your bag,” they instructed me, hardly useful advice since I wasn’t going anywhere and didn’t have a bag.

Not wanting to make the trek all the way back to the car, I ducked into a nearby restroom and stashed the offending knife in the toilet seat cover dispenser, where I thought it unlikely to be found. (One doesn’t ever realize what a paucity of places there are to hide things in aiports until one goes looking.)
Relieved of the offending metal, I took Emily to her gate where we sat and watched barn swallows swoop around outside the big windows and talked about the trip. Eventually boarding began, and I somewhat mistily (due both to emotion and lingering fatigue) got her on the plane.

I made my way back to the bathroom where my knife was stashed, and was horrified to find that it was closed for cleaning! Argh! I loitered for a bit, trying to decide what to do. The Leatherman was a gift — I couldn’t very well leave it. But I was pretty sure that the airport staff wouldn’t be very amused if I tried to explain what had gone on.

Eventually, in what felt like a pretty daring covert operation to a white-collar rule-following city boy like me, I snuck into the side of the bathroom where my knife was while the custodian cleaned the other side and retrieved it. Though I was sure the wild pounding of my heart would give me away, I made it out without incident, and walked quickly away without looking back.

Sorry we’ve been out of touch lately, folks. Our web hosting provider has been dealing with some catastrophic failures, and all of our Internet communications have suffered as a result. As you can see, this site is now working again, and our email should be up as well shortly.

To celebrate, I’m testing out a new feature for the site, thanks to Stephen’s Web. Now, if you link to this site from yours, and a couple people follow that link, a link back to your site will automatically be added to the bottom of every page on mcmains.net. Neato, eh?

I stayed up late the last two nights reading Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity (which has recently been turned into a movie). Before switching to this book, I had been reading Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule, and was beginning to suspect that having four kids had eroded my attention span to the point where I couldn’t concentrate long enough to read thick novels. Fortunately, it turned out that the Goodkind book was just a stinker; I devoured The Bourne Identity quickly and in long stretches.

The plot centers around an amnesiac who who wakes without any idea of his own identity. As he recovers from the wounds that caused the memory loss, he starts to get clues to his past from his subconscious — unexplained phrases, impressions, and abilities that hint at his life before. The gradual unfurling of his history creates a nice overall story arc, with enough unexpected twists and well-written action to keep one flipping pages well into the night. Well worth a read.

I’ve reached a breaking point with Spam. I signed up with SpamCop, but reporting spams doesn’t seem to be as effective as it used to be. (Or maybe more spammers have my address now.) I’ve been looking at various options for spam management, and have come up with two general classes of deterrent:

1. Client-side tools: these work by scanning your email account and removing spam, and then allowing your mail program to retrieve the remaining mail. The advantage to these is that they’re easy to use. The disadvantage is that they work best with a single email account. Among the most regarded of these for Mac OS X is SpamFire, which I’m currently evaluating.
2. Server-side tools: these run right on the mail server, and filter mail as it arrives. They tend to be harder to configure and use, and you have to administer your own mail server to be able to make use of them. The best tools appear to be UNIX-only, due to the fact that it has a very flexible infrastructure for handling mail. On the upside, they’re more efficient and can handle spam filtering for all the accounts on the server.

Though I really like the ease of use of the client-side solutions, I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that I may be best off setting up a mail server at the house and pointing my domains there. So, technical questions for those of you who are good at this sort of thing:

I assume a Pentium 133 running Linux would be capable of handling mail server duties. How difficult is it to set up a POP3/IMAP server on a Linux box? To get mail delivered to it, would I need to do anything other than altering the MX records for the affected domains to point to the appropriate machine? Can I use DynDNS to resolve that machine’s actual IP address, or is something trickier required? Anything else I should know?

My neighbor Grant Mazak has a band named, oddly enough, The Grant Mazak Band. I’ve sat in with them while rehearsing a time or two before, but it looks like I’ll be starting to play with them regularly. My first performance with the band will be Sunday at 4:00pm at the Cheatham Street Warehouse, a cool little venue in town that has helped to launch the likes of George Strait and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

As you might have guessed, Grant’s band does mostly country, with a bit of Americana and other stuff blended in for variety. I haven’t spent much time with the genre before, so it’ll be interesting to learn a new branch of music. Additionally, Grant & Co. are all excellent musicians, so I stand to learn a fair bit from my time with them. Should be great fun. Y’all come!

Our friends Steve & Rene Johnson have decided that they’ll be taking a job with the Salvation Army up in Kansas. We’re awfully sorry to see them go, but it looks like an excellent opportunity for them. They’ll have a place to live provided, a decent salary, and will have the opportunity to work with the poor and homeless, who have always been close to their hearts. They’ll be moving at the end of the month. Best of luck, Johnsons!

We’ve had a tremendous amount of rain here, due to some very odd storm patterns coming up from the gulf of Mexico. San Marcos has been under a flash flood watch or flash flood warning since Saturday, and the rains were still coming this morning. San Antonio has been hardest hit, with lots of roads shut down, water feet-deep in places, and chaos generally reigning. Fortunately, most of my relatives are on high ground. Stay safe, you guys!