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Gone to the Birds

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A little bit about the birds in my life.

This morning, my rooster started crowing at 4:03 AM. I know this because I heard him. We’re getting on to the time of year when you can leave windows open all night. I think one of the bedroom windows must be open a crack because I heard him quite clearly this morning. I was already awake, of course, so it didn’t really bother me. It just reminded me that I have a rooster. And it made me wonder whether my new neighbors — the folks that moved into the pink house on 328th Avenue — could hear him. And whether he bothered them.

My closest neighbors must hear him pretty good. I asked them once if he bothered them and they assured me that he didn’t. They like the sound. That’s good to know. But when you consider that he does most of his crowing before sunrise, it makes you wonder how early they get up.

One of my other neighbors had a rooster for a while. I could tell because I’d hear crowing far off sometimes, when it wasn’t my rooster. Then the crowing stopped and I knew the coyotes had paid Mr. Rooster a visit.

The coyotes have paid my chickens numerous visits. The first time was way back with my first batch of 8 chickens, all hens, which I used to let out during the day. They’d come down the driveway to where the horses live and spend the morning scratching around in the sand for bugs and other chicken delicacies. One afternoon, when they all came back to roost, there were only five of them. Three had disappeared without a trace. You’d think the horses would protect them, but no. Horses have no interest in chickens.

A funny story here. Every night during the summer’s monsoon season, we have to move our horses out of their lower corral, because it’s in a flood zone, to spend the night in their much smaller upper corral. The upper corral has fence-hung feeders. I’d go to the upper corral in the evening and prepare it by adding hay and a grain mixture we call “bucket” to each feeder before bringing up the horses. The chickens were usually out and about and even though they don’t have enough brains to fill a shot glass, they figured out that there was grain in the feeders. So once in a while, they’d hop up there and scratch around a bit. One day, when I brought the horses up, Jake, our unflappable Quarter Horse, stuck his head in his feeder to get at the grain and immediately pulled it out. A chicken popped out, onto the ground, and ran away. Jake seemed to let out a deep sigh before he stuck his head back in for dinner.

I currently have three hens and a rooster. Over the years, I’ve lost lots of chickens to coyotes, which is why a coyote tail hangs from my Honda’s rearview mirror. More recently, however, the problem has been my neighbor’s dogs. I like my neighbors and I like their dogs. We live outside the town limits, at the end of a dead-end road. There are only three houses out here and we all have dogs. Although leashes are technically required — this is Maricopa County — none of us pay much attention to that. Instead, we’ve trained our dogs to stay nearby. Dogs don’t necessarily understand property lines, so our dogs occasionally stray onto each others’ property. No big deal there. My neighbor’s dogs, Bo and Trixie, often come up to my house to visit my dog, Jack. Sometimes they go down to the wash and play together. They play rough — too rough for my brother’s dog, who came to visit for Thanksgiving. But they have fun and they don’t really bother anyone.

That is, until Bo and Trixie discovered that if they dug under the fence, they could get at the chickens. The fence was my effort to contain the chickens so the coyotes would stop getting them. Coyotes are evidently lazy and are not interested in the hard labor of digging under a fence. Bo and Trixie, on the other hand, like to dig. The chickens gave them a reward for good digging. So one day, they dug under the fence, got in, and had a good chicken dinner, leaving only two live chickens behind as mute witnesses.

At first, I thought the coyotes had done the dirty deed. But then I realized that whoever had done it had left parts. Coyotes don’t leave parts. They take the whole chicken in their mouth and trot off with it. I’ve seen them do this. But I wasn’t putting two and two together yet so I figured it was the coyotes. So we reinforced the bottom of the fence with stakes and filled in the holes and got some more chickens, including the current rooster.

One day around Thanksgiving, I’m lounging around the house with my house guests and there’s a knock on the door. That in itself is amazing; no one ever knocks on our door. No one can ever find our house. If you know where our house is, it’s likely that you know us well enough to just open the door and holler “Hello?” I opened the door and found my neighbor’s three little kids standing there. They’re aged 4 to 8 or something like that. Two boys and their older sister. “Our dogs are eating your chickens,” they reported.

I threw on my shoes and ran down the driveway, followed closely by my brother and whoever else was around. Sure enough, the dogs were in the chicken yard. But these chickens had some survival skills — quite impressive for chickens — and had retreated into the upper part of the coop. The dogs were unable to catch them.

We got the dogs out and secured the chickens in the upper coop, where I knew they’d be safe. We patched up the hole Bo and Trixie had made. And a few weeks later, we installed an electric fence around the outside bottom edge of the fenced-in yard. I was there one day when Bo touched it. He went yelping back home and didn’t return for over a week. Needless to say, they don’t try getting into the chicken coop anymore.

The chickens, however, must be traumatized by all these close calls. Only one of the three hens lays eggs. I get about 5 eggs a week from her. The other two are freeloaders. They don’t know how lucky they are. My chicken-raising book advises you to eat the chickens that stop laying.

PhotoI also have a bird in the house. Alex the Bird is an African Grey parrot. As I type this at my kitchen table, Alex is practicing his vocabulary. “Jack, no! You’re bad! Are you cranky? Hello Mikey. Are you a duck? Gimme that thing. Jack, no! Alex! Hey goober. Fatso. Come on Jack. Wanna go upside down? Are you a chicken? Are you a cow? Are you a cranky bird? Ricky bird. Alex, are you cranky? Alex is a maniac. Okay, Alex the Bird. Hello. Hey, you goober. See you later alligator.” You get the idea. He’s 2-1/2 years old and he says a ton of stuff. In fact, he’s forgotten half of what he used to know. It’s pretty amazing considering that he’ll live to be about 50. By the time I’m dead and gone, he’ll be talking better than most people I know.

Alex also does sound effects, like the dog whining, my cell phone, and the squeal of the back screen door (which no longer squeals, but Alex squeals anyway every time we open it). He whistles pretty darn good, too. Right now, I’m teaching him the theme for the “Andy Griffith Show,” which I downloaded from the Internet. Every once in a while, I play it a few times for him. He practices in the morning — like right now — and I repeat back the part he’s trying to do to reinforce the correct stuff.

African Grey parrots are incredible companion pets. They thrive on attention and will learn to say whatever you take the time to teach them. Like all other birds, they’re messy, but if you have a dog that likes bird food, a lot of the mess is cleaned up as it happens. Every morning, in fact, when Alex has his breakfast (scrambled eggs), he drops half of it on the floor where Jack is waiting to gobble it up. Sometimes I think he drops the food on purpose just to watch Jack.

Unlike the typical African Grey (at least according to most books and articles I’ve read), Alex is extremely affectionate and likes to be cuddled. I hug him every morning before I put him back in his cage for the day and every night before I put him back in his cage for bed. He also likes to play rough. I hold him upside down by his feet and tickle his belly. Although he makes some fussy noises sometimes — his way of saying, “Cut that out!” — I know he likes it. It’s the attention, I think. He trusts me and knows I won’t hurt him. So although our rough play should be scary to him, it isn’t.

There are a lot of wild birds around Wickenburg, too. Hummingbirds abound. I used to keep feeders filled for them, but I’ve been slacking off. I don’t spend enough time at home to watch them. There are also quail, doves, Gila woodpeckers, thrushes, orioles, and more others than I know. When I had my office in the house, I recall looking up out the window one morning to see a Gambels quail dad leading his six or seven baby chicks to a shady spot in my flower garden. I watched them lounge for quite a while, transfixed. The babies were so cute! Then dad decided to move the troop on and they hopped out of sight.

We also have roadrunners here, although I don’t see them very often. Roadrunners are most often found in sandy washes and places where they can find lizards and snakes, which they eat. I was in Lake Havasu City the other day, chatting with some folks at the Nautical Inn when we spotted a roadrunner standing on the deck of a building less than 50 feet away. One of the men told us a story about an exchange between a roadrunner and a coyote that he had witnessed. The two animals faced off with a long chain-link fence between them. The roadrunner made cackling noises, and walked back and forth on his side of the fence, teasing the coyote. The coyote walked back and forth. Little by little, the roadrunner and coyote got closer and closer to the end of the fence. Finally, the coyote seized his chance. He took off, darting around the edge of the fence. But the roadrunner was quicker. He took off (they do know how to fly) and sailed over the fence, landing on the other side. Then they faced off again, on opposite sides of the fence, and the roadrunner started cackling all over again. It was quite clear who was smarter (in case those cartoons didn’t convince you) and the roadrunner was definitely having some fun at the coyote’s expense.

We don’t get many birds in the yard anymore, probably because of Jack the Dog. He chases all animals out of the yard. That’s okay, though. There are plenty of other places for them to go. I’m sure I could get some back if I put out seed for them, but Jack is actually quite good at catching doves and I really don’t want to see any more dead doves on my doorstep. (And they say cats are bad.)There are three red tailed hawks in the area. They live near the golf course on Steinway Road. I often see them together on the power lines there. The are also turkey vultures in town. They just got back from wherever it is that they go for the winter. They look wonderful in flight and many observers mistake them for hawks. But there’s no mistaking them when they’re on the ground around a dead cow. They’re downright ugly!We have owls, too. There was one that lived in the state land out behind my house. Every evening, just after sunset, he’d fly out for his nighttime hunt. He’d land on a tree behind our house and hoot for a bit, then soar past our house and land on the top of a power pole on 328th Avenue. We saw him nearly every day for weeks. And we often saw or heard him coming in early in the morning. But one day, he misjudged his landing on the power pole. His wings evidently touched the power lines in just the wrong way. Fried. We found him on the ground near the power pole. The next day, his body was gone.

That’s the way things are here in the desert. Every animal — dead or alive — is a meal for another animal. Nature keeps a delicate balance here that really isn’t a balance at all. For example, because of all the rain we’re having, there’s a lot of grass. That means there’s plenty of food for the rabbits. That means there will be plenty of rabbits this spring and summer. Rabbits are good food for coyotes. So next year, there will be lots of coyotes. It happened the last time we had an El Niño year, so I know what to expect.

That’s all for now; I need my second cup of coffee. And my rooster is crowing again.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves…

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…and other ranting book reviews revisited.

Just want to say a few quick things that came to mind yesterday evening in the shower, after I’d written too much about all the books I’ve been reading. (I’m referring, of course, to the entry titled “Writer’s Block Still Sucks” in the “Writing – For Pleasure” category.)

First of all, Eats, Shoots & Leaves did indeed make me laugh out loud. Really. More than once, too. But I read a review on Amazon.com where the reviewer absolutely hated the author’s sense of humor.

As for Bird by Bird, I really did get pretty sick of the paranoia and hypochondria jokes the author kept spitting out. It really turned me off to the book. (That and the fact that I didn’t learn anything from it other than the benefit of carrying around a few index cards and a pen everywhere I go.) Yet some of the reviewers on Amazon.com thought the author was outrageously funny.

As for State of Fear, the bestselling author in question really did leave quite a few loose ends in his book. Very untidy.

I have a theory about my reactions to these books. I think my problem is that I read too fast. For example, I can get through a novel in a matter of hours. As a result, the book is still very fresh in my mind throughout the reading process. So when an author makes the same kind of stupid jokes over and over, they really can get on my nerves. And when an author forgets to tie up lose ends, I still remember the end from when it was originally loosened. Someone who reads slower might forget some of these things, or maybe even not notice them.

Of course, I could just be a picky, opinionated bitch, looking for an excuse to make is sound as if I’m not so picky, opinionated, or bitchy.

Whatever.

Writer’s Block Still Sucks

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As unlikely as it may seem to regular readers of these blogs, I’m still suffering from writer’s block.

Writer’s block? How could Maria be suffering from writer’s block? She writes blog entries several times a week and she still writes the computer books that pay the bills. How could she possibly think she’s blocked?

That’s what some of you might be thinking. And frankly, I think it, too. But I’m sure writer’s block is the problem. Sadly, I still can’t figure out what’s causing it.

Back in June, I wrote a blog entry complaining about writer’s block. Back then, I was having trouble writing almost anything I needed to write. No, not needed. Wanted. I couldn’t write anything I wanted to write.

That included fiction and eBooks for an eBook publisher I was writing for.

I still haven’t written another eBook for David. And, what’s bothering me most is the fact that I haven’t written a single new word of the mystery book I’ve been trying so hard to write.

Well, obviously I haven’t been trying hard enough. But let’s not go there, okay?

And this problem is making me feel miserable.

(Of course, it could be the weather that’s making me feel miserable. It’s been cloudy and rainy for a long time now — days, in fact — and I’m really not used to it. I live in Arizona where it’s sunny most of the time. This El Nino weather system we’ve been experiencing is great for the desert and the cattle and the wildlife and the wildflowers. But it’s making me understand why Seattle has the highest suicide rate in the world. It’s depressing!)

The problem is, I have an overwhelming need to write. I think that’s one of the reasons I write these blog entries. Something inside of me demands that I share my thoughts with others. Blogs make it easy. They also give me the freedom to write whatever I want to write about. So I don’t have to write 650 pages about how to use Mac OS X 10.4. (Well, actually, I do. But not in my spare time. Just during that 7 to 3 workday.) I can write about anything. The weather, politics, flying, or having a bad case of writer’s block.

Last time I wrote about writer’s block, someone e-mailed me with a lengthy message that advised me to read a specific book. There was a lot in that message and I put it aside to read it when I had more time. More time never seemed to come. Then I changed e-mail programs. The message and its advice was lost. (That’s another good reason to use the Comments feature on these blogs. I can’t lose a comment.)

Today, I was in a bookstore down in Surprise. (Sadly, the closest real bookstore to Wickenburg is 32.65 miles away.) I browsed the books in the reference section, the ones about writing. I found a few books about writer’s block. One was a psychology book that claimed to explain why writer’s block happened. It had diagrams of brains in it. The type was dense, without headings, and it looked very dull. I was afraid that reading it would give me reader’s block, which would probably be worse. A few other books claimed to cure writer’s block. Well, they didn’t actually use the word “cure” but they clearly indicated that they could help. They help by making you do exercises. One of the exercises chilled me to the bone: “Describe the first time you can remember being very embarrassed.” Who the hell wants to remember that? Writing about bad personal experiences is supposed to make you want to write more? I put the book back very quickly.

I’ve been reading a lot of books about writing lately. Sometime last year, I read On Writing by Stephen King. I was extremely surprised by how motivated I was when I’d finished it. (I wasn’t motivated to write while I was reading it because I was so absorbed in it that I couldn’t put it down.) Following Mr. King’s suggestion, I dedicated several hours every evening to my mystery novel project. In no time at all, I’d knocked off about 90 pages or 30,000 words. And what I’d written was pretty good. Then I ran out of steam. Big time. In fact, I guess you can say that the fire had been put out with ice water.

Then I started reading books about writing mysteries. Perhaps I’d be able to pick it up again when I got some advice from mystery writers. I started one book called…oh, hell. I don’t remember. And I don’t have it anymore. I hated the book so much that I donated it to my local library. The book was going to teach me how to write a mystery by using a sample story the author had come up with. The sample story was so gawdawful that I couldn’t bear to read about it. The poor victim — a teenage girl — couldn’t just be murdered. She had to be sexually abused (or made to look like she was) before being murdered. And the murderer was a wacko. (Obviously.) Sheesh. I could never write about something like that and I didn’t want to pretend I could. So I gave the book away.

Next, I picked up a book called The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery. The premise behind this book is that the reader is a part-time novelist with a busy day job and family. The reader can only spare time for writing the mystery on weekends. So the book set out tasks for 52 weekends. I figured that my time is a bit more flexible, so I could do most weekend assignments in one evening. For example, do a bunch of exercises that would define the detective. The victim. The murderer. You get the idea. I worked on my assignments faithfully for about a week and they really did help me out. But when it got to the point where I needed to come up with notes for scenes, I ran out of steam again.

That gave me the idea that my problem had something to do with plot. I knew what was going to happen, but not all the details. I needed the details to write them. But, for some reason, I couldn’t come up with a good outline.

I tried index cards, Word’s outline feature, and a notebook. I ended up with a bunch of index cards, a half-finished outline, and a lot of scribbled and disorganized notes.

There was something else nagging me, too. All the books I’d read so far assumed that the victim would die before the detective entered the story — or before the story even started. But after 30,000 words, my victim was still alive. And, at the rate I was going, he’d be alive for at least another 30,000 words. That meant I had to edit what I had to become more focused. But, for the record, I still don’t plan to kill him off before my readers get a chance to know him a little.

I started reading other stuff. I read a book called Seven Floors High, which I absolutely, positively, do not recommend. I bought the damn thing from Amazon.com after reading glowing praise about it in the online reviews. What crap! I think that every single review was written by one of the author’s friends or people who work for his publisher. And I really do mean that. There wasn’t anything worth wasting time on in that book. It was poorly written in first person, present tense (of all things!) and had more exclamation points than periods. It was repetitious, had virtually no plot, and was pointless in every sense of the word. It was about a guy who gets a job in telecomm startup in the U.K. The startup looks like a fraud and everyone who works there spends more time drinking and doing drugs than working. And throughout the book, there’s a “secret narrator” who interjects information about U.S. secret spy stuff, etc. Several conversations in the book were engineered just to share otherwise irrelevant information like this as part of the plot. But none of the characters were remotely involved with spy stuff, so none of it fit. It was weird and stupid and pointless. How an author can get a piece of drivel like that published is beyond me. Yet I kept reading, expecting it to get better at some point. Or for the telecomm startup plot to somehow connect with the spy stuff. After all, all those reviewers said such good things. In the end, I felt as if I’d been ripped off by Amazon.com. I will never buy a book based on a reader review again. And this one is so bad, I wouldn’t even donate it to my library. It went right into the trash.

I read some books about writing. Actually, I guess it’s safe to say that I started reading a few books about writing. The first was Bird by Bird. I don’t recommend it. It’s obviously for people who have been rejected so many times that they’re beside themselves with self-pity. The author tries to be funny with jokes about her own paranoia and hypochondria, clearly expecting the reader to feel the same way she does. I don’t. My paranoia is not as keenly developed — at least not yet — and I’m don’t have any undue concerns about my health. So I thought her jokes were pretty stupid, especially when she kept using the same themes over and over throughout the book. I made it about 3/4 of the way through it.

I started The Plot Thickens: Eight Ways to Bring Fiction to Life. After all, I had a plot problem, didn’t I? The book was good — well written and full of good insight — but I just didn’t feel like reading it. (Are you starting to get the idea that my writer’s block problem centers around my avoidance of the plot issue? I am.) So I put it aside about 1/3 finished.

Next, I read a Tony Hillerman mystery and a Dick Francis mystery. I liked the Hillerman mystery a lot. The Dick Francis book was good, but his main character did a few stupid things that nearly got him killed. It’s hard to believe someone smart enough to solve a mystery would be dumb enough to put himself in danger like he did. I’d taken a second Dick Francis mystery from the library with that batch and found myself wishing that I’d taken two Hillermans instead. So I returned all three books without reading the second Francis book. It’ll still be there when I’m ready for it.

I started The First Five Pages, another writing book by the author of The Plot Thickens. The premise behind this book is that there are 19 factors to consider when writing a book — fiction or nonfiction — and that the editor wading through the slush pile will look for these things when looking for an excuse to reject a book. Noah Lukeman, the author, presents the topics in the order they’re most likely to shoot you down. For example, the first five are presentation, adjectives and adverbs, sound, comparison, and style. According to Lukeman, if you screw one or more of these up, it’ll be easy to spot and the reader won’t get past the first five pages. I have to say that I agree with him. His 19 factors are what makes a book work. A writer must be proficient at all 19 of them to produce a publishable book. In reading this book (I got about 4/5 finished before putting it aside), I was able to objectively look at my own work and decide where my biggest problems are: adjectives and adverbs, focus, and pacing and progression. That’s not to say that I’ve got the other 16 factors licked. I’ll probably reread most of this book — perhaps with a highlighter or notebook nearby — to make sure I fully understand the problems and solutions I need to tackle. The only thing I didn’t like about the book were the author’s examples of bad writing. The examples were so bad, they weren’t good examples. After all, does anyone write that bad? (Well, maybe the author of Seven Floors High.)

One interesting thing in that book: plot is not one of the 19 factors. (Perhaps there’s hope for me after all? Nah, you can’t avoid plot in a mystery.)

A friend of mine loaned me a copy of Michael Crichton’s book, State of Fear. I read it. I found the book enjoyable in that it had a plot that moved and it was just far enough from reality to be a good escape. It was full of facts and figures about global warming and, if that information is real, I appreciate having my eyes opened. Now I know Mr. Crichton is a bestselling author and he obviously knows a lot more about writing than I do. But I just can’t stand the way he breaks up scenes with spacing between paragraphs. It’s customary to use additional space between paragraphs to indicate a scene change within a chapter. But he continues the same scene — sometimes the same conversation within a scene — after that additional space! It drives me bonkers. My brain is not prepared for that and I simply can’t get used to it. The other thing he does — which other bestselling authors who’ve had their work turned into movies often do — is to constantly switch back and forth between character pairs or groups within a chapter. This is writing for the movies or television. Although it works well with visuals in the movies — a dinosaur is sniffing around the car where the kids are trapped; switch to rapter pen — it’s pretty annoying when done to the same extent in writing. Maybe it seems like I’m being nit-picky, but this is personal preference. I just don’t like to read books that pick up and drop scenes like they’re hot potatoes — especially when they’re not. One thing I will swear by — and this is after reading so many books about writing in a short period of time — Mr. Crichton has a lot to learn about showing vs. telling. He tells us everything, not giving his reader much opportunity to figure stuff out for himself. But what disappointed me most about this book was the loose ends he left behind: What ever happened to the cell phone the guy in Hong Kong put in his pocket? It seemed so important when I read about it, but it was never mentioned again. What ever happened to the French girl and her American boyfriend? They seemed like important bad guys, but they were never identified and never caught. What happened to the two NERF guys who were so obviously bad guys? Were they arrested? Was NERF brought down? Were they punished for what they did? Which girl did the lame-o lawyer hero wind up with? I suspect it was Sarah, but I can’t be sure. But I guess none of that matters. He’s proven himself as a bestselling author and can write whatever he damn pleases, whatever way he damn pleases. People will continue to buy his work and overlook any shortcomings. Personally, I’m going to re-read Jurassic Park, just to see how it compares with this latest work. I’m willing to bet that JP is a lot better written.

Which brings up another pet peeve of mine: bestselling authors lending their names to series that they don’t even write. I’m talking about Tom Clancy’s Net Force and Op Center books. I got fooled by one of the Net Force books. I thought I was buying a Tom Clancy book, something equivalent in quality to Hunt for Red October. I got a book that read like a made-for-TV-movie, full of side stories that had nothing to do with the plot (who cares about the main character’s son’s soccer game?) and may have been added to increase page count, and a narrative that obviously suspected the reader of having an IQ below 50 (remember: show, don’t tell!). I knew after 20 pages that Clancy hadn’t written what I was reading, but it took a moment for “created by Tom Clancy” on the cover to explain it to me. I guess a bestselling author gets to a certain point when he doesn’t have to write his own books anymore and can still make a ton of money on them. I hope I don’t get to that point — at least not until arthritis makes it impossible for me to write.

Writer’s block, she says? How can she possible have writer’s block. Look at all she’s written in this entry alone! It might be the work of a raving lunatic, but it’s not the work of someone with writer’s block!

Plot. That’s the problem. I need an outline. I need to get motivated. I need to shut myself up in a room without access to the Internet or other work I’ve written or any other distractions and write the outline. I need to stay at it until I’m done.

I use outlines for my computer books. Frankly, I can’t imagine writing one without an outline. It keeps me on track, it tells me where to go next. It also reminds me that I shouldn’t talk about this now because I’m going to talk about it in Chapter 12. Or I already did in Chapter 2. This is no different. It will definitely help me with that focus problem Mr. Lukeman so kindly pointed out.

I just finished another book yesterday. It’s called Eats, Shoots & Leaves and it’s about punctuation. Oddly, it is a bestselling book in the U.K. I’d seen it more than a few times on Amazon.com, while searching for books to help me get over this block, but have always disregarded it. After all, I know punctuation pretty well. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m certainly above average. I don’t consider it one of my writing problems. But last week, when I stumbled into the library, looking for something new to read, I saw it on the shelf of new books. It’s a small volume with a Panda joke on the cover. (Unfortunately, my library stuck a library address sticker over the first two lines of the joke, making it difficult to read.) I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did. It turns out that I qualify as a stickler for punctuation, since I get all hot and bothered when people use apostrophes and quotes incorrectly in signs and headlines. The book was full of information about the history of punctuation, as well as lots of examples of how misused punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence. For example, compare “The convict said the judge is crazy” to “The convict, said the judge, is crazy.” Ouch! Unfortunately, the Brits have different punctuation rules than we do, so the book is of limited use to Americans who need to learn about it. But the author’s sense of humor is great. I didn’t think it was possible to laugh out loud when reading a book about punctuation, but it certainly is. I liked the book so much, I bought an audio edition of it to listen to on long drives (or flights) and a copy in print to send to one of my editors, Cliff, the comma king.

What’s currently on my reading list? Writing Down the Bones is another book about writing that has gotten lots of praise. I’m a bit worried that it’ll be another Bird by Bird, so I’m not rushing into it. Today, I picked up Writing Mysteries (a Writer’s Digest book edited by Sue Grafton) and Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within. I don’t know why I picked up this second book. The inclusion of words like woman and igniting in a book’s title normally raises red flags. I may be a woman, but I don’t see why a woman needs different advice about writing than a man. I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be instructions in here for balancing my family and career or finding time away from the kids to write. I don’t have kids. I don’t really have a family, either. And my career is as a writer — that’s my day job. As for igniting — that’s a stupid marketing word that someone at the publisher obviously wanted to use to punch up the title. (You wouldn’t believe how a publisher’s marketing department gets involved in cover copy when they obviously haven’t even read the book.) Actually, in paging through this book, I realize that I’d better take it back. It’s really not for me.

(Thinking back on this, I realize that I’d picked up this book in the store right before my cell phone rang. It was Rod on the phone and I hadn’t spoken to him in two months, so I found a comfy chair in a quiet corner of Barnes and Nobel and chatted with him for about 15 minutes. Mike came in from Best Buys and read a magazine in a nearby chair while I talked. Then I hung up and we decided to go. I didn’t review the books I was carrying. If I did, I would have noticed the illustration on one cover, which showed a laundry basket, a child’s toys, and a stressed-out looking woman with a pen in her hand. Not a book for me. So I’ll blame it on Rod.)

But Writing Mysteries shows promise. I think I’ll tackle that one next. Or at least after I finish The First Five Pages and The Plot Thickens. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

And about that outline…

I’m sure I’ll get to it soon.

Getting Even Closer

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I take (and pass) my Part 135 check ride

I spent most of yesterday with an FAA inspector named Bill. Bill is my POI for Part 135 operations. Frankly, I can’t remember what those letters stand for. But what they mean is that he’s my main man at the FAA in all Part 135 matters.

Yesterday was the second day this week I spent time with Bill. On Wednesday, I’d gone down to Scottsdale (again) to set up my Operating Specifications document on the FAA’s computer system. The FAA has been using this system for years for the airlines and decided to make it mandatory for the smaller operators, including Part 135 operators like me. Rather than put me on the old system and convert me over to the new one, they just set me up on the new one. That’s what we did Wednesday. It took about two hours that morning. Then Bill and I spend another hour reviewing my Statement of Compliance, which still needed a little work, and my MEL, which needed a lot of work.

I had lunch with Paul, my very first flight instructor, and headed back up to Wickenburg, stopping at a mall in a vain attempt to purchase a quality handbag. (Too much junk in stores these days, but I’ll whine about that in another entry.) I stopped at my office and my hangar to pick up a few things, then went home. By 4:00 PM, I was washing Alex the Bird’s cage and my car. (I figured that if I had the hose out for one, I may as well use it on both.) After dinner with Mike, I hit the keyboard to update my Statement of Compliance so it would be ready for Bill in the morning. I added about eight pages in four hours.

A word here about the Statement of Compliance. This required document explains, in detail, how my company, Flying M Air, LLC, will comply with all of the requirements of FARs part 119 and 135. In order to write this, I had to read every single paragraph in each of those parts, make a heading for it, and write up how I’d comply or, if it didn’t apply to my operation, why it didn’t apply. (I wrote “Not applicable: Flying M Air, LLC does not operate multi-engine aircraft” or “Not applicable: Flying M Air, LLC does not provide scheduled service under Part 121” more times than I’d like to count.) Wednesday evening was my third pass at the document. In each revision, I’d been asked to add more detail. So the document kept getting fatter and fatter. Obviously, writing a document like this isn’t a big deal for me — I write for a living. But I could imagine some people really struggling. And it does take time, something that is extremely precious to me.

I was pretty sure my appointment with Bill was for 10:00 AM yesterday. But I figured I’d better be at the hangar at 9:00 AM, just in case I’d gotten that wrong. That wasn’t a big problem, since nervousness about the impending check ride had me up half the night. By 4:00 AM I was ready to climb out of bed and start my day.

Bill’s trip to Wickenburg would include my base inspection as well as my check ride. That means I had to get certain documents required to be at my base of operations, all filed neatly in my hangar. Since none of them were currently there, I had some paperwork to do at the office. I went there first and spent some time photocopying documents and filing the originals in a nice file box I’d bought to store in my new storage closet in the hangar. I used hanging folders with tabs. Very neat and orderly.

I also printed out the Statement of Compliance v3.0 and put it in a binder. I got together copies of my LLC organization documents, too. Those would go to Bill.

I stopped at Screamer’s for a breakfast burrito on the way to the airport. Screamer’s makes the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had.

I was at the airport by 8:45 AM. I pulled open the hangar door so the sun would come in and warm it up a bit, then stood around, eating my burrito, chatting with Chris as he pulled out his Piper Cub and prepared it for a flight. He taxied away while I began organizing the hangar. By 9:00 AM, I’d pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out onto the ramp. At 9:10 AM, when I was about 1/3 through my preflight, Bill rolled up in his government-issued car.

“I thought you were coming at 10,” I told him.

“I’m always early,” he said. “Well, not always,” he amended after a moment.

Fifty minutes early is very early, at least in my book.

He did the base inspection first. He came into the hangar and I showed him where everything was. But because I didn’t have a desk or table or chairs in there (although I have plenty of room, now that the stagecoach is finally gone), we adjourned to his car to review everything. That required me to make more than a few trips from his car to the hangar to retrieve paperwork, books, and other documents. He was parked pretty close to the hangar door on my side, so getting in and out of his car was a bit of a pain, but not a big deal.

“You need a desk in there,” he said to me.

I told him that I had a desk all ready to be put in there but it was in storage and I needed help getting it out. I told him that my husband was procrastinating about it. I also said that I’d have a better chance at getting the desk out of storage now that an FAA official had told me I needed it. (Of course, when I relayed this to Mike that evening, Mike didn’t believe Bill had said I needed the desk.)

Chris returned with the Cub and tucked it away in Ed’s hangar before Bill could get a look at it. Some people are just FAA-shy. I think Chris is one of them.

Bill and I made a list of the things I still needed to get together. He reviewed my Statement of Compliance, spot-checking a few problem areas. We found one typo and one paragraph that needed changing. He said I could probably finalize it for next week.

My ramp check came next. I asked him if it were true that the FAA could only ramp check commercial operators. (This is something that someone had claimed in a comment to one of my blog entries.) He laughed and said an FAA inspector could ramp check anyone he wanted to. And he proceeded to request all kinds of documents to prove airworthiness. The logbook entry for the last inspection was a sticky point, since the helicopter didn’t really have a last “inspection.” It had been inspected for airworthiness at 5.0 hours. It only had 27.4 hours on its Hobbs. Also, for some reason neither of us knew, the airworthiness certificate had an exception for the hydraulic controls.

Then we took a break so he could make some calls about the airworthiness certificate exemption and log book inspection entry. He spent some time returning phone calls while I finished my preflight.

Next came the check ride, oral part first. We sat in his car while he quizzed me about FAA regulations regarding Part 135 operations, FARs in general, aircraft-specific systems, and helicopter aerodynamics. It went on for about an hour and a half. I knew most of what he asked, although I did have some trouble with time-related items. For example, how many days you have before you have to report an aircraft malfunction (3) and how many days you have before you have to report an aircraft accident (10). I asked him why the FAA didn’t make all the times the same so they’d be easier to remember. He agreed (unofficially, of course) that the differences were stupid, but he said it was because the regulations had been drafted by different people.

That done, we went out to fly. I pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out onto the ramp and removed the ground handling gear. Bill did a thorough walk-around, peaking under the hood. He pointed out that my gearbox oil level looked low. I told him that it had been fine when the helicopter was level by the hangar and that it just looked low because it was cold and because it was parked on a slight slope. Every aircraft has its quirks and I was beginning to learn Zero-Mike-Lima’s.

He asked me to do a safety briefing, just like the one I’d do for my passengers. I did my usual, with two Part 135 items added: location and use of the fire extinguisher and location of the first aid kit. When I tried to demonstrate the door, he said he was familiar with it. “I’m going to show you anyway,” I said. “This is a check ride.” I wasn’t about to get fooled into skipping something I wasn’t supposed to skip.

We climbed in and buckled up. I started it up in two tries — it seems to take a lot of priming on cold mornings — and we settled down to warm it up. Bill started playing with my GPS. The plan had been to fly to Bagdad (a mining town about 50 miles northwest of Wickenburg not to be confused with a Middle East hot spot), but when he realized that neither Wickenburg nor Bagdad had instrument approaches, he decided we should fly to Prescott. I told him that I’d never flown an instrument approach and he assured me it would be easy, especially with the GPS to guide me. So we took off to the north.

It had become a windy day while we were taking care of business in my hangar and the car. The winds on the ground were about 10 to 12 knots and the winds aloft were at least 20 knots. This did not bother me in the least and I have my time at Papillon at the Grand Canyon to thank for that. I’d always been wind-shy — flying that little R22 in windy conditions was too much like piloting a cork on stormy seas. But last spring at the Grand Canyon, flying Bell 206L1s in winds that often gusted to 40 mph or more, turned me into a wind lover. “The wind is your friend,” someone had once told me. And they were right — a good, steady headwind is exactly what you need to get off the ground at high density altitude with a heavy load. But even though gusty and shifting winds could be challenging, when you deal with them enough, flying in them becomes second nature. You come to expect all the little things that could screw you up and this anticipation enables you to react quickly when they do. Frankly, I think flying in an environment like the Grand Canyon should be required for all professional helicopter pilots.

Bill and I chatted a bit about this during part of the flight and he pretty much agreed. But when he told me to deviate around a mountaintop I’d planned to fly right over, I realized that he wasn’t comfortable about the wind. Perhaps he’d spent too much time flying with pilots with less wind experience. Or perhaps he’d had a bit of bad wind experience himself. So we flew south past Peeples Valley and Wilhoit before getting close enough to Prescott to pick up the ATIS at 7000 feet.

Bill made the radio calls, requesting an ILS approach. Prescott tower gave us a squawk code and Bill punched it in for me before I could reach for the buttons. Then Prescott told us to call outbound from Drake. That meant they wanted us on the localizer approach (at least according to Bill; I knew nothing about this stuff since I didn’t have more than the required amount of instrument training to get my commercial ticket). I think Bill realized that they weren’t going to give us vectors — Prescott is a very busy tower — so he punched the localizer approach into the GPS and I turned to the northwest toward the Drake VOR, following the vectors in the GPS. All the time, the GPS mapped our progress on its moving map, which really impressed Bill. At Drake, I turned toward Humpty and Bill called the tower. When they asked how we would terminate the approach, he told them we’d do a low pass over Runway 21L. I just followed the vectors on the GPS toward some unmarked spot in the high desert. We did a procedure turn and started inbound. Five miles out, the tower told us to break off the approach before reaching the runway and turn to a heading of 120. Traffic was using Runway 12, with winds 100 at 15 knots and the tower didn’t want us in the way. So I descended as if I was going to land, then turned to the left just before reaching the wash (which was running). Once we cleared Prescott’s airspace, we headed south, back toward Wickenburg.

We did some hood work over Wagoner. I hate hood work. It makes me sick. I did okay, but not great. Fortunately, I didn’t get sick. But I did need to open the vent a little.

Then we crossed over the Weavers, did a low rotor RPM recovery, and began our search for a confined space landing zone. Personally, I think the spot he picked was way too easy — I routinely land in tougher off-airport locations than that. Then we did an approach to a pinnacle. No problem. On the way back to the airport, we overflew the hospital because he wanted to see LifeNet’s new helipad there. He agreed with me that it was a pretty confined space.

Back at the airport I did an autorotation to a power recovery on Runway 5. It was a non-event. With a 15-knot quartering headwind, only two people on board, and light fuel, Zero-Mike-Lima floated to the ground. I did a hovering autorotation on the taxiway, then hover-taxied back to the ramp with an impressive tailwind and parked.

“Good check ride,” Bill said.

Whew.

After I shut down, we went back to his car, which we were now referring to as his mobile office, and he filled out all the official FAA forms he had to fill out to document that I’d passed the check ride. Then he endorsed my logbook. Then he left. It was 2:30 PM.

I fueled up Zero-Mike-Lima, topping it off in preparation for flying on Saturday, and put it away. I took the rest of the day off. I’d earned it.

Tiger: The Saga Continues

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I continue work on my Tiger book.

The other day, I got a new Tiger build from Apple. I’d been waiting anxiously for it. My editor, Cliff, who’d been at the Keynote address at Macworld Expo had reported that the build Steve Jobs was using for his demo looked different from what we had. Although most authors wouldn’t mind a few appearance differences, my book has over 2,000 screenshots in it and every minor difference will affect at least one page. So after having some difficulties with Font Book and not being motivated enough to revise the Classic chapter, I put the book aside to wait for new software.

The differences, it turns out, are not major. Sure, some screenshots will change, but not many. The New Burnable Folder command has become the New Burn Folder command — that little change will force me to revise every single screenshot of the File menu. But hey, I expect stuff like that. It goes with the territory. It’s one of the drawbacks of writing about software that hasn’t been completed yet.

Interestingly, I’ll work with the software right up to the Gold Master and still get the book out on time. That’s because of the “system” Peachpit and I have for getting these books done. No other publisher works the way we do. As a result, if another book comes out on time, it’s likely based on something other than the Gold Master. That means it’ll have errors in it. But more likely, other books will be delayed and will appear on shelves a month or more after Mac OS X 10.4 has gone to the Apple Stores and is available in new computers.

Yesterday, I worked on the Applications chapter, the one where I go into some detail on how to use the applications that come with Mac OS X. We’ve decided to folk the i-Apps chapter into this one, so it’s likely to be a very long chapter. I got about 20 pages done yesterday and I hope to finish it up today. I found two surprises in the Applications folder: a brand new application that I’m looking forward to using every day and the return of an old application that disappeared when Mac OS X was first released. I’m not sure if I can talk about them — Apple is notoriously secretive about pre-release software and I don’t want to get sued — so I won’t. But I think Mac users will be pleasantly surprised (as I was) to find at least one of these new tools.

The book is over 600 pages long so I have a lot of work to do. It’s my biggest book, both in size and sales, and the one I’m proudest of. Mac OS has grown quite a bit since I first wrote about it for Mac OS 8. It has far more features and is a bit more complex than the Mac OS of the old days. The book makes the complex features simple and the simple features even simpler. It also has tons of tips and tricks for using Mac OS X.