The morning glories and other plants we started in the garage are coming along splendidly.  It’s almost time for planting.

Right now I’m on the back porch with my best of the best dogs, Molly.  It’s 9 p.m. and the water pump on the well is running and filling the backyard with a wonderful sound.  The wind is calm tonight so no chimes.  Molly is so good about sitting/laying here at my side and guarding me.  She stays between me and the gate.  Isn’t that a hoot?  I’d hate to be the poor fool who ever might decide to come through our gate unannounced.

I figure I need about six additional boards for the top of the pergola and about 21 more of the slate boards I’ve been using for the picket fencing.  I also still need to fix the doggie door arches, and add a board there, too.

After we get that done, it’s on to getting the wood work creation painted, and then I need to begin some work inside.  I want to do some accent painting and make some other positive improvements inside.

It looks like my dad will be here in a week or so, so I’m trying to get as much done before he gets here, too.  Not that it will largely impress him, but I will know what I’ve done.  He didn’t say much when I told him Kari and I had built this wonderful patio cover I’m sitting under.  So I’m not expecting much of a reaction to the bench work and pergola.  It’s funny, when he was here in October of 2006, he insisted on hiring someone from Home Depot to put up our $99 storm door at the front of the house.  I’ve since put one on the back door, added a patio cover, fencing, etc….

I just wish my Mom’s dad was still around to be able to see all this.  He would be pleased.   And he would take a seat each morning out on the bench work and watch the sun come up in the east and think of something profound to write on the wood.

http://www.celebrity-babies.com/2008/04/randy-orton-1.html

There is nothing like that moment at birth when you get to hold your own flesh and blood for the first time.  I remember those three moments as vividly in my head as I see the screen in front of me.  One daughter, hit by the change in temp had to go, and the doctor pointed her at  one of the nurses, the twins, well, one came out and I talked to her a few moments, then came the other, and I headed over there to say hi and count fingers and toes.  Heaven.

But why would Fox care about the further harm they’d be doing to children across America?  After all, they’d be making money on the deal and so would their advertisers.

The Cubs are on WGN, losing to the Nationals by two in the fourth.  They were in Colorado while I was in Chicago.  Apparently, I was not the only one at EWA who had checked.

Okay, got to get back to work. More cleaning to do.  Feels like Saturday.  Wish it was.

I did make it over to The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue.  Way cool.  Glass steps up to the second floor.  A theater upstairs where they hold court for classes.  Dallas has a great Apple Store, Chicago’s is just in a different league.  But of course, it’s on the Magnificent Mile.

There is a Hershey Store across diagonally from Water Tower Place.  What a cool store.  They feature the world’s largest chocolate bar.  Essentially, the one you’d buy in a store, but this one is about 1.5 feet long and about 10 inches across and about .5 inches thick.  It runs $30 but looked like it would have been worth every single bite.

And so, as I sat one morning in the restaurant at The Wyndham Chicago, I could not help but overhear two more senior gents than I talking about the area.  One, like me, was a native of the area to the south east of Chicago.  As you know, I was born in Gary and my grandparents are/were from Hobart.  While downtown Chicago, (and I know I’ve said time and again, if the DISD job had opened up in Chicago, I would be 100 times happier) is quite metropolitan, the man was saying that Northwest Indiana isn’t.  And the more I thought about it, he’s right.  Now is that all bad?

Grandpa Claxton quit school in Northern Alabama in the eighth grade so he could help support his family.  When my dad was seven in 1952, Grandpa loaded up the family and drove up highway 31 to Hobart, IN to take a job working in the steel mills that John Cougar Melencamp so poignantly refers to in Minutes to Memories.  Some of the Claxton clan also went north, some stayed south.

And so, Grandpa worked hard for the next 35-40 years and raised his family.  The house they raised my three aunts and dad in would fit inside the first floor of my house, and there would be room left over on the first floor, let alone the second.  How they managed four kids in two bed rooms and one of themselves is still a mystery to me, but they did it.  Dad joined the air force in 1968 and me, mom and dad left for a 20-year ride on the road and in the air.

Hobart still is in many ways like it was when I was a kid.  The Rocket, a Sonic-style drive in (which I’m told actually had good food as opposed to that stale, pre-packaged blah Cliff ‘Hot Head, Arrogant, Richard Cranium’ Hudson is so proud of) is still there off Route 6 and Wisconsin, though it’s long been something else.

My point here is that the man was right and I’d never really thought about it in that way until he said it.  As I’ve written or certainly thought since I’ve taken my recent position, is that I missed many opportunities being stuck in Montgomery, AL during the early years of my career.  Maybe being there made it easier to become the governor’s press secretary by age 30, but I also missed out on a heap of opportunities for refinement, for seeing and being more on the cutting edge.

And so I wonder, (bringing this home) how to more positively influence what my kids are exposed to here in Dallas.  They certainly will have greater opportunities than I had for cosmopolitan exposure.  I mean, how much of that do you get in Northern Michigan at the former K.I. Sawyer AFB?  That experience afforded me a greater appreciation for the environment.  We spent every day we had the opportunity to do so, playing in the woods, building forts, riding trails, digging as far as we could muster.

And then it frustrates me incredibly to see, particularly my boys, wanting to spend much if not all of their days inside sitting at their computers and game consoles.  I had two of them wash my car last weekend and all I heard was how they normally just sit in the back while mom drives thru a car wash.  They’re 14 and 15.  Heck, when I was that age, I would wash my mom’s station wagon and dad’s Rabbit weekly, dreaming about being able to drive them.  Dreaming of getting an old ‘57 Chevy and fixing it up when I got old enough.  My boys wouldn’t know one if they saw it.

And so maybe the whole answer here isn’t just living in a big city.  It really goes back to spending time with your kids.  Exposing them to the things that will /could change their lives forever.   TVs and games and computers and DSs can be great electronic babysitters, but the rest of the world passes by while they’re tuned in, and they don’t even realize it.

Kari sent out an email to several family members on Thursday that I’m going to share in this space.  She has a login and I’ve been trying to get her to post things on the blog, but I remain hopeful she will.

Donny is such an amazing artist.  Beautiful paintings of his are hanging up all around the house, and I enjoy every last one of them.  He’s also created some incredible sketches and watercolors.  Over the last year, Donny has started dabbling in woodworking.

The backyard is almost completed.  It still needs paint and some more fence to hide the shed in back, but it won’t be long til I send you pictures of our completed backyard retreat!  Here are some pictures of Donny’s yard art in progress…

Here are the photos she speaks of in the email.  I was hoping I could get out there and do more today, but alas, did I mention it’s 44 degrees?  I can’t get sick again.  Next weekend I’m off to DC.  And I’m still not over the double middle ear, sinus infection.  Argh.   It’s been eight days now.

But I certainly have made some good contacts and friendships while here. My good friend Kent Fischer from The Dallas Morning News is been seriously bitten by the blog bug. I met a good friend of his named Alex Russo, and have enjoyed reading his blog, This Week In Education. (http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/) (Sorry, I can’t do links with a Mac in Safari in Word Press).

This has been a good conference and it is has been good to see young guns on the edge of new technologies searching for answers to how to plug into the future in an ever-changing profession such as the news business. Once upon a time, I was a young press secretary to a governor who was showed what a Web browser was and how it worked. I am the one who had the first T1 lines put into the Alabama Capitol in 1995. I am the first one to have secured an email address (on CompuServe) for Alabama Gov. Fob James. And made one of the first campaign Web sites in the state, too.

Kent, Alex and Scott Elliot from The Dayton Daily all are trying to do what I was doing nearly 15 years ago, this time with blogging. It’s an exciting time, and one that will continue to evolve the news industry and how PR people like myself interact with them.

Kent gave Dallas ISD media a good raking over the coals yesterday in one of his presentations. I kept thinking back to my 5.5 years in that job and my long-held philosophy of “Speed Kills.” That could not be any more an accurate term today than it was when Carville was touting it in 1992.

But some will resist change for whatever reason. One very good reporter here today was sitting in the lobby writing out their presentation on paper with a pen because the company laptop never works and well, like I said, some old habits never change.

I am ready to go home though and spend time with my wife and kids. Next weekend I leave for DC for another event. And the pace of the Internet keeps on marching forward. Tomorrow, I go home to be a dad again. I cannot wait.

Been a good week with the girls, though they’ve been calling their mother repeatedly and not getting much in return. It seems like every couple of hours today and yesterday they asked to call her. All three of them.

Need to pack for trip tomorrow to NOLA. Going to be a wild week.