What, you might ask, is the first book I’m reading?

Well, there are several books on the device already: the two Jules Verne novels that I managed to finish on my smartphone before the Kindle arrived, the free Bible that I downloaded while trying to figure out which Bible to buy, and The Siege of Washington : The Untold Story of the Twelve Days That Shook the Union, which I discovered on sale through the terrific web site Ereader News Today, which spotlights whatever books Amazon happens to have on sale (or free!). Today, caught up in Dickens bicentennial madness, I downloaded A Christmas Carol, which like the Verne books is a public domain work offered by Amazon for free.

But – other than looking up a couple of Bible passages – the first book I’m actually reading on my Kindle is kind of unexpected: God Drives a Tow Truck, an inspirational book by Vicky Kaseorg. The book is normally $2.99 in the Kindle store, but when I stumbled across it the other day, during my fevered week of Kindle anticipation, it was free. I can’t recall whether I saw it on Ereader News Today or somewhere else.

I’m not usually a “Chicken Soup For The Soul” kind of guy, but the reviews on Amazon were favorable, saying that Kaseorg’s autobiographical stories were frank and funny. It just seemed like it might be something worth reading, especially at the no-risk price of zero. (The Kindle holds 1,400 books, and even if I were ever to delete some of them to free up space, I can always re-download any book I’ve purchased.)

I have to say, it’s an easy and enjoyable read. Yes, it’s upbeat, inspirational, and a little predictable at times, but the stories are well-told, Kaseorg has a sense of humor about herself, and the sentiment seems genuine, not manufactured. The stories cover various periods in the author’s life, many of them taking place when she hadn’t yet come to the Christian faith. Some deal with her love of animals, others with her family life or with people she’s encountered along the way. Kaseorg is also an artist, and each chapter has an illustration; that’s the one drawback of the Kindle’s otherwise-wonderful black-and-white e-ink display.

There are some of the stories that I can probably use in the future as sermon illustrations when I lay speak. (I always attribute stuff like that, by the way. I will never forget the time when a previous pastor of mine used Walter Wangerin’s story “Ragman” from the pulpit without saying where it came from, as if he had made it up. I was furious, “Ragman” being one of my favorite stories.)

Anyway, even though it’s not free anymore it’s still a good buy, an inspirational book that actually is inspirational.

But the past few things I’ve ordered from Amazon under “super saver shipping” have come by way of a service called FedEx Smartpost. I’ve looked this up, and I’m not sure I understand it completely. It’s a service offered by FedEx Ground by which they pick up packages, drive them cross country, and then drop them off at a postal distribution center, so that the final delivery to the customer is handled by the Post Office.

This would make no sense for you or me – there would be no benefit in sending a package by FedEx Ground from here to Memphis, and then paying for it to be mailed by USPS from Memphis to Cincinnati. For me, as an individual USPS consumer, Shelbyville to Cincinnati and Shelbyville to Memphis are the same price, so I wouldn’t save any money on the USPS portion of the trip by mailing the package to Memphis instead of Cincinnati. Then, after mailing the package to Memphis, I’d have to pay FedEx Ground for its part of the trip. I would be paying twice for the same service. As an individual consumer, I could make out much more cheaply by using only one carrier – let’s say, the US Postal Service – to mail the package directly from Shelbyville to Cincinnati (however the post office decides to route the package is their business, not mine).

But this hybrid service must make sense financially for Amazon, and other such customers, or else they wouldn’t be using it. I’m assuming, therefore, that Amazon and/or FedEx is getting some sort of discount from USPS in return for dropping off large volumes of pre-sorted mail directly at postal distribution centers, saving USPS a lot of work. That discount would have to be pretty steep — more than enough to make up for what FedEx Ground is charging for the first half of the trip, so that the total cost to Amazon is less than it would cost to use either FedEx Ground or USPS separately.

My paternal grandfather, who died when I was about five or six years old, worked for the Post Office. He was head of parcel post at the downtown Nashville post office, which is now the site of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. I wonder what he’d think of this new world of package delivery.

The Bible translations I’d use most often – the New Revised Standard Version, which is used in a lot of official United Methodist literature, or the most recent update of the New International Version – are available for Kindle, but according to the reviews they don’t have e-reader-friendly navigation. There are some other Kindle Bibles that do have good navigation, making it easy to look up a chapter and verse, but they don’t come in any of the translations I like. There are also some specialty NIV Bibles that cost more than I’m looking to spend right now or that are organized in special ways, including the Passages NIV e-Bible that has the readings broken up so that you can follow along with the Daily Audio Bible. As a DAB listener, I may get the Passages Bible eventually, but it’s not what I’m looking for right now.

I have ordered a Holman Christian Standard Bible for free; I’ve heard them use that translation on DAB from time to time, although I’m not too familiar with it otherwise. But I really want HarperCollins or Zondervan to get on the stick and create a great, reasonably-priced NRSV or NIV e-edition.

Sort of.

Serling wrote a script called “The Time Element” as a pilot to pitch “The Twilight Zone” to CBS, but the network wasn’t interested. Eventually, the script ended up in the hands of a producer who worked for Lucy and Desi, and was produced as an episode of “The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse,” an anthology series created and hosted by Lucy and Desi (in this case, just Desi) Desi. The episode was relatively successful, enough so that CBS took a second look at Serling’s proposal.

Here it is, in parts:

But Thomas still wanted to be able to serve customers quickly, even during peak hours. The solution he came up with was to have hamburger patties almost always on the griddle, ready to be scooped up and turned into a sandwich on order.

Typical business patterns make it possible to predict about how many patties you need to have standing by at a given time of day, but it’s not an exact science. Sometimes, a patty will be ready but no customer will be at the counter to order it.

Dave’s solution to that problem was a stroke of genius: he added chili as a menu item. Any patties not needed for hamburgers would be crumbled up and set aside for the next batch of chili.

I was going to stop at Sonic on my way to work today, but as I saw Wendy’s sitting there on Madison Street it occurred to me that the perfect lunch for a cold and rainy Saturday would be a big Wendy’s chili and a baked potato. Of course, the Wendy’s chili is even better with a couple of gold packets of that mysterious hot sauce they offer with it. I have, for years, insisted that they ought to sell the stuff by the bottle. I would buy it and put it on a lot of different things.

Anyway, the chili and potato are a perfect antidote to the weather. Well done, Dave.