Living the dream of the endless vacation “Anyone who has ever dreamed of leaving the city and taking their lives back to nature (and who hasn't?) will find much to contemplate in this warm and hilarious tale of rural misadventure and small town quirk, even if they have never chased a goat in a bathing suit or called 911 because there were cows in the road. Stimson's voice is endearing: both in its self-deprecation and its rapture, as she sings an only slightly conflicted love song to Vermont.” —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted “Taking a plunge that wimpier sorts (i.e. most of us) only fantasize about, Ellen Stimson and her family packed up their house in St. Louis and threw themselves into a wildly different life in small-town Vermont. Armed with the passion-and haplessness-of wide-eyed newcomers they rescue goats and adopt chickens, do battle with skunks and bats and falling ice, and, most disastrously, buy a black hole of a general store. Through it all they manage to retain their love for their adopted home as well as one another. This is a tale to which all the cliché words absolutely apply: hilarious, heartwarming, rollicking, and, most of all, rich in the real stuff of life.” —Julia Reed, author of But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!

Clear writing and analysis of the broad spectrum of processes that produce shale are coupled with well-captioned 150 illustrations, 40 tables, boxed technical details, glossary and appendices. Recounts the step-by-step evolution and stages of shal, enabling readers to master the basics and to dig yet deeper into their origin, practical implications and relationship to earth history. Background information appears in appendices (Clay Mineralogy, Isotopes, Petrology, etc.); technicial details in high-lighted boxes, and definitions of 300+ terms in the Glossary.

"The book is aimed at narrowing the gap between industrial aspects of mud engineering and its academic basics. It also sums up the experience of handling unconventional and unforeseen problems related with well-bore instability with the right composition of mud to facilitate correct properties in drilling fluid design, and thus minimize/eliminate non-productive time. If the book is able to fulfil any / all of these objectives, then the purpose of writing the book is served. It aims to reach out to petroleum engineering students and those mud engineers who have just begun their career in oil field, with many questions wandering in their minds, and aims to answer them in a manner that makes sense to their limited exposure with the least technical jargon but yet, effectively quench their thirst of inquisitiveness. For the professionals who aspire to climb the ladders of success to reach the corporate jungle, the book cautions them that what appears costly superficially need not be always costly and thus spend enough money to have a right team of professionals surrounding them and not the guys who will always agree to them for the fear of loss of their job."

Rock-hard mud. What's a boy to do? If you're Mitchell, all you gotta do is turn to your super-secret mud-softening potion for help. But when this concoction backfires causing a never-ending rain of mud, Mitchell might have gotten a little more 'help' than he bargained for. Surely he can stop the muddy rain before the entire yard turns into a mud lake...

Includes section "Review of recent geological literature."