A few weeks ago, I was about to head out the back door to put a couple of pork shoulders on the barbecue. Just as I was on my way out, Paul showed up and grabbed the door. I was home by myself, so I welcomed the excuse to ditch the kitchen cleanup and to sit out, smell the meat, and run our mouths.

There's no one of my age -- at least no one whose family hails from the rural South -- who hasn't heard, "When I was bad, Daddy made me go outside and pick my own switch." I always dismissed this as old person hyperbole. In my mind it belongs with, "I walked fourteen miles to school barefoot every day, and it was uphill in both directions."

I don't see anyone else still carrying an iPod classic around, but mine is indispensable, and I spent the better part of a day distraught that I'm one hard drive failure from not having one any more.

Guess how many hours I've spent tracking down and looking at the trove of celeb naked pictures this week? Read this whole post, and find out.

When we last checked in with our intrepid voyagers on Velvet Elvis, they were at a nice little anchorage at about the spot where the civilized Florida coast dissappears for good. We left there between 5:00 and 6:00, knowing that our first all day-all night-all day sail was ahead of us.

I was getting ready for work this morning, and I substituted a long sleeved button down shirt for my usual short sleeved short.

Before I start my story, let me say to all of my Facebook friends that I've really enjoyed everyone's first day of school pictures. At least one of you has extremely cute kids. Go ahead and keep thinking it's you.

There's a certain segment of my family that has earned some notariety with the rest of the family for their propensity for making snacks out of other snacks.

We left Slidell at 6:00 AM under a cover of bugs. It's been a long time since we've hung with so many gnats and mosquitos, and they stuck with us for at least an hour. Then, in a scene right out of a cartoon movie, and army of dragonflies showed up and ran them off. The dragonflies stayed around for a long time too, and there must have been a couple of dozen flying along and resting on the lifelines. We didn't mind them, and the boys got out the net to practice insect catch and release.

I'm not sure what made me think of it today, but several years ago, a group of us went into a rather nice restaurant. There were probably 6 or 8 of us.

On Saturday, I heard something that I had never heard before: Floyd Cramer on the radio. Back in the early 90s, if you turned on mid-day TV for any amount of time at all, you were sure to see the commercial for a Floyd Cramer, playing a collection of other people's hits as piano instrumentals.

You know that guy in your company's project meetings who is absent-mindedly clicking his pen during the call? It's not really so absent minded. He's sending a Morse code message to whoever's on the other end.