That was my biggest smile this week. Not that I thought I would be seeing something that was unbelievable -- far from it, in fact. But it was great to see V working hard at something and being so proud of what he was making.

I recently related a story to my wife and mother. I would have thought that between them, there were no tales that they had not heard, but they both claimed that it was new to them. I guess that makes it a fresh story for me to post here.

This Friday, we went to New Orleans to meet up with a big group of friends. I guess it's becoming a thing, but since the holidays marks a return of out-of-towners who have fled to greener pastures, we end up with a decent crowd of both local and out of town friends. Even if I could remember all of the reasons that I laughed until my face hurt, I probably wouldn't post about them.

A little while back, I sent this pic to some of my family and asked them to guess what's happening, and what events lead to this pose. All of the necessary information is right there in the picture.

A couple of short stories, first about mp3 players before Apple started making them, and then one that pulls the rock and roll out of those mp3 headphones right out into the real world.

A few weeks ago, we went to the Global Wildlife Center. You get in a big trailer behind a tractor, and putter around some pastureland. You have cups of food to feed various creatures, which seem mostly to be in the deer family.

Halloween this year was wet. I never thought about it before, but I don't ever remember a rainy Halloween before -- not even as a kid. But it was fine.

Saturday morning, we went to the Wooden Boat Festival in Madisonville. In my mind, it's more of a boat show than a boat festival, as no one was deep-frying Oreos near a stage full of fiddle players. But who doesn't like a boat show?

On the one hand, assigning "unscramble the spelling words" to a dyslexic kid is kind of mean. On the other hand, we both had a good laugh unscrambling "and" when I explained what people are informally referring to when they reference "my nads."

Almost every night, I walk in the dark. By August, it doesn't feel unusual to step into the lush thick air. Even though the sun has been down for a couple of hours, the streets still release the heat that they stored during the day. Manicured yards and neglected yards are all thick and green, albiet with different flora.

This is a really really long post full of all the activities I did while being by myself this week.

One night recently, a handful of us were at <a href="http://www.erinrosebar.com" target="_blank">Erin Rose</a> maintaining a buzz that we had put on elsewhere in New Orleans. We were hanging out in a narrow space between the bar and the restroom doors. (This is a great story!)