It's been a month back in Baton Rouge and back to real life, and for the most part, it has sucked. We knew we were coming back to some boat maintenance, but our house was a disaster area.

We found an interesting meat market.

A recent Facebook comment got me to thinking about some of the characters from my early sailing days.

At the time of this post, we're in the middle of our Atlantic crossing. There's a lot of time for music and books, so that might be what I'm posting about for a little while.

I encountered a technology this week that I haven't come across before. Normally, that would be a source of great joy for me, but this time, not so much.

There are a couple of little things that I found surprising about buying things that coil up in Eurpoe.

Slovenians love to take a walk. And it's a great place to walk. But there's also a flip side to being a great place to walk.

Now that I don't have to get a kid up and make him get ready for school, I can start my mornings with long walks with the dog. It's been nice to take in the neighborhood Christmas decorations at a walking pace. But this week, I noticed a couple of decorations whose seasonality is questionable:

Every year, I create a big photo book from our activities over the year. It's mostly of the kids, with some other family portrait or maybe one pet picture. I print off three copies, and those get given as gifts to both of the grandmothers and to Mrs. theskinnyonbenny.

A couple of weekends ago, we headed out for the annual cutting down of the Christmas tree. We drive out in the parts of rural Louisiana that are in the hour or two from Baton Rouge, and there's not really another time that we get to these parts of the state. I forget from one year to the next that rolling hills of East Feleciana Parish are kind of pretty. Even more so with the little bit of changing leaf color that we see up there. It's not New Hampshire in September, but it's prettier than you would think.

Through most of my adult years, we've done destination Thanksgiving. It coincides with our wedding anniversary, so we've had a mix of family trips and friend meetups. We've never had friends come here -- where it's pleasant, but several times we've frozen our asses off at their homes or at some neutral location.

This week, a group of Orcas sank a sailboat near the Strait of Gibraltar. You've likely being seeing these stories for several months. They've attacked a couple hundred boats over there. Very often, they do little or no damage. A few times, they've sunk the boat. This is nerve-wracking.