Over the last couple of years, birthday week has been a source of some little bit of stress. The source of this is all of the Facebook greetings from people whose birthdays that I've ignored for years.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an external hard drive go bad. That's bad news for me, because it's the one I use for both my main laptop's backups and also my music/movie file storage. Not a huge deal -- I always keep two copies of everything -- but I definitely need it back in service.

I probably spent half a day just to come up with eight puns.

K is always quiet on his way to school, and it often freaks me out, since he's never quiet. This morning was his second full day of school -- and his first where I wasn't planning to walk him in, and I was afraid that he was nervous about finding his way around. At a stop light, I turned back to him and asked, "Are you sure you know where to go when I drop you off?"

Tip of the cap to AAA. I called last night because we had a car with a dead battery. The only thing I had to type in for the computer is my account number. Called again today, and their system must have associated my phone number and the account, because I got right to a human without having to enter anything. She confirmed me by name, and I didn't have to read off my number or verify any silly childhood memories. Very nice.

I thow out a new conspiracy theory, and I float an old one that I kind of buy into.

We spent the week of Easter on the sailboat. Almost entirely, we were tied up at Pontchartrain Landing on the lakeshore. It's an almost unknown RV Park and Marina, and not at all a bad place to hole up for a week.

This is just three totally unrelated short little posts about what's been happening around the theskinnyonbenny house.

I'm going to write a whole post dumping on Clemson football, and then tell you in a single sentence that I want them to win the national championship.

Last week, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary. I'm not nearly old enough to have been married twenty years, just as I am not nearly old enough to have a younger sister who dotes on grandchildren, yet here we are in a weird parallel universe where both things are ture.

As I've mentioned in this space before, I'm an old man now. It's time to start publishing my gripes.

We decided to sail to Mandeville, a town that's usually four or five hours from our home dock. It's a pretty standard trip for us, but this one spirals into nuttiness.