Today was a magical day. We began in the morning, loading up a 40-gallon pot, frame and butane tank in our trusty Toyota, with many oranges, onions, potatoes, lots of spices, and then drove out to the bayou for a crawfish boil. We were visiting Georgia, our friend we haven't seen in nearly a decade, since San Miguel days.

Georgia's house backs up on a bayou, so after greeting four dogs, unloading the cooking supplies, and admiring the view, Georgia and I hopped into a canoe, loaded with crawfish traps, a bucket of fish heads, and oars, to bring home dinner. We poled through the marshy grass, got green slime all over ourselves, laughed a lot, but didn't fall in and brought home the biggest crawfish I've ever seen, some as big as my hand. One even pinched me!

Then the Guv popped all his special incredients into his giant pot, fired up the "boil", and the crawfish turned bright red for dinner. We sat out on the porch, tossing our shells over the side, and joked about how many crawfish we could eat as the sun set, the purple martins came home to roost, and egrets flew along the border of the swamp.

We drove back home along Interstate 310, up over the Mississippi River via the Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge, some 150 feet over the river, and admired the skyline of New Orleans. Tomorrow's our last day of volunteer work at the library where we'll say goodbye to new friends, and maybe, just maybe, tomorrow night we'll see Irma Thomas in concert.