I know you know the festival

Today was a big day. Here's what happened.

• Facebook birthday wishes continued to roll in. (On Facebook? Get in on the fun!)
• A student with whom I worked closely back in 2002 and 2003 visited campus, on a break from his pursuit of a doctorate in history. Our hour-long Starbucks discussion wasn't half long enough.
• Progress was made on the paper I'm reading at the International Society of Religion, Literature, and Culture meeting in Aarhus next week.
• Archer finally won the coveted "Gallery Good As Gold," a sticker he's been talking about ever since he started going to Marguerite Vann. It's like the rarest Pokemon of Good-As-Golds. You get it for having one of the two best art projects in the class, the ones that get hung up in the hallway. The project was a family portrait, and Archer worked on it during his one art period per week for about a month. (We got to see it this evening; it was excellent, in my unbiased opinion.) The Gallery Good As Good is "colored," as Archer has been telling us breathlessly for months: "They're pink, and purple, and green, and stuff like that!" He got a purple one.
  
• We went to the Fall Festival at Archer's school this evening, a huge fundraiser including a silent auction, chili cook-off, hot dog dinner, and carnival games. Archer won at bingo, to his great delight, and we took home a bag full of cheap trinkets that the kids won by throwing beanbags at things and picking up floating ducks. It's hard to overestimate how happy this made them.