King of all he surveys, Max here expresses great joy at being taken to the Wellfleet Oysterfest a few weeks ago. It was vest weather and we met Leah's mom and aunt, which made the bivalv-a-licious event three times better.

Oysterfest is one of those things that you know will cost too much and not be all that super, but that you still have to go to once or twice. In our case, we have been trying to get there for 7 years, so we sort of had to follow through now that we were free on the right weekend. We had oysters on the half shell, oyster fritters, fried clams, clam chowder, and...wait for it....wait for it....candy.

Leah and Susan bought some kind of fancy chocolate thing filled with peanut butter for Max to distract him from the fancy chocolate things they bought for themselves. He made short work of it, as you can see. Max plus melty candy equals serious work with joy as the outcome from his efforts. He does not smile or comment until he is done, at which point he says, very plainly, "I want some more chocolate with peanut butter inside it," as if you were always stocked with six or seven of those things. He also does not mind sticky - note the rubbing together of the hands in a manner that, if I were covered in that much chocolate, would send me straight to an insane asylum. It gets messier before it gets cleaner. Maybe he was a little concerned about his hands at this point, but I think he was just trying to eat them.

He didn't have any more candy until Halloween, when we decked him out in a dog suit and paraded him around the neighborhood. Climbing up and down all the stairs proved to be a problem, since Max got tired of it quickly. Luckily we were only walking a block to a friend's Halloween party, where there was actual dinner and a game in which Max tried to eat a cookie off a string hanging from the ceiling.

The night was on thin ice from the outset, when told us that he did not want a costume, did not want candy, and would rather read. He nearly put the kibosh on the entire thing when he found an alphabet book on our way out the door and refused to leave until we had read through M. Roughly 12 seconds after we took this photo, Max took off the hood. About 20 minutes after that, when we reached the Halloween party, he ditched the costume itself. Probably very hot. He was a good dog, though. We got a grand total of one trick or treater, leaving us with 15 dollars worth of KitKats and Reese's. I put them in a bowl on my desk at work and they were gone in one day. Teachers love candy, I suppose.