Castle in the Clouds

Blog titles. Book titles. I hate coming up with them.  Mostly because I'm not very good at it. But, now that I have you here, I thought I'd share a little bit of what's been happening over here. It's really all the usual stuff.  Work. Sports.  School.  Too much television.  A book here and there. Then there's the fear that I'm going to go prematurely gray because of this child right here... I know he's not the only middle school student out there struggling with his grades.  I know this because parents talk.  I hear the stories.  I watch kids getting benched for being on academic probation.  Of course, none of that makes my hubby or me feel any better.  We're not worried about those other kids, we're worried about our own.  If he could succeed by our will alone, he'd be golden.  Unfortunately, doing well in school requires that he turns in his completed homework on time and that he pay attention to detail.  Two things he really doesn

I don't get a chance to attend many conferences, but my sister and I did manage to make it to this year's Epic ConFusion in Troy, Michigan.  (If you click on that link, you'll likely discover their website is under construction.  At least, that's what I find when I click on it...) We couldn't attend the Friday panels, but we arrived nice and early Saturday morning.  Since we couldn't get checked into our hotel room until later that afternoon, we decided to start our day off with breakfast at the Marriott (holy hells expensive!), attend a panel, and then browse the dealer's room. Although our breakfast was very good, we quickly agreed that the next morning we'd venture away from the hotel in search of either a McDonald's or a Starbucks. Our first panel was on the topic of comic books.  Even though I've had limited exposure to comic books or graphic novels, my sister is a huge fan of the comic book hero or heroine.  My exposure is limited to