While the drama here at TV.com rages on, real life continues. I could blog about the bad timing of the release or the fact that most of us knew that it would come with some huge bugs or the fact that the data has taken 2nd place to becoming a MySpace clone or...but I won't.

This weekend was the first speech and debate tournament of the year. Looking at the schedule, we compete every weekend until Thanksgiving. I'm tired just thinking about it! My co-coach and I might try to split some weekends, but logistically that's pretty hard. We had 11 kids compete at this tournament. Two rental vans cost the team about 300.00 for the weekend. A bus would've cost us just 700.00 plus. The problem? Cars need drivers, which requires both of us. I know I've mentioned it, but a speech tournament lasts from about 3pm to midnight on Friday. We are usually back up at 6am on Saturday and compete until 11:00pm on Sat. At least, you hope you are competing that late because that means your kids are doing well. Unfortunately, the older I get, the harder the long schedules are physically.

We did pretty well this weekend. The kids walked away with 4 "shinies" or trophies. And we had 3 other kids who were on the verge of getting awards. Our team is growing and still pretty young. So, all of this hardware is pretty impressive.