Thank you.

As the title says, thank you everyone for reading my blog. If you actually have read my blogs these last few days then you are probably crazy! These blogs were far too long. Sorry!

My last blog in this series. It's almost done! That's good because tomorrow I leave for the weekend again. :-D Oh no! I just got back and discovered it saved this post as a draft instead of publishing it! I thought it was out there for the world to see.

I thought it was a very good round. Katie and Charlie did a good job and managed to hold their own pretty well. One thing that I noticed about the round is that Katie and Charlie showed their lack of experience against fast talkers. Fast talkers are more popular in college and a person quickly learns to lump and clump arguements, but NCFCA hasn't had too many fast, coherent talkers. Katie and Charlie are good at lump and clump, but the shear number of arguements overwhelmed them. One thing about the Baker-Baker team that Katie had noticed and I enjoyed watching in future rounds was their command of information of the current topic. Katie said that they were the best informed team she had seen at nationals and from some of the subtleties I saw in the final round, I would have to agree. In finals, the affirmative had some excellent arguements but I'm still not sure who I would have voted for. If the Affirmative had brought up the complete lack of brinks in the DAs, I would have gone Aff, but that was never pointed out.

I'm home now! I think I mentioned that at the beginning of this series of blogs. My grandma flew down Sunday morning and I picked her up at the airport and she's moved into my room while she acclimates to the schedule of the household. She's not doing too much except to make sure things stay clean and dishes washed and clothes keep getting cycled through the washing machine and put away... OK, she's helping out quite a bit, but her big value comes in just being here for my mom. With all of us kids doing our daily activites, Mom doesn't have anyone to talk to during the long day; so grandma talks and they have visited extensively since her arrival here. I'm sure they still have quite a bit of catching up to do. The catching up that people do when they know they are going to spend a long time together is so much different than catching up with someone during a phone call. All sorts of details, small incidents, old incidents, and the humdrum of daily life is shared during the extended visits and that is so much more refreshing than phone calls, E-mails, or even blogs.

Yes, it's true. Blog's will not replace speech. :-)