Referrals, Knoxville con and more!

I love digging through referrals. Let’s see what weirdness awaits us this time:
– Someone from the Securities and Exchange Dept. in D.C. perusing my Smashed Cauliflower recipe.
– Lots of recipe hits, as usual. Is Italian Chili that hard? Man! Tons of hits.
– A google.de hit for Nina Hartley.
– Cox in Las Vegas! Hi, Heather!! :)
– COOL! Someone in Derio, Pais Vasco Spain translated a post into Spanish with Google translate! It seems to work VERY well! Look at my site in Spanish.
– Lots of Budget, Bibi Chen, Neat Receipts and Atala, as usual.
– The obligatory Dragon*Con sucks and Heroes hits.
– Rendi’s comment seems to lead many searches for her to my blog. Meh!
– And last, someone from Comcast biz office is very interested in my blog, apparently.

We will be in Knoxville for a small con this weekend, the Knoxville Comics and Anime Con. I hope it’s a good show. The tables are pricey for a small show and this is a test to see if it’s worth it. My guess: probably not. We shall see.

My niece will be staying with us at the hotel and I suppose at the Con, too. We’ll not have time to run her back and forth. She’s having MUCH conflict with my brother and is desperate for a break. I told my brother that it’d be hard to raise her, especially in the teen years. He, of course, did not listen and has let her have WAY too much freedom too soon. Dating and having sex at 13?? I’m no prude, but that seems a bit young to me. But you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube and he’s just going to have to work it out with her. Or she’ll run away and go off the rails. I’m trying my very best to not let that happen, but I’m one lone voice against a chorus of ignorance and blame. Fortunately, my niece has a highly developed sense of self preservation and is keenly aware of how volatile both sides of her family are. She’s adept at laying low and still getting her way. Which I can totally appreciate.

She’s only 14, but is dealing with issues I had at 17+. I am not sure how, exactly, I am supposed to handle the position I’m in, so I just go with my gut and hope for the best. I’ve tried talking to my brother about the growing teen angst his daughter is having, but he gets defensive and shuts down. I am not in a position to offer my niece an alternative place to live nor do I think that should be my role. I hope that my brother won’t ruin every last scrap of their relationship by being pigheaded and narrowminded. Chances are that he will ruin everything, simply because he has zero role models (single father w/ teen daughter) and zero ability to deviate from how he was raised (by pigheaded, narrowminded parents).

Family. No good can come of it. :/