She gets up before sunrise, which comes a bit later each passing day now, rubs her eyes, shuffles to the bathroom. Shes up, my little 6-year-old sweetheart, which means we are too, making the kinds of noises and gestures grown folks do when duty calls in the early, early morning.

First I take out Glass Joe with a devastating series of blows to the face and body. He doesnt stand a chance. Then I polish off Von Kaiser with a TKO in the first round.

Last week Greensboro musician, filmmaker and all-around good guy Tim LaFollette passed after suffering with ALS, AKA Lou Gehrigs Disease, for two years. We were friends not the kind of friends who got together for lunch every week or even talked on the phone all that much.

On the first day of tournament play at the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club, youre gonna want to get the lay of the land.

The stuff coming out of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is complex, dense and truly amazing.

The ticket line at NewBridge Bank Park wends around the corner and halfway down the block. A sizable crowd is building not Willie Nelson numbers, but not bad, considering the Grasshoppers are in West Virginia playing the Power, it is 100 degrees outside even at 6 p.

Imagine, as I am now, that my name is Mr. Wallace Henry Hartley, 33, of Dewsbury, England, a violinist and bandleader. The year is 1912, and a couple days earlier I was chosen to lead the band on the brand new showpiece of the White Star cruise line: the RMS Titanic.

Im moving kinda slow today, not exactly dragging my ass along the ground but low enough to it that I could win a limbo contest. And Im not the only one. All told, six YES! Weekly staffers made the trip down to New Orleans last week for the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, along with about 300 other journalists, designers and sales staff from some of the best papers in the country.

They came in the mail on Friday, an overnight delivery of Promethean proportion in a package the size of a lunchbox. Id been waiting for it less than 24 hours, and still I was jumpy with anticipation.

Ive been thinking a lot about the fire at the castle tis year, about the brutal murder of William Ransom Hobbs, the tragic fate of Deborah Ann Moy and the fire that obscured most of the crimes physical evidence. Ive been thinking about this unsolved murder, this savage attack that happened all those years ago, back in September 2009.

Im back after a week in New York with the family, where I ate bagels and lobster, reconnected with family and old friends, and worked to eliminate my farmers tan.

The tide had made full flow in the late afternoon, and by the time the sun fell low its roar loosened to a gentle sigh. The crowds had deserted the beach just an hour or so before, and shore birds fought over their leavings. Streaks of deep pink, blood orange and full-on red ran through wispy cloud cover like watercolors.

It started out simply enough. We had some concerns about the lawn this year. We have concerns about it every year, actually. Our mottled quarter acre in varying shades of green may not be the worst expanse in the neighborhood that distinction belongs to the house on the corner, the yard pocked with dandelions and other fast-growing weeds, the edges spilling over the curb, tall shoots popping through creases in the driveway.

I dont have many pictures of my father. Its not because he wasnt around. My father was a fixture in the house where I grew up he was always around: watching TV in the den, fixing plates of snacks in the kitchen, shooting pool in the basement.

We get up like we do every day, a few snooze buttons past 6 a.m., roll from our bed and shuffle to the kitchen, rousting the children from their rooms as we go. I begin the countdown that ticks off every school day, calling off the time before the bus hits curbside like a veiled threat.

The first bear was spotted a couple weeks ago in north Greensboro, and since then bear sightings have been reported in the Aycock Historical District, NC A&T University, a downtown train trestle, US 29 and a tree near Battleground Park.

On May 2, George Ewing left his Scranton, Pa. hotel room, started walking and just kept going. The plan was to walk 600 miles in 30 days, about 20 a day, all the way back to the Gate City, where this trip really started.

How many cats is too many? For some, of course, just a single cat is too many to keep in a home, and I get that. Feeding a cat can be a hassle, and the price of cat food the good cat food, the kind you get from the vet and not from the convenience store is not insignificant.

What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end. And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.

Everyones talking about the embalming table. There it is, right there, the newest among piles of prized artifacts: a low, wooden recliner with elegant iron hinges, made around the turn of the century when the embalming process was done via housecall, bought from a Greensboro seller who came in with it yesterday.