How do we avoid marital stress through all of this?

It’s hard for sure. One thing I’d suggest is that while the Orlando thing sounds intriguing, we went to Disneyland when I was in junior high and it was sort of like ‘I’m too old for this’ although my trip there w/ my daughter when she was 4 was magical and all of that. I agree w/ the people who are suggesting camp? If you are playing W-O-W you are pretending that you are ‘tough’/ magical/ etc. whereas outside, marching through the woods, sailing boats, etc. I think that you are closer to the sort of experiences that are part of the cool factor of stuff like Lord of the Rings, although I am sort of biased because I’m a huge geek? I am not a camper either but did sort of go to boot camp for a couple of years of martial arts training, pretty much classes 5-6 days/ week and usually some sort of cardio on my ‘day off’ and two-a-days (at age 40…how do you spell mid-life crisis?) before the black belt test? It was good to study something intensely like that. Push my comfort zone. Sure I have sucked at fantasy baseball ever since but well, you know, there are sacrifices we can make…

I think camp may be a better solution than Disney whether junior likes it or not? I have not been to Orlando but Disneyland was a bit young when I went there when I was in junior high. Although it was spectacular with my 4 year old. Re video games, even the people I know who were into W-o-W would play like 12 hours/ day for two months and then have to remove it from their computers because it was like crack. W-o-W will still be there when he comes home. Another thing may be that perhaps the people @ camp may actually be better at W-o-W too? I think diversity may be useful and, if you go to camp and get a bunch of new magic buddies, the possibility to pwn one’s friends may be significant, for a few week’s investment?

Or not, I totally sympathize but we just pulled the plug on junior. Every now and then she has a computer oriented project to do and we’ll log her on and go ‘did you miss a lot of important messages?’ and the answer seems to have become “no” since they don’t have much to talk about. We don’t now all the other parents of her posse but it seems like some of them may be in the same boat because they seem to be developing a mutual interest in hanging out at the mall, going to movies and stuff. There’s a whole bunch of other perils there-- nose rings, Victoria’s Secret, McDonald’s, etc.-- but I like that they are getting out and around rather than sitting around txting each other. This is only in the last couple of weeks and there’s plenty of time for the wheels to fall off the bus and we had HUGE brouhahas about the “you are grounded from the computer” “how long” “forever” conversation too but things have been eerily calm most of the time?