So, the prevention coordinator came into my room for a bit (and she’s still going..) to talk about stuff she talks about, like cyberbullying and online safety. I gave a test to see if they were retaining anything…and here’s the best of the worst answers…spelling mistakes intact.

1. What is the main reason people try to get private information out of students? Correct answer: To get to their parents for financial information for their own gain

• bad answer 1: (a 6th grader)- They want to be friends to the end with you.
• bad answer 2: (another 6th grader) So they can find where you live and kidnap you.
• bad answer 3: (a 5th grader) They want to meet you and stalk you.

2. Name three things you should never do when messaging or sending email. Correct answer: Common sense things-no all caps, send it to the right place, no flaming, ect.

• Bad answer 1 (6th grader) go and see if they got it.
• bad answer 2 (6th grader) have a positive attitude

3. why is it easier to cyberbully someone instead of doing it face to face? What makes it harder for the person being cyberbullied to defend themselves online? Correct answer: Cyberbullying isn’t a face to face method. It’s easier to say mean things on line because you don’t have to deal with the face to face reaction. It makes it harder because you not only take the person’s safety away, the person being bullied doesn’t know who did it, or who started it. It’s hard to take action away from school.

• bad answer: (6th grade) They mite kill you or call the po po

4. List 3 things that would make a password hard for someone to hack.

correct answer: a combination of numbers, letters and symbols.

• bad answer 1: (6th grader) omegle, facebook, aim and myspace.
• bad answer 2: (6th grader) put ur name, numbers and something else.
• bad answer 3: (5th grader) your pet’s name.

5. list 5 rules for good messaging and emailing.

Correct answer: common sense things…

• bad answer : talk, read listen and press send.

6. What is spam, and why is it harmful?

Correct answer: non useful mail that is sent to your computer by companies trying to obtain private information. it’s harmful because it can contain viruses or items that can compromise your security.

• bad answer 1- I have no idea what spam is.
• bad answer 2- a food that comes in a can.
• bad answer 3-Spam is a website that can get people hurt. It is harmful because people can get really hurt.

7. Name three things you should never do when messaging or sending email. Correct answer: common sense things…

• bad answer 1- see if they got it.
• bad answer 2 tell them they looked hot in their clothes.

8. why should you never click on a pop up?

correct answer: It could contain a virus or a way to compromise your personal and private information

• bad answer 1-A dirty old man could be behind it.
• bad answer 2-a kidnapper sent it to you.

and thus concludes this edition of the Bestest answers ever! My thanks go to the awesome prevention coordinator, who I adore,  for making this entertainment possible!

Last night was the first night of Learn to Skate for Hockey. The fact that Isaac is taking hockey lessons is something that is a sure source for irritation among specific members of Isaac’s educational team. When I emailed the physical therapist (PT) to ask if he had to wear the AFOs with the skates, I got a full on lecture about how teaching him to play hockey maybe wasn’t the right choice of sport. She went on and on and on about how he may have trouble negotiating a stick, puck and otherwise and maybe putting him in a regular learn to skate program would be more beneficial.

Yeah. RIGHT. Put the kid on skates with no gear and only give a half hour lesson with a half hour of free skate that would be beyond frustrating for a very beginner. Yeah. No.

That was motivation number one-being told he couldn’t do it.

So, we headed off to the rink last (friday) night and geared the kid up. I swear. Doing the whole gear thing reminded me of this:

Yes, extended deep sea diving.

Because first, over the long underwear style Speed Racer pajamas, we had the chest/shoulder protection, the elbow pads, the shin/knee pads, the hockey undies, the socks, pants, gloves, jersey  and skates…and then the helmet with full face cage…

The one thing Isaac wanted most in the world was his stick. We put the pirate tape on it and this became motivator number 2.

Since my child has no clue on how to skate, he started out on buckets. Using them for support and pushing the buckets across the ice. There were tears, there were falls, and one fall was a massive bell ringer-thank GOD for helmets!

There was even a conversation about how he couldn’t play hockey without a stick…and I told him that he had to be off a bucket before he could hold onto his stick.

And there was one sweet, wonderful big kid. He got Isaac up and moving and even got him a puck…and his stick.

Motivator number 3 anyone?

By the end of the night, my darling shrimp had stick in hand, was standing up and moving without a bucket…and whacking at a puck.

So, mix all 3 motivators in and it’s kind of obvious-we’ve got a hockey player on our hands.

And for me…well, it’s motivation to get knitting on some warm stuff. That ice rink is FREEZING. It’s also motivation to make sure that I’ve got fresh batteries in my camera. Mine DIED LAST NIGHT! Stupid stinkin batteries.

you’re sitting at a gas station, and he looks over at the car wash and the PVC pipe holding up the sign and says…

“oh, look! It’s a  Chicken GUN”

Happy birthday to an amazing part of my childhood, Doug’s childhood and Isaac’s current giggle…

So, in honor of that…a song that makes all of us in my house laugh hysterically-and made us explain what linoleum was to our 5 year old..

Today, Isaac had a half day, due to grades 1-5’s parent conferences. Oh, fun. So, we miss a full day of resource and therapies…but I digress. I picked the small boy up a smidge early and took him to purchase his hockey skates, stick and other items. We ran our errands and then progressed onto attempting to purchase the skates. My first instinct was to go to Kemp’s. BUUUUUTTTT, since I had done something slightly stupid with Isaac’s adderol prescription (don’t ask. It’s a classic Laura maneuver. I’ll just leave it at that.), I decided that we should stop at Dick’s, since it was on the way.

Yeah. Bad idea. Superbad idea.

I walk in with Isaac, and find the way through the new store to the hockey department. There, we get a pair of skates, a roll of clear tape (for the socks) and a mouthguard. I didn’t think the skates were right-they seemed waaay too big, but I was told they would work. Heck! What do I know! I’m a first time hockey parent. They also didn’t have the hockey undies that he requires to play. The guy that was “helping” us didn’t even know that there were special protective underwear for hockey, and tried to sell us a run of the mill jock. No, no, no. How are we supposed to keep the socks up? seriously! The hockey specific ones have velcro on the bottom of them that you stick the socks to.

Then, we got some bad recommendations on the stick. They tried to sell us a STREET HOCKEY stick for an ice hockey game. Yikes! Plus, since all of the sticks were too long, I asked if they cut them to size for the player. He said we could do it ourselves. When I asked for measurement guidelines, he gave me a blank stare.

Not the right answer.

So, we were headed for Kemp’s. I purchased the wrong skates, inquired about the return policy and made sure that we could return them unworn, unsharpened if they turned out to be the wrong skate., which I was almost positive they were…but again, I didn’t know.

We get to Kemp’s, Doug laughing at me the whole way for the simple fact that 1) I knew where the hockey store was, and 2) he knew how this was all going to end up.

We meet up with a wonderful young man who we asked to help us fit Isaac properly for skates. Turns out he got his start in the youth hockey program where Isaac is starting! YIPEE!

He fitted Isaac properly for a pair of skates, thereby letting us know that the kind we bought were too flexible for Isaac and were also a full size too large!

Yeah. Great.

This meant we had to take the wrong skates back. Thank the good lord I asked about the return policy.

Stop laughing at me for not listening to my gut. I did enough yelling at myself the entire time we were driving back to Dick’s.

So, after purchasing the proper skates, stick (with pirate theme grip tape) and hockey undies, we made the trek back to the offending store. I walked in with the bag, and was greeted by the customer assistance person at the door. She asked me what was wrong with the purchase, and  I told her-

Wrong size and too flexible.

She looked at me funny and pointed me to the guy at the register.

So, the lesson here in all of this is that I should go with my first instinct and NOT with the one that comes when I’ve done something stupid and I’m trying to consolidate travel.

Man. Hockey is complicated!

Yeah. My friend asked me that. She’s lucky I’ve known her since high school and I have one of her kids in my computer classes at school AND is my favorite pampered chef consultant… Otherwise, I’d have to whack her.

What brought her to ask me this pivotal question?

What did I do to make her wonder about my dental coverage?

I signed Isaac up for youth hockey.

Yes, you all read that right. Youth Hockey. This level is called “learn to skate for hockey” and is the first in the progression towards full out hockey. How did this all come about? Frankly, I’m still in shock that I did this, but it all started, as it always does, with an announcement from the shrimp…

“Mommy. I want to join the River Rats.”

(do you all hear the sound of forehead hitting hand here?)

After a long explanation that first, he couldn’t skate and secondly he was too young-he announced this:
“mommy-I want to play hockey.”

Ok, I can get behind that. It must have been providence that I opened my email the  next morning and saw that the school PTO email list had sent out a list of activities and announcements (they do it every week) and one was a “learn to skate” and “learn to skate for hockey.” Hrm.

So, I made some phone calls on my break at work, and found out that it was an option for us. I quickly signed the small boy up and proceeded to update my facebook status to “oh, my, what have I done?” or something like that.

I didn’t let the small boy in on the whole thing until Sunday morning. I just didn’t want to hear all weekend about hockey, hockey, hockey. Meanwhile, I’d been quietly scoping out where to get certain hockey items that we can’t get through the loaner program-and wouldn’t want to…Really-I’m not allowing my child to use someone else’s hockey undies. No thanks.

Sunday morning rolls around and I get the small boy dressed and we head off to the open house. He thought we were going to take him to play on the trains at Barnes and Noble. Nope. Not at all. We drove to the ice rink, where we found that it was colder inside the rink than it was outside the rink! YIKES!

I then asked my darling crazy child if he wanted to still learn how to play hockey, and he excitedly yelped at the top of his lungs and ripped off his seat belt.

Thank goodness there were the coaches to help us gear up. We made a choice to use loaner gear for this season, as hockey costs add up FAST. Hardcore fast. For just pads and things, you’re looking at 100.00 on the low end of things. YIKES! And being my child is supertiny, and still growing, he’ll most likely outgrow things faster than we can buy them! eek!

Starting in November, I’m going to no longer be soccer mom, I’m going straight to hockey mom!

And yes, I’ve already put Dr. Nancy, Dr. Jen and Dr. Jason on alert…

Wednesday night was the VIP party for the new store. We basically kept the store open until 11 pm and ran all sorts of games, giveaways and tours of the new place. My job was to run the Wii video game challenges. I found Mario and Sonic at the Winter Games which, incidentally, is tons of fun…and includes hockey…and put that up for some time trial play.

There were these two kids who were in the store from about 7:45 pm. They saw us getting ready for the party and saw me setting up the swag stuff. I pegged them as either 8th graders or freshman, just by their sheer PITA nature. It didn’t help that I’d been in the computer lab all day with my students…so, I was on edge. These two goobers come up to me and ask if they can take some of the free stuff. At this point, myself and another district manager told them no, that it was for the party and that it was going to be raffled off and used for tournament play. Then, the line came that pegged them as 8th graders…

“So, if we stay until 9, can we get some stuff?”

Seriously. Where’s your mom? Don’t you have homework that you need to complete?

So, these two goobers stayed until 9, got some freebies and then proceeded to stay a bit longer…and drive me more crazy during the videogame tournament that I was running. The one won a prize, and kept hounding me re: the prize and if he could win another one for competing in a 2nd tournament. Umm..you got a freakin’ free gift card, a free faceplate for your xbox and lanyards-what else do you want?

These two drove me insane…totally insane! The one even started complaining to the other one that it was a school night and if they could, they’d have stayed until the end of the party so they could get more free stuff.

OY!

One person said it was the “nerdiest event she’d ever been to.” Umm. I agree totally. But come on. Nerds R Us. That’s why we work at a game store…

Yep! I’m back game geeking! That little fall I took at the end of last school year put me out of commission for the majority of the summer. Then, the lack of hours put me seriously under the game geek radar for an extra special long time.

Now that I’m back there are just a few changes at the game geek empire! Let’s do those in bullet points, shall we?

• My Geekdom is now a “store of the future!” It’s neato bandito! We’ve got neat new registers and all of this high tech jazz. I’m all in bliss…
• We now get to wear jeans and sneakers to work, along with the company shirt. I’m not knocking this. Ya gotta love jeans and sneakers.
• We all have our own engraved name tags with the company mascot on them. What company you might ask? This should give you a hint… “there’s one…there’s another one…HOLY S####!”
• There are game advisors who got promoted, who really are letting it go to their heads.

Then, there are the things that stay the same-

• the supergrumpy District Manager
• the one blockhead assistant manager
• the hilarious people I work with
• the area manager who still refers to me as “the girl I stole from Starbucks,” when he tells anyone about me.
• the insane customers

So, with this store, comes a whole new crop of problems.

• figuring out where to put the 90 trillion PS2 games that are in the store. just as an aside-I never, ever want to see another PS2 game again. Seriously.
• figuring out why the alarm for the store was never set up until the blockhead assistant manager had to spend the night in the store.

and the largest problem…that we found upon opening this afternoon….

THE PEOPLE WHO SET UP OUR REGISTERS NEVER, EVER SET UP OUR WIRELESS…

and this meant….

WE COULDN’T RUN CREDIT CARDS OR PROCESS ANY SORT OF GIFT CARD!!!

Oh, lord. Save me.

so, I got on the phone with the help desk and got transferred to three different people…and finally I got someone who knew what they were doing on the phone…but thought we were a “regular” store and not a “store of the future”, so was giving us troubleshooting based on the ‘regular” thing. ARGH!

I passed it off to the area manager. Thank goodness the transaction that I was doing was for another district manager.

So, hopefully, the VIP party tomorrow night will come off without a hitch! No more unhelpful people!!

We not only had a pre-season River Rats game here…

With lots of fights, because now, we’ve got a NORTHWAY SERIES BACK!

Isaac got his face painted at the game and some silly gear courtesy of Nana…

and then we had opening night…

Can I begin this tale of hilarity by saying that I had a target on my chest? I was hanging down at the boards with Puddle (as she does) and Isaac, who seems to love all of the banging around of warm ups, and toward the end, a puck came flying over the boards. Normal occurance. Seriously normal. WELL, it came and hit me in the chest-bounced off me and went down on the ground. Isaac scrambled and got the puck…and I grabbed Puddle’s phone and put up the following status…

Just got hit in the hooters with a puck! must be hockey season!

Yep. it’s true. I did. Yes, it’s hilarious. I think I deserve one of those hot as all get out 3rd jerseys for my humiliation and pain. But I digress.

My little guy got a new hat…

and we watched a very young team really try and pull it out.

Isaac watched Mommy go slightly nutty yelling….

and exercise huge restraint in not throttling the old, grumpy geezer in front of them who thought children didn’t belong at a hockey game, and told a few parents so.

Then, we went down on the ice after the game for the Meet the Players session.

Isaac was beyond excited that we got to go onto the ice. He could NOT believe that we were actually walking on ice. He asked me a few times for ice skates. I told him he had to master the art of soccer cleats before he could even THINK of getting on skates.

Isaac got his hockey stick signed by the entire team, save for the coaches. They didn’t come out. I think the assistant coach was trying to find ways to tell them of the Curse of Meet the Players Night…but I digress.

Then, asked Isaac if I could do one thing. Take his picture in the goal…

We’ll be back for more games. I know it. I just know it.

I’ve finally corrupted my son to the dark side…Hockey is the appropriate sport…

We got to see a movie stunt being done!!
It’s for a movie called The Other Guys that’s been filming in the area for the past few weeks. They’ve decided to use our area as a double for New York City. The only thing that’s the same is the plates on the car…

But here’s the stunt being set up. I wonder if you can guess where that car will land…because I’m not going to show you…