“Mom, I had fun,” said my youngest. That alone made last week’s family night out to the Texas Tornado hockey game worth it. Oh, they lost to Topeka Roadrunners, but being there provided a memorable experience for my husband and our two sons. Our teen daughter had no interest in going.

And all that in spite of my older son refusing to eat the BBQ buffet meal and my husband standing in line for an entire period. One of my clients invited us to the hockey game as part of its partner appreciation. We didn’t sit in the normal seats in the crowd. We went to a reserved area on the ground level behind one of the goals. It had tables and chairs and a buffet along the back wall. Popcorn, baseball hats, signed hockey sticks, pennants and programs decorated the black and gold tables.

I had an it’s a small world encounter when I entered the area. It was one of the tennis coaches who taught several of my classes a few years ago. Her husband also works with the client.

NHL vs. NAHL Experience

I’ve attended a Dallas Stars hockey game. The NHL Stars have nothing on the NAHL Tornadoes. If you’ve been to a major league and minor league baseball game, you can tell the difference. It’s the same way with the NAHL hockey game. Smaller arena, more entertainment, closer to the action. Although I grew up a big sports gal, hockey didn’t make my top list of sports. The Dallas Stars didn’t come to Texas until I was a teen and hockey wasn’t popular in Texas.

Watching the game on the ground level is a whole different experience than watching it way high up in the stands like I did with at the Stars game. At one point, I jerked in response to the loud crashing of players into the window near me.

Intermission

During the intermission, the boys got into a Porsche and rode in it around the ice. That may not sound exciting to you, but my boys — especially the older one — LOVES sports cars. It was the first time he rode in a Porsche. The girl on the other side of the cheerleader in the photo is the client’s daughter.

After that, the fans threw hockey pucks to try to get them in a small bucket in the middle of the ice. It was wild watching hundreds of flying pucks and only two landing in the bucket.

And another small world thing happened during intermission when kids from an elementary school choir sang. That elementary school was my kids’! What are the chances of that? First, the arena is in Frisco. The school is in Plano. Second, the Tornadoes played 34 games at that point. About half of that would be home games. So out of roughly 17 games, they sang at the one we attended.

I also met Ike, the team’s mascot. I’ve got a thing (no, not a fetish) for Mascots since seeing the San Diego Chicken when I was a kid. The chicken came to a Texas Rangers game and I had a blast watching his antics.

Freelancer Feels Like a Part of the Team

As a freelancer, I don’t have opportunities to attend corporate events like I did when I worked in the corporate world. One event took place at the old Texas Stadium in Irving (pre-Super Bowl 45 stadium) and one at Las Colinas Studios where TV shows film. Imagine how it makes a freelancer feel when she’s invited to a client’s event. One thing’s for sure — it makes you want to work harder (I already do, but it gives you renewed energy) for the client knowing they appreciate you.

It’s a Teeny, Tiny World

Though a local company (my only local client — Hint: Look on the window of the Porsche), I met Frank online. He created Fib or Not and hired me to do the copy for the game. Later, we discovered we lived within a mile of each other. When we first met, the little guy and girl in the Porsche were babies. Fast forward a few years, they are one year apart in grade at the same elementary school and we run into each other at school events.

Brain food…

• Phlixie: It’s tedious to find captioned instant download movies on Netflix. Phlixie is doing what Netflix should’ve done. They hope to expand it to other services. Yeah!
• Reading Judiciously: When I read — especially nonfiction — I try to look at the author’s writing and learn from it. Tough to do because you want to absorb the material, too. Kind of like multi-tasking brain. [Link: Elizabeth S Craig]
• The Query Letter That Won Me an Agent and a Four Book Deal (And Why It Was So Successful): That says it all.
• HTML5 Cheat Sheet: I still rely on my old yet in great shape VisiBone HTML card. It has high quality lamination.
• Claim Your Oscar: Worried about giving away too many trade secrets? Need not to worry.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Parents Shouldn’t Text: That should be “SOME parents shouldn’t text.” I think I’m a decent texter. Training my son on texting etiquette. [Link: Bitrebels]
• Light Show: Sensational!
• 13 things worth knowing about Super Mario: I had the mini Donkey Kong arcade toy. Memories…
• A cartogram done in real 3D: The material used? Legos. My mom has an beautiful book of map art. This will need to be in the next edition.

Can we expect showers to follow? To be continued…

• 27 Twitter Applications Your Small Business Can Use Today
• The Top Five Innovation Killers: Go on. I dare you.
• 10 Free Things for Writers: Contains stuff I hadn’t seen before reading this list.
• Angry Editor Rant: Want to know why things aren’t going so well for some freelance writers? This could explain why. [Link: Anne]
• How to Land a Writing Job: Another winner from Anne. She’s on a roll!
• Experience Design: Why pages are the last thing you need to worry about. Lovely presentation by Tim Richards.
• 175 strategies and places for link building. Step 1: Find time. A 17-year-old has more time than a parent of three with a full-time paid job and part-time job as volunteer.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Drawings by Craig Frazier. Words by You. Submit your captions.
• Super Mario Brothers Rubik’s Cube: And I can’t even solve the original — just one side.
• Passover Does Facebook: Hilarious.

Resources available in captioned media talks about the Caption Media Program (CMP), a great program that ofers free loans of open captioned programs. The program now offers Internet streaming videos and currently has over 1000 videos. I love this part because finding online captioned media is like the needle in haystack thing.

I just finished reading Winning Results with Google AdWords (reading it to do an abstract, not to advertise) and learned something interesting. Google Video relies on caption transcripts to make its videos searchable. Well, why can’t the captions be in the streaming videos, too? [ Read more... ]

Not trying to be a namedropper here, but Zeldman pointed out a must-read article: The King of Closed Captions. I’ve been familiar with Joe Clark for a long time because I am an avid supporter of CC especially with my profound hearing loss. In 1983 or so, I got my first CC decoder – a butt-ugly clunky brown box with old-fashioned TV handles for changing selections. The first CC thing I saw was a Bond, James Bond movie. Which one? I don’t recall. I DO remember being in awe because for once in my life I didn’t have to ask, “What did she say?” “What happened?” “What’s so funny?”

Most of the answers were, “Nothing.” “Just that blah blah. OK? Shhhh!”

Then I discovered a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=B0007IO6V4%26tag=manalangcom-20%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/B0007IO6V4%253FSubscriptionId=0EMV44A9A5YT1RVDGZ82″ title=”View product details at Amazon”>Dynasty and Alexis vs. Krystle cat fights. I hated waiting a whole week to see the next episode. The next day, I would talk about the show with my best buddy. It was amazing to be able to talk to a friend about a TV show and what happened.

I watched EVERY show that was CC in the early to mid-’80s. By the late ’80s, there was enough CC TV programs for me to make choices.

CC expanded to cable and I finally got the opportunity to watch old movies like “Double Indemnity” and most Hitchcock films thanks to Turner Classic Movies. TCM captioned many of its classics. I still have not seen original “The Odd Couple” movie in CC because no one has provided CC! Plus, the arrival of DVD provided more opportunities to view older movies.

Then in the late-’90s (or so), MTV and VH-1 captioned its music videos. By then, I was over rock ‘n roll TV. Nonetheless, it was an exciting moment to see the words of a song instead of just listen to music and watch da moves.

Now, if online videos would get captioned, I’d be a happy camper.