Dear Kid,

Hope you are enjoying Spring(ish) Break so far. In honor of the icy weather we went to see the Cincinnati Cyclones play last Saturday night.

It was pink in the rink night for the Pink Ribbon Girls (fabulous women). We had pink glow sticks, the players had pink and black jerseys (j’adore!), and the Cyclones pulled out a win in a shoot out (Pi and I love shoot outs so we were all happy).

Which ever group was working the concessions must have had a good night too, because I paid $4 for a bottle of water, because of course a bottle of water should cost $4. Yeesh.

More importantly, the ice was pink and excuse me but how entirely cool was that? Extremely cool and kudos to the Ice Crew (yes, there really is such a group).

Pink ice of course led to the question “how do they do that?” and while I love you dearly I decided to go to a higher source for information. I even went higher than My Friend The Internet. I went to Sean Lynn of the Cyclones who exceeded All Expectations by answering me on a Sunday when he should have been hoarding $4 bottles of water for Winter Storm Titanic and the impending Ice Doom.

According to Sean:

The ice is painted with a giant wand sprayer with pink ice paint. It starts with one coat and once that coat dries an additional coat will be added. It usually takes a few coats. Once the pink appears even and our ice crew is happy with the color, the remainder of the evening is spent locking in the pink color by building layers of clear water/ice on top of it. By creating these additional clear layers, the pink is able to show through and last the entire game. To remove the pink, we will use the zamboni to do a series of dry cuts. This will slowly remove the clear layers and eventually the pink layers revealing the ice surface that we are accustom to for all other games.

Which was a great (and speedy) answer (and proved how smart you are) and I thanked him muchly and–wait, Ice Paint? Makes sense, but what is ice paint?

Unsurprisingly, you can’t use regular paint on an ice rink. I have asked the JetIce people (they make ice paint) for some more information, but unlike Sean they weren’t sitting around waiting to answer my questions. So I’ll get back to you when I know more.

Sean also suggested we watch this video about how they make hockey rink ice.

Have a wonderfully, colorful day, sweetie.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

December 12^th was Quite a day in history. And, being the kind of mother I am, I have decided to try to make some sense out of it for you. (I am such a good mom.)

In 1408 The Order of the Dragon was first created. This is important since the Dust Dragons are direct decedents of the Order and believe it is their dust-given right to overtake any place they want to overtake. Since I am a better blogger than a housekeeper, mostly I don’t argue. Mostly.

Fast forward to 1787 when Pennsylvania became 2nd state to ratify US Constitution, paving the way for We The People to become a country.

Speaking of We The People, on December 12, 1800, Washington DC was established as the capital of US so that many, many years later Auntie M could go to college there. Many years.

Then in 1914, many People tried to fly out of windows on Wall Street because of the largest one-day percentage drop in the history of Dow Jones Industrial Average, down 24.39%. Note: They did not master the art of flying before hitting the pavement.

Musically speaking, in 1792, Ludwig Von Beethoven received his 1st lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn. Ludwig was 22 at the time. You know why this is important, right? How could we have Peanuts and Snoopy without Schroeder playing Beethoven?

A lot of sports things happened on December 12^th (which is odd because I don’t usually think of December 12^th as a big sports day. But it was, so pay attention, because We, The People are big sports fans).

In 1899 George F Bryant of Boston patented the wooden golf tee, paving the way for using golf tees for all sorts of things, even golf.

In 1930, the Baseball Rules Committee greatly revised the rule book. Pretty much no one noticed. On the same day in 1949, the American League voted 7-1 rejecting legalizing the spitball. The lone dissenter spit on the decision.

In 1953, Chuck Yeager reached Mach 2.43. I don’t know if that really counts as sport, but it paved the way for the movie The Right Stuff which is a Most Excellent film.

Speaking of excellent movies, in 1965 Gale Sayers of Chicago Bears scored 6 TDs, tying the NFL record, paving the way (quite indirectly) for the movie Brian’s Song which is not only Most Excellent but is also one of the all-time Tear Jerkers.

In 1968 Arthur Ashe became the 1st black to be ranked #1 in tennis. Yep, he was that good.

And perhaps most importantly, in 1981 Wayne Gretzky scored the quickest 50th goal (game 39).

Here are a bunch of random bits of December 12^th history:

In 1901 Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeded in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less. This historic message was Morse code for the letter “s” rendering the whole event fairly obscure in history. Take a lesson from Alex Bell and be memorable if you’re going to do something historic.

On December 12, 1913 Hebrew was officially introduced as the language for teaching in Palestinian schools. Tov!

In 1925, Mr. Arthur Heinman coined term “motel” and opened the Motel Inn in San Luis Obispo, CA. I think it’s pretty cool to be known almost a century later for having invented a word and a concept. I hope to be known as the mother of the child who invented the word “oversplode” (among other things).

And for a Cincinnati fact, on December 12, 1946 Tide detergent was introduced. Happy Birthday, Tide!

I The Mom hope your day is equally eventful,

Love, Mom

Twister, Cincinnati Cyclones Mascot

Dear Kid,

We we went to the Cyclones hockey game last night. The crowd was surprisingly light for a playoff game.

I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out. Rodney Dangerfield

Two minutes into the game, the Reading team (never did quite figure out their team name) had scored twice and we had spent 17 hours in the penalty box.

The Beanpot is the most important college hockey event in the universe.

I had quite a nice discussion with a psychology major from the University of Cincinnati who was at the game with her parents. She’s taking a sign language class so we chatted (and signed) a bit. She’s teaching her mom sign via Skype which I think is really cool for both of them. More importantly, she was kind enough to watch my purse when we went for food so a big Thank You to her.

Billy Smith was the first goaltender in the NHL to be credited with scoring a goal (Nov. 28, 1979).

On a huge check, one of the boards broke. Play stopped while they replaced it (during which the Cyclones continued to not score. But at least they didn’t get any penalties.)

The center red line is “broken” because back in the olden days when television was a teeny tiny black and white screen and everything was run by the network (hard to image a world without cable and 900 inch TVs) it was difficult to distinguish the red line from the blue lines.

During intermission, Pi and I got to high five Twister, the Cyclone mascot. Somebody (who ought to remember who bough his pizza before he makes snarky comments) said, “Cool story–you can tell it at parties to break the ice.” Funny, kid. Very funny. (<– note the sarcasm font)

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1992, Manon Rheaume made sports history by being the first woman to play in one of the four major sports leagues in the US. (She was the goaltender for the Tampa Bay Lighting in a pre-season game.)

Deep in the second, our boys finally found the back of the net and the crowd went wild. Seriously, wild. Wish there was a way to bottle that kind of energy and sell it to college kids–no more problem with 8am classes!

Then we tied it up –and in the last few seconds they scored and the game ended 3:2, them.

Love, Mom