NSTeens: Helping teens make safer online choices

I like to consider myself a full citizen of the online generation. There’s little doubt that the Internet plays a huge role – a huge and beneficial role – in my life. But many’s the time when I’ve thanked my lucky stars that the Web didn’t exist when I was a teenager. Aside from being a minefield of potential social faux-pas (like, say, spamming all your contacts to grub for votes!), today’s online teens face issues like cyberbullying and identity theft.

I don’t have teenagers online yet, but I do have a couple of schoolage boys, and no doubt in a couple of years they’ll be far more capable online than their doddering parents. The trouble is, they’ll still be kids. That’s why I wanted to be a part of the Mom Central blog tour to promote NSTeens, a new Web site aimed at educating teens of the potential risks and dangers that exist online and how to deal with them. (Disclosure: I will receive a $20 amazon gift card for participating in this blog tour.)

Continue reading “NSTeens: Helping teens make safer online choices”

Celebrity sightings?

I’m pulling this conversation out of the comments from yesterday’s post, which has turned to minor (and major) celebrity encounters. Share your celebrity sighting (or, erm, stalking) stories here!

Margaret Atwood was mentioned in the last set of comments, and I have a story of my own to add – one that nicely straddles the line between sightings and stalking, in fact!

It was the late 1990s, maybe 1998 or so, and I was attending a Margaret Atwood reading at the National Library. I had a small collection of autographed Canadian literature, and I was clutching my hardcover copy of Alias Grace, hoping for a signature. I stopped off in the washroom about fifteen minutes before the reading was scheduled to begin and – gasp! – there she was! Margaret Atwood! In the bathroom!!

She stepped into a stall, and I froze. Would there be a public book signing after the reading, or would this be my only chance? If I slipped the book and a pen under the side of the stall, she’d be comfortably seated and able to sign at her leisure. In less than a second, the realm of possibilities played out in my head, and finished with me being escorted out of the library by security with neither my book nor my dignity. In the end, I decided to wait, and got my autograph by standing in line with the rest of the world. “The time I almost stalked Margaret Atwood in the ladies room” doesn’t play out for laughs quite to the extent that “The time I stalked Margaret Atwood in the ladies’ room,” but I didn’t know about blog fodder back then.

Do share! What’s your best brush-with-celebrity story? (And, only a couple of days left to vote to send me to Chicago. Just think of the potential for minor celebrity stalking at BlogHer!!)

Stalking President Obama

Barack Obama is coming to Ottawa on Thursday. Even though there is no public appearance scheduled, I work just steps away from Parliament Hill and the ceremonial route to the airport, so I don’t think I’ll be able to resist stepping out and joining what they’re predicting will be massive crowds lining the streets, hoping for a peek at the passing limo. The Globe had a great article yesterday on past presidential visits. Did you know they airlift an armour-plated, chemical-and-bullet proof Cadillac nicknamed ‘the Beast’ over the border? Hope that puppy has decent snow tires, cuz the forecast looks messy.

Despite my best efforts (consisting of two or three pages of google search returns – hey, I have a lot on my plate right now!) I haven’t been able to crack the code of deep security around Thursday’s itinerary. He arrives at 10:30, and it should take around an hour for him to work his way downtown, by my estimation. The most logical (and scenic) route is down Colonel By, if he goes to either 24 Sussex or the Parliament Buildings. How long I’m willing to stand out in the forecasted snow/rain mix, ostensibly on a coffee break, remains to be seen, I guess.

I’m not sure why I’d be willing to stand outside in a massive crowd of strangers in the February cold just to maybe, possibly, catch a passing glimpse of a limo or, under the best possible circumstance, a brief presidential wave… but I would. He hasn’t been in power long enough for his magical magnetism to fade just yet, and there’s something in me that wants to be a part of that. (Not as much as the busloads of people coming in from southern Ontario, though! I’m keen, but if I had to make any more effort than bundling up and walking 50 metres from my office, I’m not sure I’d bother.) I’ve read in several media reports that Obama is more popular here than he is in the US. I can think of a few reasons why, George Bush and Stephen Harper formost among them.

Back in 1990, I was lucky enough to stumble into the roped-off sidewalks on the Sparks Street pedestrian mall just before then-president Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR walked among the crowds. I even shook his hand! My friends said I should have rubbed the infamous birthmark and made a wish. Instead, I grinned and said something foolish like, “Here’s to world peace!” and he replied in Russian, which was probably something to the effect of, “Hello nice Canadian girl, could you please stop staring at my forehead?” I also had fun with the cheeky strangers standing nearby, playing a rousing game of “spot the KGB” – usually, the ones with the really bad polyester suits. The bomb-sniffing dogs were cool, though.

That was pure chance — I was downtown to pay my Zellers bill and annoyed I couldn’t get across Sparks St for all the ropes and barricades. I made a more concerted effort to pay my respects to Pierre Trudeau when he lay in state, though. I queued up on a cool September evening for nearly five hours for the chance to file past his casket in the Hall of Honours of the Centre Block. I’m not sure why I did that, either, except I’ve always been pleased that I did.

What do you think? Are the “I was there!” bragging rights worth the effort? How far would you go to catch even the tiniest glimpse live and in person of the sunshine that streams forth from the Obama entourage? At the very least, whatever direction this little adventure takes will likely leave me with some decent fodder for Project 365. I tell you, there is no end to the lengths to which I will go for decent blog fodder…

(Speaking of blog fodder, you only have six days left to vote to send me to BlogHer this summer!)

Working my social media networks

I spent the weekend spamming my family, friends, acquaintances, and more than a few random strangers, grubbing votes for the “Send a Blogger to BlogHer” contest. Since I work(ed) in social media, I’ve got a pretty good idea of how to run a social media campaign, and that’s more or less how I’ve been approaching this.

So far, I have:

  • sent notes to my Facebook “friends” – from the near and dear to the ones who I vaguely remember from the third grade;
  • skimmed the 657 contacts in my gmail account and spammed a goodly number of them with an e-mail;
  • sent out a few tweets on twitter;
  • posted notes to just about any forum, bulletin board or online community I could find my user-ID and password for; and
  • set up a table at the grocery store beside the Girl Guides selling cookies and the pee wee hockey team selling apples.

(Okay, so that last one wasn’t true. But I did think about it.)

Vote for me!

Too much?

You guys have been great in supporting me. Nadine and Mad re-tweeted my message, Cooper and Emily endorsed me on the Motherhood, and Sara wrote a whole blog post encouraging people to vote for me. *smooches* Some of my girlfriends even figured out that you can vote more than once from different browsers, so I managed to vote for myself six times: once from each of IE, firefox and safari on the desktop and the laptop at home!

Any other ideas on how I can grub for some votes? I noticed that some of the other finalists were holding giveaways (i.e. “Vote for me to get entries into this draw! Retweet or blog to get multiple entries!”) and at first I thought, “Oh, I could do that! No doubt, everyone loved the iTunes giveway, and it would be a small price to pay to trade a $25 gift card for a free trip to BlogHer!” But to be honest – not to cast disparaging remarks at the competition or anything, but – the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I was with the idea of “buying” votes. How is that different from asking you to leave a silly comment in exchange for an entry in any other giveaway? I don’t know — it just seems not quite right to me. What do you think? Would it make you more likely to vote, or would that be a line I shouldn’t cross? (I kind of hope you’ll vote for me regardless, but I’m also curious as to your opinion.)

Aside from accosting random strangers with BlackBerries – and there’s no shortage of those around here! – to beg them for votes, any ideas how I can drum up a few more votes and still love myself in the morning? I realize it’s a fine line between proactively campaigning for votes and annoying the hell out of my friends and “friends” alike, but when’s the next chance I’ll have an opportunity like this?

(And if you haven’t already, for goodness sake VOTE!)

A rambly ode to the Canadian health care system

By Friday of last week, Lucas had been sick for three days. Fever, green snot, bad cough and most troubling, increasing lethargy. I gave up waiting it out and tried to get an appointment with our ped, but by the time I got through around 11 am, the answering machine said they were completely booked up for the day. (In seven years, I’ve never heard that one!) It offered the number of the after-hours pediatric clinic, which would take calls starting at 4 pm.

(This gets long. Refresh your coffee and settle in!) Continue reading “A rambly ode to the Canadian health care system”

Day one of begging for votes, and already she’s exploiting the kids

This is what happens at the intersection of “Oh crap, I need to take a photo today!” and “Oh crap, how am I ever going to get enough people to vote to send me to BlogHer?”

24:365 Vote for me!!  Vote for me!!

How could you deny this cutie? If you haven’t already, pleasevote for me!!!!

Vote for me, vote for me, oh please please please won’t you vote for me?

**earsplitting squee**

Remember last week when I wrote that rather locquacious ramble through my own archives that masqueraded as an entry into Mabel’s Labels’ “Send a blogger to BlogHer” contest? I had such fun writing it, but it was really only a lark. I mean, can you imagine what Beloved would say if I ditched him with all three boys for a weekend to jaunt off to Chicago thsi summer?

But!

They! Picked! MEEEEEEE!!!!!! They picked me as one of the top ten finalists!!! Me!! Can you believe it?

*breathe breathe*

But now I need you, Bloggy Peeps. I really need you! I mean it was one thing when I was grovelling for your votes for the ego-satiation of the various blog awards, but this is a trip to CHICAGO, dudes. Seriously! Me, at BlogHer. The whole idea frankly scares the crap out of me, oh my god all the talking to strangers and being intimidated by the best of the bloggy universe makes me a little queasy just thinking about it, but now that I know it’s even the remotest possibility I want it with all my heart!

So I need you to vote from as many computers as you can lay your grubby little fingers on, okay? Vote at home, vote at work, vote at the school library and the community centre and your sister-in-law’s house. But you can only vote once per IP address, now through February 23.

Send me to BlogHer '09!

You’ve got to vote for me, because I just know Beloved is going to be out there voting for all the other girls to win!!

From captcha oracle to captcha syndrome

I’ve spent idle moments in the last week re-reading and thoroughly enjoying our bloggy adventures this time last year. Remember these post about liveblogging the labour? Your comments are more fun that the posts themselves! (*coughasusualcough*) And reading your congratulatory notes on the post about Lucas’s arrival and naming the “Player to be Named Later” brought tears to my eyes.

Throughout reading them, I laughed and laughed at your various “captcha oracle” observations. Which made me laugh even harder when I saw this search query in the referral logs: apparently, we’re the number one search return for “captcha syndrome.” And you know what? I’d be okay with this one being an incurable disease. *grin*

Project 365 week 3 and a Winterlude interlude

I’m having a lot more success being creative with my camera than with my keyboard lately. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, I guess! I’ve been having fun looking for things to photograph, but I had no idea that sorting through the daily snaps (I seem to get between five and thirty a day) to find the keeper is almost as time consuming as coming up with a couple hundred words to post here.

I think my favourite shot this week, from a purely photographic point of view, is this one of a corn field near my house, in about a metre of snow:

18:365 Cornstalks in the snow

Working downtown provides an almost endless series of ideas for my pictures. Yesterday on my lunch hour I popped down to the Rideau Canal for a little bit of Winterlude action. I’d caught a few nice pictures of the icicles hanging outside my bedroom window last week, so thought I’d check out the ice sculptures in Confederation Park. Hard to believe, but in the 20 yrs I’ve lived here, I’ve never done that! But you know what? Meh. They were kind of disappointing. Not just because it was mild and they were melting, but I dunno, I just expected something a little bigger and more spectacular.

I tried a couple of different angles and compositions, but nothing was working. I headed back to work, and walking across the Mackenzie King bridge I couldn’t help but snap a few pictures of the skaters on the Canal. Each day since I’ve been back at work, I’ve been driving the full length of the Canal on my daily commute, and it’s been crying out to me to be photographed. This was just a quick shot, and perhaps one of the most hackneyed and over-exposed shots of Ottawa, but I like it nonetheless.

21:365  Winterlude on the Rideau Canal

I have the same problem with picture-taking that I do with writing: how to make something fresh when I know that nothing I am doing is truly original. With a picture like this, I think I just have to get over that and recognize that some pictures are just nice to have in my collection. And now that I have this one, I can stop trying to compose and snap a photo or seven of the skaters on the Canal as I barrel down Colonel By Drive in rush hour traffic.

For those of you following along, these are the rest of this week’s Project 365 photos. (You can click on any of them to embiggen on Flickr.)

15:365 Picture window16:365 Icicles in the sun (3 of 4)17:365 Toes
19:365 Happy Birthday, Lucas!20:365 Friends and family at Lucas's birthday breakfast