WPI's Touch Tomorrow Festival

A couple of weekends ago we went to WPI’s Touchtomorrow event that is cosponsored by NASA. This event is free to the public and allows everyone to get up close and personal with Robots, astronauts, professors and students who have built/are building/thinking about building cool stuff.  There was  a ton of stuff for kids to do. Spotty’s eyes were aglow. He was enraptured listening to one of the mechanical engineering professors. He was talking about how they initially go to home depot when they are building proto types of items that would help the disabled. I never would have expected Spotty to be interested, but he didn’t want to leave. Spotty was also able to drive around a couple of robots and play video games that the students created.  We spent at least 5 hours there, and could have spent more. Spotty got a very cool NASA patch for completing his “passport” (going around to various shows/talks and getting a stamp to say he participated).  We will definitely be back next year.

Spotty Chop's last school project

Biography of famous folks from Massachusetts. The kids had to do research, write a speech, dress as their person and create an “artifact” that represented them.

Spotty chose An Wang (founder of Wang Labs) as his person. 

Some mom’s were complaining about the people their kids choose and how “hard it was to dress them so they resembled their character”.  

I gave them an eyebrow raise and said “Spotty chose an Asian business man”. They shut their pie holes.

Spotty thought with his glasses and polka dot bow tie that he looked EXACTLY like An Wang. I couldn't agree more. 

Ps - for the folks too young to remember, the artifact was a word processor, the precursor to the home PC. In fact this looks identical to the word processor I brought to Simmons College... 

The Last Straw

Last night  while Boy Toy and Spotty Chop were leaving hockey practice Boy Toy witnessed a domestic violence incident. Spotty DID NOT see anything (too busy playing video games). A man and woman were hitting each other and then the man pushed her out of the car and left so quickly that it spun her around. Boy Toy called 911 and followed the guy until the police came. The police spoke to Boy Toy as did the woman. She thanked him and said that the man had hit their son, and that was the last straw and she stood up to him. Boy Toy congratulated her and told her she did the right thing. She didn’t want to press charges, but Boy Toy did and because he witnessed it (a violent assault the police called it) and  said what he said, the man was arrested. Spotty Chop  was a little upset that the guy was going to jail, but Boy Toy  explained what happened and that what the man did was unacceptable and you just DON’T DO THAT.

This morning I said to Spotty, “so your dad said that you were a little upset about the guy going to jail, you understand why he had to go?” Spotty said “he hit a woman, and pushed her out of a car, you just can’t do that.”  I agreed.  I then said “your dad did the right thing, you have to help people when they need help.”  Spotty rolled his eyes at me “I know mom, you have to do the right thing”. 

WORD boy.

Snaps to the woman for taking a stand to protect her child. I truly hope she and her son end up happy. 

Some days I get pissy…cranky even

I have a word doc with…I don’t know what you call these? Are they all Memes? Well whatever they are called, some days I only need to scroll through a few of them, other days I need to roll around in all of them. Most of these have who created them, a lot do not. I didn’t create any of them so if you see one that you did, or know who did feel free to shoot me a line and I will happily give credit where credit is due. Often I will be on the internet, I will zig, then I will zag and then I will find someone who is just brilliant, but due to my getting old, my brain can’t remember where the hell I was to find them.  

Librarians rock

So Spotty Chop is taking part in a committee to choose the “best” book of 2014. The kids had to commit to reading 10 new books this year, and at the end of the year they will vote on things like:

Best Cover

Best Male Character

Best Female Character

Best Story

Etc.

Spotty has read:

Almost Super - Marion Jensen

Jackpot - Gordon Korman

A Snicker of Magic - Natalie Lloyd

The next book was just chosen:

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee

So far Spotty has loved each of the books he’s read. Almost Super seems to be his fav right now.

So the Children’s librarian (Mr. S) sent out an email to the parents of the participating kids of the “Cartwheel awards” staying that he was going to the Book expo in NY and wanted to try and get signed books for the kids. I didn’t tell Spotty why I wanted a list of his favorite authors, but this is what he came up with

1              Dave Roman - Astronaut Academy

2              J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter

3              Stephan Pastis - Timmy Failure

4              Tom Angleberger - Origami Yoda

5              Ursula Vernon - Dragonbreath

6              Jeff Kinney - diary of a wimpy kid

7              Suzanne Selfors - Imaginary Veterinary

8              Stephen/Lucy Hawkins - George’s secret key to the universe

9              Bryan Chick - The Secret Zoo

10           Jay Epstein/Andrew Jacobson - The Familiars

11           Jon Scieszka - Spaceheadz

12           Dav Pilkey  - Captain Underpants

13           Lenore Look - Alvin Ho

14           Samurai Kids: White Crane - Sandy Fussell

15           Kate Klimo - Dragon Keepers

Well I went to the library today and Mr. S got Spotty the next in the Timmy Failure series!!! Spotty Chop is going to be reading a book that doesn’t get to bookstores until the end of OCTOBER! His head is going to EXPLODE when he finds out. The only bummer is that Stephan Pastis doesn’t personalize books (to save time) – but what he did do is draw a picture of the main character.

I just think this is so Fing awesome. Spotty recently mentioned that he may  become both a video game maker AND a librarian!