It has taken me a few days to recover from a fun weekend in Minot for the Girls 19U State Tournament, where our freshman granddaughter played. We left the house Friday morning and had a nice ride to the western part of the state.

It’s time! The great thaw out has begun. I, for one, could not be more excited to drive in the nasty, messy slush knowing that clear roads and freshly exposed potholes await me and my Ford Edge.

This week we babysat Hugo, the granddog, belonging to our granddaughters in Grafton. It’s been fun, at least most of the time.

“Don’t pizza when you need to french fry!” I heard over and over in my head as I laced up and locked into my freshly rented pair of skis last Saturday. It’s a line from a cartoon concerning how you ‘pizza’ your skis to make a triangle to stop and ‘french fry’ them to make them straight to go.

What do you get when you have bowling league night, an armful of towels, a 3 a.m. drive to Grand Forks and a pair of scrubs? A baby birth story, of course! If Catelyn had arrived about 12 hours before she did, she would have had her dad pedal to the metal driving the suburban to Grand Forks instead of his bowling buddy, Darryl Kartes.

It must be me. The way I carry myself, maybe it’s my choice of clothing, could be my haircut (sorry Barber Bob Tapson) or my appearance in general; I think I bring out the worst in people. Case in point; recently I was travelling with one of my daughters, and we stopped at a roadside convenience store snacks. There were three ladies working the counter, one was the middle- aged manager and the other two were teenagers. The manager immediately smiled and greeted us, so far so good.

Two weekends ago was one for the books. It was the second to last weekend of hockey games for us, ever. Stories were told, drinks were drunk, birthday Jell-o shots were shared with an opposing team, a few bucks were made in pull tabs, whipped cream tricks were tried, fun was had, memories were made. We squeezed in four hockey games, and even though we only managed to get one win, the losses were close with two games ending in a one-goal difference. A one-goal loss in hockey is like losing by one run in baseball. It’s still a loss, but you didn’t get smeared, and in the end, it could have gone either way. The team this year is young with only two seniors. We have a new goalie, new defensive players and new lines. Basically, it’s been a rebuilding year, but it holds a lot of promise.

Who are these people? So if you’ve ever taken an online survey, used social media or have had your per-in a data breach, you’re likely to be the recipient of scammers who are sending phishing or smishing texts to your phone at all hours in hopes that you fall for the bait and respond. The spelling is awful, which tells me the person sending the text can’t hold a real job due to being stupid. Likely, he or she spent way too much time playing on their phones when they should have been paying attention in class. I’m guessing you likely receive the same or similar texts. Although I’m tempted, I’ve never responded to any such texts out of fear they’ll send even more. The end game of the scammers is to bait you into clicking on a link or perhaps calling or texting back. Once you do this they can infect your phone with a virus or malware. So, as satisfying as it would be to give them a piece of your mind or try and give them a dose of their own medicine, don’t do it. A lot of these nuisance texts aren’t even sent by humans but rather automated systems that are sending out mass texts to thousands of people’s phones.

This week, I’ll continue on my series of weird things that can be found in our offices that just make sense to us. Today, we are going to touch on the countless lil’ Jesuses that can be found in all sorts of odd nooks and crannies of each office area at Simmons Multimedia.

I’m in a password funk. A few years ago I bought myself a really cute email and websites online password journal.