[  Mood: Fed Up WIth Life ]
So we got hit with a very big storm yesterday, and the vestiges are still here. We got at least 31 cm of snow. That’s over a foot. The snowplows have not cleared all the snow yet. The city is pushing garbage and recycling off by one day. There is a great deal of wind, causing blowing snow, and dropping the temperature from -14C to – 24C. In imperial, that’s 6.8F dropped to -11.2F thanks to the wind. It is so bad, the cops are asking people to stay off the road.

But guess what? I have to go to work.

Yup, although the buses are canceled and the city is asking the rest of us to stay home, I have to get to work to provide free babysitting. The reality is that there are parents who are going to get up, drive their kids to school and then go home. There are other parents who will not understand that the buses are canceled all day. These are the parents we will be calling at 3:00 pm to find out why they haven’t picked up their children.

You might think that I am bellyaching for no reason, but we’ve already had one of these days this year. The children who showed up were the children who lived far enough away that they needed drives. The children who stayed home all walk to school. Maddening.

And the parking lot will be nuts. It will not have been plowed, so now you will have hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of cars dropping off little Billy or Ethel or Mohammad in a lot designed to park about 40 cars. Last time around, many of these cars got stuck and had to be pushed out. Male teachers had to go out and push cars. I don’t remember that being covered in teacher’s college. And it wasn’t like some of the parents were practicing safe driving or that others had bothered to buy snow tires, even though they live in CANADA!!!

ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!

I hate days like this.

[  Mood: Cool ]
[  Currently: Watching America’s Next Producer ]
So I was doing some Christmas shopping on Saturday. I was wandering up and down the aisles of the Bay, trying to decide if I should buy the Husband Unit some Stanfield’s on behalf of Santa, when I got sight of some pretty sexy underwear made by 2(x)ist.

I thought to myself, when did they start making lingerie for men? I didn’t really care, but I liked it!

Then I thought, lingerie is such a girly word. Men’s lingerie needs something a bit more classy, manly as it were.

So then I thought Mangerie.

Good, but not perfect.

Then it came to me, Mengerie.

It sounds more like Lingerie, making the word flow better.

So I have now entered it in the Urban Dicitionary. Accepted or not, I want you all to go out and use it wisely.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[  Currently: Working on the grocery list ]
So Thursday I went to the library to pay off some fines and deal with a book my students had lost. It cost me $50, but then I could take out books again.

On Friday, my students had silent reading. As they were digging for books in the library, they came across one of the books, Through My Eyes, by Ruby Bridges.

No problem, take it back you say. No. If you pay for a book that is lost, you can’t bring it back. Well you can, but you won’t get the money back. Something about the library’s computer system.

Since I wanted to buy the book anyways, and this one is a fully protected library copy, I am not too upset.

But oh, the irony.

[  Mood: Silly ]
[  Currently: Working on the blog ]
I was wracking my brain for something to write about today, and nothing seemed blog worthy or at the very least legal. Except maybe the chaotic game of barnyard tag that I had my class play for their Daily Physical Activity. It involves rubber chickens and a lot of running around and screaming. It’s what I imagine an evening with Dharma would be like, but I digress.

So I was watching a repeat of the Colbert Report and an ad for this came on the TV.

I started to laugh.

It is not ridiculous enough that there was a Faux Fire, but it was so popular that there had to be a Faux Fire 2.

Who new the end of days would be so funny!

[  Mood: Angry ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast – Organic Shreddies Knock-off with Raspberries and ]
So last night, I settled into bed for my long winter’s nap. I quickly fell asleep, which is an indication of how tired I am. I hoped to make it through the night rather than have the 2:30 bathroom call and the insomnia that follows.

Imagine my surprise, when at 4:00 am, the snow clearing equipment goes by.

Here in Ottawa they come and take away the snowbanks fairly regularly. If they don’t, the snowbanks start to narrow the roadways and it makes it difficult to drive.

But do they have to come at 4:00 am? My neighbourhood is not downtown, so it’s not like doing this at 3:00 pm is going to cause a lot of disruption. Yet the city insists on doing all of this kind of work at night.

So now instead of pregnancy related insomnia, I get snowclearing related insomnia and headache. I mean a bad one too. And given that I am pregnant, I can’t really take anything for that.

Nice.

So the next time refers to you in a negative fashion about being a geek, tell them, “Well yeah, but at I’m not like these guys.” We’re all second in our geekdom to them.

The article comes complete with a video of the event!

Rocket Geeks Build and Launch an X-Wing Fighter was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

[  Mood: Angelic ]
[ Currently: Getting the grocery list ready. ]
Luke is a third child in a world where every couple is only allowed to have two. His family hides him in the attic and he is only allowed outside when no one is around.

Then one day, the government forces Luke’s family to sell the woods that are around his home and he is suddenly confined to the house. Things get worse when the woods are cut down and homes for "Barons", the rich, are built. Now Luke can only sit on the stairs to eat his dinner.

Luke notices a face in the window of one of the homes after everyone has left and realizes, there is another third child. He meets Jen and learns that there are many, many others in the same situation as him. Jen tries to get him to join in the fight to free the third children, or shadow children, as they are known.

Margaret Peterson Haddix has created an utterly believable dystopia in this book. Luke’s joy at finally having someone outside the family to talk to is believable and so heartbreaking. The resolution of the story, while heartbreaking, is also right on track and opens this up for a continuing series.

Nice read.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Just working on the blog. I know!!!! ]
So the pregnancy related insomnia is really helping my reading. Of course I look awful, but hey, we all got to make sacrifices.

Lean Mean 13 is the thirteenth Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich. Stephanie is a bounty hunter in Trenton New Jersey. She goes after the small time criminals: the flashers, the jaywalkers, the drunk drivers. She is in an on again, off again relationship with a plainclothes cop, Joe Morelli. Stephanie has also attracted the attention of fellow bounty hunter Ranger, who is a walking add for the special forces.

In this installment, Stephanie’s ex husband disappears and everyone thinks Stephanie killed him. She has to find him and clear her name, as other corpses pile up. All while trying to bring in some skips so she can pay her bills.

Plot wise, this is not a revolutionary novel. Where Evanovich shines is her sense of humour. She populates her stories with secondary characters that are zany and off colour. Best of these is Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur. The scene where the old lady invites home a taxidermist for dinner is priceless. Especially when she sits his hostess gift of a stuffed cat at the table. Brilliant.

A nice, funny quick read.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Brushing my hair ]
Well the fourth book of the Dresden files has completed its run on my reading list, and wow, what a great piece!

This book finds Dresden’s debt to his Godmother sold to the Queen of the Fey Winter Court, Mab, who is much less of a sex kitten than in Laurel K. Hamilton’s work, btw. To pay of the debt, Harry has to find out who killed the Summer Knight. He also has to secure safe passage for the White Council through fey lands or risk be sent to the Vampire Red Court. Dresden also manages to pick up a case to find a missing changeling.

All in all, a very good book. Gripping, fun to read, full of laugh out loud goodness that I am busy adding to the Quote-O-Matic. His best so far.

This list from ToyFare of the top 50 fictional weapons is, as expected, very comic book, (recent) film, and video game oriented. How else could you explain #18 Excalibur finishing higher than Dagger of Time (from Prince of Persia #17), Sword of Omens (from Thundercats #11), and He-Man’s Power Sword(#2!!!). Missing weapons that were apparently too cool for a list that put He-Man’s sword at #2(!) and Mr. Freeze’s Gun at #12 include:

Nautilus– Captain Nemo‘s legendary Victorian era nuclear submarine from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island. Nemo and his sub recently returned to geek prominence in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman graphic novels.



Bolo– Artificially intelligent super-heavy tank from the Keith Laumer novels of the same name



Wonder Woman’s Magic Lasso– This is a no brainer. Not all weapons need to blow things up or draw blood.



Smart Bomb– The ultimate weapon that destroys everything on your video game screen, made its first appearance in the classic Defender. Shouldn’t the ultimate weapon be on a list touting itself as the Ultimate Weapon list?



Oxygen Destroyer– As any geek worth his/her salt will tell you, Godzilla died at the end of the original 1954 film. The Oxygen Destroyer completely dissolved the future “King of the Monsters.”



The Necronomicon– The legendary book, created by H. P. Lovecraft, holds the key to other dimensions and can grant a knowledgeable necromancer immense power for the mere price of their immortal soul. (I wrote a piece a few years back about this non-existent book)

I’m sure there are plenty of others. What do you have?

Top 50 ULTIMATE WEAPONS was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon