[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Watching The Daily Show ]
Well I have shown my letters to the school and I have 12 teaching days left until I leave.

To say I am excited would be an understatement.

Ya see my mat leave starts April 28th, but I can take upto 10 weeks of sick leave before the due date. My doctor wrote me the note yesterday to excuse me starting March 28th.

She also gave me "the head office is blind" letter that confirms that I am pregnant. Yup, that’s right, I have to send my employer a doctor’s letter saying I am pregnant. Cause I might be faking it.

The sad reality is that this rule exists because someone tried to pull a fast one and pretended to be pregnant to get some time off.

And by the way, we get a year off here in Canada for maternal/parental leave. Partial pay from the government insurance plan. So here comes my paid "vacation".

Twelve more days!

[  Mood: Amused ]
[  Currently: Eating My fabulous 1 serving of carbs breakfast ]
So ThinkGeek sent me a lovely newsletter outlining some of its new offerings. One of the things that caught my eye was this Heroes inspired t-shirt.

And my immediate reaction is "Cool! Whip out the credit card!’

But it only comes in black.

But that is the geek colour of choice, you tell me. Well first, the art teacher in me tells you that black is a shade, not a colour, but I digress. I am a natural blond. I am very pale naturally. Black washes me out. I like bright, happy colours. Would it kill geek merchants to offer a few reds, purples, and blues?

I had the same problem when the Husband Unit wanted to order me Geek Inside.

Again, it only comes in black. We contacted Think Geek and begged for pretty colours. They have yet to respond.

Come on people! Colours don’t hurt! Let’s embrace them!

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Watching Rick Mercer Report ]
l8r, g8r is the third and final book of what has come to be known as the "Internet Girls" series. What is unique about this series is that it is written as an instant messenger conversation between the three main characters. These books are hugely popular with the kids I teach.

This book finds the three protagonists, Maddie, Zoe and Angela are in their final year of high school. They are worrying about getting into college and boyfirends. They also still find themselves in an ongoing struggle with Jana.

The book moves at a good pace, but lacks the freshness of the first book. The situations are more adult, making it not appropriate for my classroom. I am glad that Lauren Michaels has decided this is the last book of the series, cause I don’t think it would last them at college.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Watching American Idol – Top 24 Women ]
So remember the Gestational Diabetes?

Well they put me on a special diet. I am down to 12 to 13 servings of carbohydrates a day. A serving equals 15 grams of carbs. This breaks down to two servings of dairy, four servings of fruit and nine servings of grains. I can eat a lot of lean meats and even more vegetables. Fats are also AOK!

So by the third day of this diet, I was alternating between hormonal crying and homicidal ranges. Seriously, I cried more in three days than I have my entire pregnancy. You can send your condolences to the Husband Unit.

I had gone out an bought three diabetic cookbooks, but since they are written for poeple eating three meals a day, not the six that I have been told to eat, they din’t help that much. It took me three hours to plan the week’s menu and coming up with a shopping list.

My blood sugars were also bizarre. There was at least one day that my blood sugar one hour after dinner was lower than my blood sugar after a night of sleep and fasting.

So I emailed the nutritionist suring one of my sobbing fits and she called me right away Monday. After several questions, she decided to adjust my meal plan. Now I can eat my grains mostly around the big meals. Fruits and dairy get eaten as my snacks. I also get more of them.

And surprise, surprise, I am fine now. I get to eat normal meals and have stopped packing heat. I’ve even been able to have a couple of pieces of chocolate. Carbs are my friend.

Universal Pictures has announced a five year development deal with Hasbro to produce movies based on Hasbro properties such as Monopoly, Candy Land, Clue, Ouija, Battleship, Magic, the Gathering, and Stretch Armstrong.

There was already a subpar Clue movie back in 1985. And of course we all remember the wretched Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and the abysmal movie. I don’t hold out much hope for a Magic, The Gathering or any these other properties. Imagine a Ouija movie… *shiver*

Addendum: New York Times article on the subject.

Ouija the Movie? was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

While I applaud NBC Universal’s decision to offer several of their older shows for free online, I just wish more of the shows were any good.

A full list of streaming vintage series follows:

NBC.com
A-Team
Emergency
Night Gallery
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Miami Vice
Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Buck Rogers

SCIFI.com
Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Buck Rogers
Tek War
Night Gallery

ChillerTV.com
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Swamp Thing
Tremors
Crow
Night Gallery

SleuthChannel.com
Kojak
Miami Vice
Simon & Simon
A-Team
Night Gallery

Outside of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Kojak, and Night Gallery, these shows, most of which were awful upon first viewing, are better served collecting dust rather than wasting bandwidth. Course now with Tek War freely available, millions of Boston Legal fans can experience the magic of mid-90s William Shatner.

No date was given for when the shows will become available.

STREAMING VIDEO GOES RETRO ON NBC UNIVERSAL was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to Kung Foo Fighting – I love YouTube ]
Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in a small town in Louisiana. She has a small problem. She is telepathic, so she hears exactly what patrons want to do in the back seat of their car with her.

Into this bar walks a man she can’t read. His name is Bill and he is a vampire. Yup, Bill the Vampire. He has just moved to town and Sookie is intrigued.

A small problem crops up. Women who have been to frequent Vampire bars looking for dates begin to turn up dead. And Bill is the prime suspect.

This murder mystery/supernatural romance was a good read. Charlaine Harris has created an interesting world that I plan to revist.

The creepiness ends. The fake Irving Klaw MySpace page is no more!

This is a little creepy **UPDATE** was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

[  Mood: Amused ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
So Husband Unit and I went to the pre-natal class this weekend. Several times my sense of humour got the better of me.

For example, when the instructor explained that my uterus grows from being able to hold a couple of table spoons to being able to hold 18 pints of liquid (I think it was 18 ), my reaction was "That’s a lot of beer!"

Apparently, I spoke out loud, cause the husbands around me snorted. The wives, not so much.

Then the instructor brought out the diagrams of delivery. These diagrams included actual clinical photography. My reaction? "Look! Porn!"

It was at this point that one of the women moved her husband away from me by switching places with him.

Husband Unit and I learned a lot this weekend. Most important was that he and I laugh way more than most couples.

And that I am going to hell when I die.

While doing some research on my grandfather, I ran across his MySpace page! The fact that Irving Klaw has been dead for some 41 years would seem to make this impossible.

If it all wasn’t strange enough, I ran across this:

On one level, this is all very flattering but on another it is just creepy.

This is a little creepy was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon