Better Late Than Never

I've been a bad blogger lately. I've been scheduling my blogs way in advance, and then I get so slammed during the week that I haven't had much of a chance to do much except scroll through all your blogs and make the occasional comment. Because of this, I've missed out on some announcements.

Better late than never, right?

First up, Sharon Bayless has started up The Blog Tour Exchange. It's a place where you can sign up your blog to host future blog tours and where you can set up your future blog tours. Check it out. She has a contest going, and you can enter as long as you sign up by November 1st.

And of course I missed Charity Bradford's cover reveal on October 1st. (I'm 21 days late. Eeek!)

By the time you see this, I'm sure I'll have missed some other major events in the blogosphere. School gets into full swing and I get swamped. This is normal for me.

Oh, and I won a copy of PT Dilloway's new book Tales of the Scarlet Knight: A Hero's Journey. So, when I have a spare moment, I'll be reading.

Ten Things

I watch a lot of TV. I have to have something on in the background while I'm knitting.

I watch the usual prime time shows, and I watch shows that I won't tell you about because I refuse to admit that I watch them. Recently, I stumbled across a new show that The History Channel's H2 is presenting called 10 Things You Don't Know About.

Every half hour episode tackles a new topic. While some of the facts they present don't surprise me, most of the time they are true to the title. In the eight episodes I've seen, I already had heard maybe two of the "things" before (one for sure).

(I didn't know this one.)

And here's the 30 second commercial about the series...

I find stuff like this fascinating. And it's nice to learn something while I'm knitting my nephew a stuffed owl for his upcoming 2nd birthday.

Do you have any good shows to recommend? Or would you rather hear about my Vampire Diaries obsession?

Nook Issues

I have a nook. When researching the various eReaders, I decided that an important factor was being able to borrow eBooks from the library, and the Kindle doesn't do that. (I looked at the other eReaders on the market, but ultimately decided to go with something that had a major retailer behind it.)

It takes me a while to do anything new. I found a great sewing pattern for outdoor chair covers. I have the pattern. I bought the material. I even have thread. I just have to set aside some time to do the sewing. Who knows when I'll get to it? It's one of my quirks.

It took me a while to get a library card. (The county libraries check out eBooks, and I had never gotten around to getting a county library card.) Then I sat on that for a while. I only got around to checking out my first eBooks on Tuesday. On Wednesday, while waiting for my car's routine service, I pulled out my nook to dive into that library book.

"User not authorized."

Oh great! Of course, there was nothing I could do about it then. (I had other books loaded on the nook, so I wasn't stuck watching CNN.) I had to wait until I could get back home to my computer.

I love the Internet. All I had to do was search "authorize nook adobe" and I found my answer. It was pretty simple, too, but I wouldn't have figured it out on my own.

Am I the only one with a nook? Anyone else out there checking out eBooks from the library? Any recommendations?

I'd Rather Be Playing Games

It's been a painfully slow week, but that's sort of a good thing as I've had a bit of a cold since Monday.  I'm getting through it fairly quickly, and I'm feeling almost normal today.  A bit stuffy, but almost normal.

I had a great idea for a post today, something about subbing, but I find that I'm not in the mood for it right now.  I'd rather be playing games.

One of my favorite time wasters at school (on prep periods, I promise!) is Freerice.com.  It's not so much a game as a vocabulary builder.  It gives you a word with four possible synonym choices.  If you get it right, you gain levels (and harder words).  If you get it wrong, you go down levels.

I've found that I tend to hover around level 40.  At the moment, I've missed several words, and I'm down to level 36, but I've gotten as high as level 41.

Try it, and in the comments, tell me how well you've done.  (You can start at any level by clicking on "change level" at the bottom of the word box.)  I'm sure you can beat my piddly level 41.

My other favorite online game of the moment is Gin Rummy (this one).  If you've got a moment, come by and join me.  I'm not that good.  You can probably take me.

So, I'm off.  Wish me luck.  Maybe I'll win.

Time for the Christmas List

My favorite Christmas movie is on next week.

My favorite Christmas movie is a TV movie from 1997 called The Christmas List.  It's been on every year since, but it's been getting harder and harder to find.  I know why.  It's now 13 years old.

They come out with new Christmas movies every year.  I understand the desire to promote the new.  But they haven't come out with a movie that has surpassed it (in my opinion).

I'm not sure why it connected with me so.  Perhaps it was because that Christmas season I was still working in retail (although my retail reality was a far cry from the movie's).  Perhaps I like the idea of a wish list where all the wishes come true (albeit not in the way expected).  Or perhaps it's because it was a sweet movie in a time where I needed to see a little sweetness.

The movie played on a broadcast network initially (I forget which).  In the past few years, it made its way to ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas.  But they've been phasing it out.  It used to play a couple of times during the season.  This year, it's only on once--Wednesday, December 15th at 4 AM.  Yep, 4 AM (that's Pacific time, but still early at 7 AM on the east coast).

That's what the DVR is for, right?

I guess it's time to find it on DVD.  Is it even on DVD?

An Early Harry Potter Showing

I think it was Sunday, although it might have been this past Saturday.  My father called to invite me to go with him to see Harry Potter.  On Tuesday.

Well, yeah.

My father gets into preview shows all the time, and he's seen everything from Due Date to The Blind Side before they open.  Since his wife wasn't interested in this movie, my dad invited me.

We got there in good time, not so early as to be the first in line, but early enough so that we weren't at the back of that line.  We waited.  As Dad has been to many of these things, he noticed that things weren't running as smoothly as they usually do.  He told me that the ones running the show clearly weren't the A team.

Once we got into the theater, we got some inadvertent pre-show entertainment.  The lady in charge of crowd control was a little too eager enforcing "the rules".

We first noticed this when she got into a "I'm going to have to call security" argument with a gentleman on the other side of the theater.  She wanted him to move towards the center of the aisle so as to allow as many people in as possible.  "No empty seats!"

The couple in front of us enjoyed this a little too much.  They already had popcorn.  The man had some great biting remarks.  The woman's only objection was that the crowd control chick might hear.  The couple next to us knew why: "No seat for you!"

The lady on crowd control was a bit of a snob as well.  There was a section cordoned off for "VIPs".  When some "VIPs" with yellow tickets arrived, she was audibly relieved.  She was tired of dealing with "the masses".

Part of me can understand the crowd control chick's perspective.  I deal with unruly students who don't want to follow the rules all the time.  But the woman of the couple sitting next to us was also a teacher, and she thought the crowd control chick was a bit over the top.  She thought that CCC could have been a lot more polite.

The show started a bit late.  The "VIPs" didn't fill their section.  CCC moved the couple in front of us to the VIP section.  (If she had only heard the things they said about her!)

As for the movie, it was fantastic, of course.  Dark.  Emotional.  The action sequences were a bit frenetic, so much so that it was hard to discern what was happening on screen.  I could tell that they intended for it to be 3D as certain scenes flew in our faces.

I was curious as to where they'd divide the movies.  So as to not give spoilers, all I'll say is that the movie ends in chapter 24.  It kind of left us hanging, except for the fact that I read the book, so I do know how it ends.

I'm going to see it again on Friday.

Subbing Books

I have three subbing books on my shelves.  Since I wasn't in the mood to pontificate on anything today, I thought I'd share.  They are:

1. The Substitute Teacher's Survival Guide  
2. Desperately Seeking Humor: Incredible and Satirical Tales of a Substitute Teacher  
3. Substitute Teaching: A Handbook for Hassle-Free Subbing  

I received these at gifts at various times.  I also received a few others that I have now passed on to someone else, but these were the ones I felt were worth keeping.  (Specifically, this book, which was interesting, but once I got one good tip from it, I didn't feel like I needed it any longer.)  

The first book is very funny, but not worth the new price (get it used).  The third book is a very good, basic how-to book.  The second book is just funny and too, too true.  

There's a way to add this to my sidebar, I think.  Perhaps I should look into that.