Geekiness

Ok, so it's no big secret that I'm a geek. Maybe I'm not the same kind of geek that my beloved husband is or that my also beloved pseudo-brother is, but I am a geek, through and through. After meeting, falling in love with, and marrying John, I thought I had a better handle on all things geeky than I used to. Then, through John, I came to know and then have the fortune to become close to Chase, and the geeky expanded. While I knew that my parents played D&D in their teenage and young adult years, it was never something that was passed along to us. (Surprisingly, that's actually something I regret.) What my parents did pass on was an abiding love for Fantasy novels, Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and my personal favorite (and my not so secret super-fangirl-thing-I-get-stupid-weird-and-kind-of-bug-eyed-and-breathless-about) Star Trek. I love the original, I love the movies, and OMG I so so so love the Next Generation. I had exactly ONE crush when I first started figuring out that boys actually didn't smell that bad and made my heart fluttery. It was Wil Wheaton. I had a TeenBeat (or some other such nonsense) poster of him that I taped to the sliding door of my closet, so that I could pull the other door over it and hide it from my parents and sister. I would sit and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation with both of my parents, and hope it was an episode where my darling Wesley Crusher would show up and I could go into my room and make up my own episodes where I had my own uniform and we'd go fishing or play baseball together on the Holodeck. *Sigh*

Becoming a full fledged teenager, and liking real boys I could actually talk to that might look at me twice if I threw myself in front of their bicycle took precedence over staring at my Wil Wheaton poster, and one day, I took it down. It had been up on the fake wood of that sliding door so long that the tape took the veneer right off, and I had to make up a story about what I'd taped there (although I doubt my parents actually believed me.) I made close friends with a real live boy I had an also not-so-secret crush on, who also loved ST:TNG. He became my closest pal and confidante, and I used to roar with laughter each time he would imitate Worf after I'd make a comment about how we might possibly "go steady", when he'd tell me "I find human women too fragile." I eventually gave up, moved on, grew up, and spent the rest of my adolescence trying to hide my geek because I thought that's the only way people would like me.

As I slowly became an adult in the last half of my twenties, and subsequently met John and then Chase, I started reaching back out to all the geeky stuff I loved when I was younger. I bought ST:TNG on DVD. I asked John to get the original series for me so we could watch it together. (Side note: This is seriously testing our marriage because he doesn't like it! Seriously! He has a Shatner aversion I just can't grasp...) I spent hours and hours playing Diablo. I spent a few years reading exclusively fantasy novels. I waited in line in Canada with a bunch of boys to see midnight showings of Lord of the Rings movies. I created a WOW account. Then, my boys introduced new geeky to me! COMIC BOOKS! How did I not spend my whole youth loving Comic Books? I have no clue. My beloved friend Annaliese introduced me to Settlers of Catan which might be one of the geekiest board games I've ever played and then become addicted to and used to start my own army of other nerds who would get drunk and play with me almost every Friday night for the better part of 4 years. (My resource cards are so soaked with booze at this point that it smells like a bar when we break out just the basic game, with no expansion cards to even out the odor of rum.) Finally, my beloved husband and my beloved pseudo-brother introduced me to D&D.

I have to admit, I'm not fanatical about it. But it's fun. I like playing, when I have the time and I'm not intimidated by sitting in a room full of people who have been playing it for years who aren't interested in making it accessible to me. My one big gripe about it so far is that it takes a good deal of time, something that is at a premium for me right now, and I don't have the kind of investiture it would require to play with the boys and their friends. Over the summer, I went to a few of their sessions, but we'd be sitting in someone's apartment with the shades drawn while the Bellingham summer blazed on and Toad Lake called to me and my skin called out for vitamin D. I came to resent the Monday commitment to my time that was HOURS and HOURS out of my house, out of the sun, in someone's apartment. I felt forced into playing this thing that should be fun and it started being anxiety causing and ceased to be enjoyable. However, John and Chase are planning a "pick up" game for myself and them and our awesome friends Courtney and Max, if we ever all get some time to play together, which would mean we play when we all have time and it's a spur of the moment thing, more like Settlers, and I'm totally down with that.

So, the whole point of this rant about Geek quotient. It all came full circle for me, tonight. John was doing his normal night time Intarbutzing, which involves a lot of looking at Gizmodo and other nerd sites, opening up about a trillion tabs to stories he wants to read more about, and saying "HOLY SHIT ELEVENTY ONE" a lot while he tries to read me articles about robots, or the military, or military robots, or phones, or computers, or the LHC being reactivated by Tom Hanks (for serious) or some guy getting his finger horribly smashed in a freak magnet accident. So tonight, in the rush of "OMG The Piratebay trial is t3h dum" and "check out this thing that zaps cancer" or "the Japanese are insane, seriously" came This article about "Watchmen" written by none other than mothafucking Wil Wheaton. OMG. My heart instantly turned 13 again and I thought about my glossy magazine page photo of Wil looking so totally dreamy in his Star Trek uniform and I had a tiny little geek aneurism. I knew he did PAX and other conventions, and I'd heard he loved D&D, but I didn't realize how hardcore, unapologetically, completely and totally nerdy he really is, and I have to say that today is the day that my 13 year old fluttery heart did a full on grown up woman thud and now I have an adult woman crush on an adult Wil Wheaton. I didn't know that he's an avid blogger, a published writer, or that he regularly does all kinds of PodCasts, but you can bet your sweet sweet ass that I am now a full fledged following along fan.

So, if you also have a crazy crazy love for Wil Wheaton, or you just want to read some really damn good writing, his blog is at http://wilwheaton.typepad.com. I am now going to add this to the list of things I read every day, and am looking forward to going back over the archives just as much as I love my daily dose of reading back issues of Questionable Content.

Also, I think this calls for another viewing of some ST:TNG



In other and slightly less geeky news, I decided today that I am going to pursue a degree in Microbiology, with the intent of becoming a High School science teacher. It's something I've been kicking around since I found out I wouldn't be able to get into the Midwifery School this Fall. Once I sat down and looked at cost of Midwifery School to get what is basically a very expensive tech certification versus the cost of actually getting my Bachelor's degree in something that could be immediately profitable if I choose to use the Microbiology degree to work in a lab, I didn't think I had another option. I think I made the right choice, as tonight I sat down to write up several lab reports and ended up looking around the web for hours at pictures and descriptions of growth patterns on specific MacConkey's agar to see which Gram negative organisms were non lactose fermenting, just because I was curious. I ended up on a site that has every single bacterium we are working with this quarter with a detailed description of the disease progression that arises from each, pattern of infection, vectors for transmission, and diagnostic methods to determine cause of infection. I kept reading aloud to John, who was listening to me with the same kind of enthusiasm I give him when he yells "HOLY SHIT guess what the military is doing with advanced robotics?" or "Did I tell you what new abilities they announced for the Bard on D&D insider? OMG it's so badass..."

And with that, I'm going to go to sleep for the night.