Ready, Set, Nerd!

(Very sorry for being late. Better late than never?)

Here's what I bring to the Nerd Off table:

I may have an obsession with River Song from Doctor Who. I realize that some people have been irritated with how much emphasis has been put on her this season, but I'm fascinated by her story and love getting more bits and pieces of it. She may well be my favorite character. Also Doctor Who related, I have a lovely papercraft TARDIS a friend made for me that sits on my desk.

I'm a knitting nerd, both in what I make (I'm currently up to three Jayne hats and a wizard hat), and with my enjoyment of it. I've been known to occasionally look at swatches of stitching for long periods of time, mumbling "it's so pretty."


In more stereotypical nerd-dom, I've been playing D&D for a little over a year now. I've really enjoyed it, and it would be hard for me to go back to playing MMORPGs. I'm not knocking the companionship you can have with people from a guild, but I really like getting to hang out with the people I'm playing with face-to-face (it also makes it much easier to decode meaning since I can see body language and hear tone of voice).

I'm also pretty nerdy with my cooking and baking, especially the latter. I really like figuring out how things work, even if I don't ever end up making them from scratch again, and I've spent pretty significant amounts of time trying to make different sorts of artisan bread and pastry.

As I mentioned in my last post, I also really love reading. Or in a more general sense, I love stories. One of my favorite classes in high school was Advanced Placement U.S. History, because our teacher helped us see it as a story rather than segmented data about people and years. This story came complete with recurring characters and themes, as well as self-referential points as people tried to correct past mistakes (often over-correcting).

As for works of fiction, I just about grew up hanging out in the library and read a good chunk of their books. While I'm not a fan of stories that have a final "gotchya!" moment where something's revealed that no one could have predicted, I do like stories that surprise me. Often when starting a book, within the first chapter or two I usually have an idea of what that story might look like based on similar ones I've read before. When the story mixes it up on me, I'm pleasantly surprised.

And now, for my not-so-nerdy things. For one, I am awful at video games. I like playing them a little at a time, but generally by the time I come back around to play them again I've lost any skill I might've gained and end up back where I started.

My second one needs a little bit of explaining. I realize that there are lots of female nerds and geeks who've put up with clerks at game stores being patronizing and assuming they were buying things for their boyfriend, or only there because of a male. So when, on occasion, I agree to go to a Games Workshop (the people who put out Warhammer) with the guy I'm dating, I always feel a little guilty because I'm living up to that stereotype. Sure, there are things I'm interested in looking at there since they have some interesting models, but I have no inclination to play Warhammer and wouldn't go into that store if it was just me.

Nerd on!

I think for me the thing I am most nerdy about is Harry Potter and I think it has gotten worse over the years. I remember when I had just began to read the books I would take them everywhere with, I think I have a photo somewhere of me when I was 10 in Italy reading The Prisoner Of Azkaban. This summer I went to the midnight showing of Deathly Hallows Part II with a group of nerdfighters dressed up wearing my shirt and Gryffindor tie, it was unfortunately too hot for me to wear my Gryffindor hat my mum knitted for me though. I also spent hours when Pottermore first turned up trying to submit my email to get early entry. When it came to getting sorted I was so scared I was going to make it into Gryffindor, so many people have said I am more of a Huffelpuff but they were wrong.

Maths is something that I really liked when I was at school. Probably because I was quite good at it but since I'm doing an art course now at college I don't really do any sort of maths now. In fact I can barley remember anything I learnt, but at the time I really like all the long complicated equations and the feeling when you get them right.

I'm also pretty nerdy about art supplies , particularly paper, I'm always searching for the perfect watercolour paper. I like the different weights and grain paper has. Quite a lot of the paper I end up buy ends up in a pile not used because it's too nice to use and I'm scared to use it.

And this the part where I can't think of any more nerdy things about myself and I can't tell if it's because there are no more nerdy things about me or if I'm so nerdy I think it's normal.

Nerdin' it up!

I adore puzzles.  I spend a bunch of my free time doing crosswords, sudoku puzzles, kakuro puzzles, hanjie... pretty much any type of puzzle is cool with me.  When I was studying for the LSAT, I actually really enjoyed doing the Logic Games sections (questions like "6 people have to sit around a table, A can't be next to B, C has to be by E, etc.).

I really like math.  Since I'm not actually studying it in university I don't get to do very much interesting math any more, which makes me sad, but when I was in high school I was in the Math League, and it was so much fun, no joke.  We just had the best time.  Plus, my team made it to Provincials!

I think puns are hilarious, and we all know that puns are the nerdiest type of joke.  I'm not particularly good at coming up with them, but I always feel like I laugh way more than is appropriate whenever someone else makes one.  I also tend to catch unintentional puns even when no one else notices them at all.

I like to learn about really obscure/bizarre history.  For example, I've read a ton of Wikipedia articles about historical elephants, cryptids, feral children, conjoined twins, and sideshow performers, amongst other things.

I read some pretty nerdy fantasy novels.  Aside from the standard ones like The Lord of the Rings or Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, I have read a ton of Dragonlance books, as well as many from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series.  Possibly my most obscure fantasy novel obsession is Robert Holdstock's Ryhope Wood series, which I read most of when I was in high school, and was always upset that my local library didn't have all the books in the series.  Since then, they have gotten rid of some of them, rather than acquiring the missing ones, and it upsets me that I can no longer even re-read them, let alone finish the series.  I realize this is probably for a good reason like they were lost or stolen or damaged or something, but still.  Still.

Also I am a huge nerd about board games.  I love board games!  Some of my favourites are Ticket to Ride, Scattergories, and Identity Crisis.  This past summer I played a bunch of retro games from the 70s that one of my friends borrowed from his grandfather, and they were fantastic.  Stop Thief was especially good, it has an 'electronic crime scanner' and it is just endlessly amusing.

I have two nerdy pursuits where I am definitely out-nerded, but I really enjoy them and would like to become better at them: Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering.  I played DnD a little bit in my first year of university, but my group was kind of disorganized and awful, so it wasn't that great, but this past Christmas one of my friends from back home put together a game for a few of us, and it was a lot of fun.  The same friend also has gotten really into Magic lately, and he's been teaching the rest of us how to play, and I've enjoyed it so much that it has made me want my very own deck!