Wheeooo!  What a crazy week.  Boss #2 is back, I’ve been preparing materials for the quarterly board meeting in two weeks, Oscar’s had some severe internal strife that has kept Alex and me up at night and I wrote a couple of short articles for my friend’s internet marketing business.  I’m beat.

It’s killing me that the two things I’d most like to be working on, the blog and the novel, are the last two things I attend to.  I’ve tried staying up to finish, but I think we all know how that’s worked out.  Weekends should be a good time, but that’s when laundry has to be done, cleaning around the attic and, let’s face it, I like to play too.

How do people do it?  Ethan Canin is a doctor, for Pete’s sake, and he is somehow able to write books in his spare time.  I’m always hearing about people who have full-time jobs, raise kids, go to school, and are active in their church or favorite non-profit and are still able to cook gourmet dinners and keep the house clean.  And they do all of this without domestic help.

Does it mean I’m not driven enough just because I want eight hours of sleep a night and time to hit a movie or museum?  I always imagine those super-people going home at night and collapsing under the strain or running around like wigged-out maniacs.  Or maybe they just turn back into the alien life forms I secretly feel they must be.

This whole regular work thing is severely cutting into my preferred lifestyle.  I’ve got to win the lottery or write a book that turns into a world phenomenon and makes gobs of money.

I know, I know. Good luck to me on both.  *sigh*

So there I was; it was Friday night and Alex and I were still tired from staying up late the night before at the baseball game (luxury box!)  We had decided not to do anything except maybe go to bed early.  There wasn’t a thing on TV so I played Plants vs. Zombies for a while.  Then I figured I’d try to find a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory on my computer since I really don’t get to watch it (no luck, only clips, dang it.)  I discarded that and moved on to checking Facebook and then Twitter.  Obviously, most of my friends were doing something interesting, so there wasn’t much on FB.  Twitter was alive with Comi-Con chatter, so I read through some of those.   I considered reading some of the novel I had picked up, a fantasy by Guy Gavriel Kay.  Then I took a shower and found myself mulling over my evening’s activities.

Damn, but it was geeky.

Look, I know I’ve always leaned toward the nerdy side.  I did well in school.  I love sci-fi and fantasy.  Star Wars rocked my world when it came out.   I even did better in math and science on the SAT and ACT when that sort of thing mattered.  But I never really considered myself a geek. 

I actually have some social graces. I do fairly well at parties; I make friends easily.  I can chat about a variety of subjects not dealing with Star Wars.  I can keep time with music.  I had few dealings with comic books and graphic novels before I met my husband.  Despite doing well in math and science, most of it never really interested me unless applied to some sort of story line.

But lately I find myself becoming more and more immersed in geek culture. 

I suppose the seeds were planted all those years ago when I used to raid my dad’s bookshelves.  I found Ray Bradbury through him; Robert Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard (pre-Dianetics.)  I read Interview with the Vampire years before it was popular because I was bored, dad had it and I was in a kooky vampire phase at the time. (I never went any farther with Anne Rice.  I thought The Vampire Lestat catered to the lowest common denominator; all shock and gore, no story.  Kind of like Temple of Doom was to Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

Some of it also comes from the type of person I like to hang out with.  My best buddy through school was an intelligent girl with the same interests as me.  We went through similar phases together; ghosts, monsters, vampires, Greek myths, elves – very proto-geek.  But it was the guys that really shaped my geekiness.  I played D&D more to hang out and for something to do in my small town than a real need to figure the hit-points for a half-elf cleric.  Plus, I liked boys with some brains.  These tended to be the nerdier fellows and when I started dating, I found out that they were much nicer to me than the jock/cool/pretty boys.  They were more thoughtful about dates, more considerate of my feelings, less inclined to chase other girls while dating me and had the potential to do much more with their lives than reminisce about the sport they used to play while pumping gas for a living.  So, I learned to enjoy mor of the stuff they liked.  I now know a lot about graphic novels (the first is to not call them comic books.) and the statistics of baseball is no longer a foreign language to me.  I am a big fan of both Bruce Campbell and Simon Pegg.  I read a book that was given to Alex by a friend of ours called I <3 Geeks and completely related to the author.  It could have been written by me.

I finally came to the conclusion that I am a “geek hag.”  I like being with them, listening to them.   Just look at my Twitter follow list: I’ve never built a robot in my life, or cared to try, but I follow Grant Imahara from Mythbusters religiously.   I may not give a fig about Star Trek, but I think Wil Wheaton is hilarious. Neil Gaiman is great (I love his books) and it’s because of his recommendation that I read and follow Martin Millar.  Three fourths of my Twitter list is based on reading funny retweets from friends of those guys.  And it doesn’t seem to be all marketing junk, they’re really friends!  I witnessed a three-way conversation between Neil Patrick Harris, Neil Gaiman, and Wil Wheaton the other day.  Adam Savage from Mythbusters chimed in.  Craig Ferguson commented on something Grant said about Adam, and then Patton Oswald chimed in about something else.  It’s no wonder that for the first time in my life I’m really regretting I can’t go to Comi-Con or Dragon Con.  And yes, they’re all guys.  I don’t follow many geek-girls.  I’d follow Felicia Day, but the only thing I’ve ever seen her in is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and as far as I can tell, she doesn’t blog.

These days, it’s to be cool to be a geek.  Or at least, cooler than it used to be.  I guess I’m just a trendy kind of gal.

I’m happy today that I got a bid on the house.  It’s still got to be approved by the bank as it is a short sale, but it’s there.  This is the third contract and I’m hoping this one works out.  I’m being pulled out of the foreclosure process at the eleventh hour on this one, so if you would please pray to your favorite entity, light some incense and candles, shake the tambor, or dance naked by the light of the moon it would be much appreciated. (Take pictures if the latter, I’m sure everyone would appreciate that post.)

Alex tells me to just let it go – which is funny coming from him, he’s a huge worry-wart  - but I’d really like to have my credit be just crappy instead of abysmal.  Plus, how can you help being hopeful when you’re handed more chances?