It turns out I had a fairly geeky weekend

In an effort to force myself out of this non-creative, unmotivated funk I've been in post-Eureka, I now commence a braindump from this weekend:

I pressed the plunger down on my coffee press and tried to clear the sleep from my eyes while Anne put the orange juice back into the fridge. The morning sun shone brightly through the kitchen window … a little too brightly for me.

While I poured my coffee into one of my many nerd mugs, I asked Anne, "will you come with me to the comic shop today?"

"Don't you usually go on Wednesdays?" 

I lifted my mug, and looked at her through the rising steam. "Wow, you noticed that. Okay. Yeah, I usually go on Wednesdays, but today it's Free Comic Book Day. Will you be my date?"

"Sure," she said, "if you'll be my date to Home Depot."

Anne loves home improvement. She's mechanically-inclined, and can build, remodel, and fix just about anything around our house. Home Depot is her comic book shop, game shop, and used record store all wrapped up together. I, on the other hand, break everything I touch, make a terrible mess of things when I try to paint, and don't really do home improvements as much as I cuss a lot while failing in every attempt at masonry.

"Sounds like a fair trade to me," I said, "what are we getting at home depot? Is it free scrap lumber day?"

"I want to look at flooring countertop samples," she said. Our water heater recently — well, it didn't blow up, exactly, but it leaked like crazy as it slowly died for about two weeks, and we didn't realize what was going on until the water it put beneath our kitchen floor began to reveal itself in creative ways that aren't as bad as they sound, but potentially very expensive to repair.

Oh, and speaking of repair, here's how insurance is supposed to work: You pay your premiums on time, and when you need to make a claim, the insurance company does what you've been paying them to do for a decade. 

Here's how insurance actually works: You pay your premiums on time, and when you need to make a claim, the insurance company finds a dozen different reasons to deny your claim, and then tells you that if you actually want to file the claim anyway, they're going to charge you an addition $1000 over the next three years.

Dear insurance industry: Die in a fire, you motherfuckers. 

Dear insurance industry "regulators" who let this shit happen: You can also die in a fire, you worthless, corrupt shitbags.

Um. Sorry. As you can tell, I'm a little unhappy with my insurance company (and will soon be shopping for a new one.)

So we have to replace our floor, which is currently – wait for it – ancient linoleum that's 40% asbestos. Yay. Making this already-long story shorter: we're putting some kind of wood floor over the linoleum, and Home Depot has a lot of samples we can check out.

So we drove over to my comic shop, ate lunch next door at Zankou (falafel wrap with extra garlic paste FTW), and headed inside. The place was packed, and the line went all the way through the whole store, which was unexpected. I introduced Anne to George and Sean, the owner and manager, respectively, and asked about the huge line.

"It's buy one get one free on everything," George said. I nearly fainted. I made big plans to get a giant pile of books and trades and archival editions … then I looked at the line

"I'm not going to make you stand in this line," I said to Anne.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I know this isn't your scene, and this line is at least 40 minutes long. I think you'd OG if we stood in it."

"OG?" 

"Over-geek."

I look a relief briefly flashed across her face. I knew she would have waited with me without complaint, but asking her to sit in a line of serious geeks with me while we all got our geek on just seemed unreasonable to me.

I collected all the Free Comic Book Day offerings, put them into my Bag of Holding, and promised the guys I'd be back on Wednesday. I'm not going to lie, Marge: I felt a little sad to be leaving without a complete collection of Freakangels trades, but I also didn't want to over-expose my geek-adjacent wife to a geek reactor that didn't have a lot of control rods.

We drove down Colorado toward Home Depot in Monrovia (the 210 was fucked, as it has been 24/7 since it was connected to the 15) which took us right past my game shop.

"That's my game shop," I said.

"Oh, we should go there and get Wits and Wagers," she said. "That game was really fun."

"Wait. You're seriously saying that you want to go to the game shop with me?"

"Yeah. I think we need to maximize our geek today."

Our geek? Our geek? I couldn't even think clearly enough to respond.

In reality, I carefully pulled into the left turn lane, waited until it was safe, and carefully made a U-Turn. In my mind, I pulled a fucking awesome bootlegger reverse, just like in Car Wars. We walked in, talked to a lot of my friends who were gathered for this epic D&D multi-table battle thing, and about 30 super-geeky minutes later walked out with Wits and Wagers, and Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age.

I've recently noticed that, after almost 14 years together, Anne has absorbed some of my geekiness, within limits. She'll watch Firefly, but I can't get her through Blade Runner. She'll listen to me go on and on about Batman and Green Lantern, but she's not really interested in actually reading a comic book. It's all good balance, because it allows me to share these things I love with the woman I love maintaining our own individual interests …. but I've noticed in the last year that Anne is starting to enjoy games and gaming. I'm not entirely positive, and it could probably be its own column if I really wanted to think about it, but I'm beginning to wonder if gaming might be a really easy and subtle geek infection vector for the non-geeks in our lives. 

I put my games into my Bag of Holding, moving it closer to the +2 Geek bonus I understand it gives when properly stocked, and drove out to Home Depot, where we had more fun than I would have expected looking at samples for formica countertops and all kinds of flooring. I'm not revealing exactly how we're going to redo the kitchen, but I think we found a way to keep it affordable (no fucking thanks to our asshole insurance company that won't help at all with the floors) while making it awesome. Eventually, at some point in the mysterious future, there will be pictures.

When we got home, we made dinner, had a quiet evening together and went to sleep early, because we hiked up the Sam Merril Trail to the old White City on Sunday. It was a beautiful hike, but we haven't done it in at least three years. When we reached the hotel ruins and sat down for lunch, I told Anne, "I'm glad we did this, but it seemed longer and more strenuous than I remembered."

Without missing a beat she patted my knee and said, "that's because we're not in the shape we used to be in, and we're getting old, honey."

She was right. Nolan always teases me about hurting my Old when we pl
ay Frisbee, but holy crap does my Old hurt today. My hips, calves, and knees are just killing me.

Of course, I have to turn everything into a game, so I've decided that the hike was two levels above my current ability, and the proper (and only) response to the pain I feel today is to grind it out at the gym until I can not only get to the White City without taking so much damage, but continue on to Inspiration Point, as well.

This actually made me think of something: has anyone done a fitness guide for gamers? Something that makes exercise and healthy eating into a game, with levels and achievements and stuff? I'd love to read and use something like that. We'd call it the d20 diet or something clever.

141 thoughts on “It turns out I had a fairly geeky weekend”

  2. I’ve heard the geek fitness program idea floated before, but I’ve never come across an implementation. Someplace like shrinkgeek.com might lead in the right direction, though.
    I’ve been using hundredpushups.com, which has a bit of a game-like feel. (Someone told me it originated on Reddit, not sure if that’s true.)

  3. What a wonderful story. 🙂
    Also, I would totally buy into a d20 Diet. It could be one that I actually stick to beyond 2 weeks. Oh, and my husband and son could get into it as well!
    I think you should take the idea and run with it, Wil.

  4. Freakangel rocks. Wanna fight creative funk? Why not create a D&D campaign/one-shot based on that: D&D PCs that killed the world at age 17. A great excuse to create Epic level PCs and try them out. 🙂
    BTW my wife is exactly like Anne re: Home renovation… and she too became quite the geek since we’ve been together so I think it is infectious.
    Rock on mate, beat that funk.
    Oh and I keep telling people that there should be a Jedi Wii Fit where we’d lift shit up by balancing on the wii board!

  6. Okay a) Being a geeky girl dating an equally if differently geeky boy we both respect the others interests but also – through learning more about them he has gotten me interested in some gaming (I love munchkins) and I have gotten him more interested in comic books (breaking him in with Vertigo before having him dive into the DC universe). It’s wonderful! (It also helps I made him a Jayne hat (and watched all of firefly with him) and am working on a Dr. Who scarf for him for Comic con (although I haven’t watched that yet)).
    b) I think a Fitness guide for gamers/geeks/readers would be an amazing idea. There seems to be the idea that those of us who enjoy geeky pasttimes are usually overweight and/or out of shape. It would be nice to be able to overcome that stereotype. You have given me an idea for an awesome project… Unless you have it copyrighted.

  7. Don’t forget to download The Late Bronze Age free expansion from Boardgamegeek/developer’s website for your game, Wil. Stretches the game a little longer, which is good.

  10. Wil, sorry to hear about your flood. I had a little flood of my own (in my DVD room – 10 complete series sets were lost). I know it won’t help you this time, but Home Depot sells water alarms. Basically a small amount of water on the floor will trigger the alarm. I have them around things that may leak water (though it didn’t help me because mine was in the wall). Ask Anne to pick up some next time she goes there.

  11. It is wonderful sharing your life with a woman who understands your inner geek, as mine does.
    I also agree with you that gaming is a way to find commonality with a “geek adjacent” (I do like that phrase) partner. Miranda and I met through EverQuest, but otherwise wasn’t that interested in most computer games. Until I introduced her to Portal. Still working on getting her to try D&D sometime though…
    Also, +1 for Car Wars reference. Not played it in 15 years, but I still have fun memories of VFRP-equipped cars taking on helicopters in downtown Midville…

  13. I just got a Fitbit (fitbit.com) and it totally has gaming elements. I find myself glancing down to check my score pretty often.
    I think Frontalot had a quit smoking type game he did, where he’d have to roll above a certain DC to be allowed a cigarette. Seems like it would be a natural step to take it to the eating realm. Maybe a daily power regarding snacks or deserts. Miss the roll and you’re out of luck.

  14. Sorry to hear about your floor, Wil. Sometimes being a home owner just blows. Here’s to a weekend of prime geekery, though, to distract from all that. Sounds like it was a lot of fun!

  15. I totally relate to that whole story (except the lack of mechanical skill, I have oodles of that) But my geek is slowly rubbing off on my wife, she’s starting to remember geek trivia which kind of bothers her and my two daughters are becoming subject to it as well. They are at once thrilled they know random stuff and terrified they are becoming geeks. I feel I’ve left a legacy. My wife also recently expessed an interest in D&D so I bought her a D&D for Dummies book just to test the waters. She has actually been reading it. It’s mind boggling.

  16. Home insurance is terrible that way. About the only time it’s worth making a claim is if some major (yet covered) disaster happens: a fire; a flood that requires repairs to a large portion of your house; your roof falls off; plague of locusts, etc. For anything less than that they’ll be clawing it back by charging you massively increased premiums for the next decade.

  17. Yeah, insurance sucks. I had a robbery during some kitchen and bath renos and foolishly made a claim, because I thought that’s what you do when you get your big screen and your laptop and other stuff stolen. My broker neglected to tell me that by making this relatively small claim I would lose my ‘no claim’ discount for six (6!) years and the increase in premiums would have basically paid to replace what I had lost. WTF! Oh, and now the insurance company says it won’t even insure my house because I’m self-employed and I’m too much of a liability…even though my house has very little to do with my business. Okay, that’s my rant for today. Wil, I feel your insturance pain…

  18. Yes, this! I was thinking this morning that it’d be cool to have achievements awarded for every day life events, including fitness, like Chore Wars does. There must be some motivating site out there.
    I paid my first visit to a new gym today since I’ve got some fitness goals to work on for PAX 2010. If I had a few achivements to shoot for, it’d make staying on that treadmill another 15 minutes a little easier.

  19. I see the geek simularities with my own wife. Although after 22 years of marrage I think my wife is actually a geek in hiding. She loves the “Lord of the Rings” movies, “Fire Fly” and enjoys watching “Blade Runner.” She doesn’t read comics (although I don’t read that many myself). She loves RPGs, although real life has kept the both of us from investing the time lately. Hopefully, that will change in the near future.

  20. My husband Casey and I very frequently do it backwards and *sneak* our friends into gaming via relating the material to something in which they’re already interested. We actually managed to fenangle another couple we know into playing D&D with us over the weekend by relating it to the kind of history and stuff they like. They didn’t actually realize they were being suckered into a table-top game until they’d arrived and there was no turning back. *Muah-ha*
    But yeah, Casey and I make most of life into a game – for example, he’s been in the Navy for almost a year and is currently powergaming that to the best of his ability (level 4 – petty officer third class so far), and this also means that we’re both in pretty excellent shape (can’t let him get sexier than myself, lol). It’s something I don’t think about much, but most of his more nerdy shipmates (which are, well, most of them, since he’s in the nuclear engineering prgram – nerrrr) are in excellent shape, so it’s something I haven’t thought about in awhile – but we DID implement a “level-up” system for us while he was training for boot camp, especially with running. Most couch-to-5k running programs are gradual enough to very easily develop an achievement-based system around them – what a great idea!

  21. Nice story, glad to see you’re writing again. I am distressingly familiar with the zero creativity funk you describe.
    As for insurance companies…asshole doesn’t begin to cover it. Insurance is the biggest legally viable scam in the world. It’s gambling with the added annoyance that if you lose the gamble you don’t just lose the money you bet but a bloody fortune on top of it! Assholes, the lot of them.
    By the way, I hesitate to mention this but as a perfectionist myself I thought you’d want to know. In the paragraph immediately after the words “Over-Geek” you begin with “I look a relief briefly flashed…”. I suspect you mean “A look of relief briefly flashed…”
    Oh and speaking purely for myself a healthy diet for gamers is an oxymoron 🙂

  22. Wow… a two-fer on this note. I’m so glad you like Wits & Wagers! My kid sister out in DC wrote most of the cards for the game (and updates). That’s one of the few board games of it’s type that people that know all sorts of weird stuff and DON’T know all sorts of weird stuff can play together…with everyone having a good time.
    Secondly… My sweetie and I are about to embark on our very own Insurance Adjuster Hell. Our house got trashed big time a couple of weeks ago (see: http://selbydale.com for the on-going story). We are just getting in the first bunch of estimates from our contractor (a good guy…and a good friend). The adjuster is making noises like he isn’t going to be paying for everything that he SHOULD be paying for. Maybe he’ll back down. Or not. Luckily, we have a friend of the family that just loves to go after insurance adjusters that try to screw you. He has one of those sweet smiles that hide the viscous Fangs of Justice.
    Have fun playing the game! I’ll tell my sister that you guys have it.

  23. Sorry about your insurance issues. Maybe your tax dollars could be brought to bear?
    http://www.insurance.ca.gov/
    There’s an option under Online Services labeled Request for Assistance that might get you some sort of help with your insurance company. Haven’t tried it myself, but I don’t see how it could hurt.

  24. Wil says: “I’m beginning to wonder if gaming might be a really easy and subtle geek infection vector for the non-geeks in our lives.”
    Of course. Everyone values personal relationships and human interaction. (Even me.) Gaming (especially tabletop gaming) doesn’t just promote interaction, it requires it.
    We can make a social event out of a comic book sale because we all share the secret knowledge of comic books, while a civilian will feel out of place and intimidated or annoyed. In a game, the civilian knows she has a place at the table.

  25. Wil Thanks for the post. Reading it was like reading a slightly altered version of my wife and our relationship. Many of the things you mentioned are in our relationship as well.

  26. Heh – first thing I taught the not-quite-so-geeky husband was D&D – our teen plays with us once a month now ;>. We board game together at least weekly – but we still have our geekdom. He does TV sports = never did catch me – and have the sf cons – doesn’t really sail his boat, as much as he loves hard SF…
    And oh my, a D20 diet (remembering some of us are still meat eaters) would be WONDERFUL!!!

  27. I’ve enacted a very similar situation, with myself playing the part of Wil, and my husband the part of Anne. He’s an engineer who can build or tear apart anything, household related or not, but has never quite caught on to my love of comics, RPGs, or other hallmarks of geekdom. OTOH, I don’t solder components onto motherboards or hack on various flavors of Linux for fun.

  29. Here’s to a great geeky weekend! While I don’t have a geek or non-geek better half, I do have friends that I am constantly trying to find ways to geek out. It would seem that I am the only geek in my circle of friends. As for that fitness program, about the only geeky fitness game I’ve ever encountered it Dance Dance Revolution. And how I do love that game 🙂 (Also, Firefly FTW!)

  30. This sounds exactly like my girlfriend and me. She’ll never admit to liking Star Trek, but she’ can now reference it in conversation without prompting. I totally agree with the gaming part too. She didn’t even want to be at the house with my “nerd friends” for barbecue and game night last week, but after one game of Settlers of Catan, she was hooked. Tomorrow is our five year anniversary, so I may have to have her read your post.

  31. While yes, there is “The Hacker’s Diet”, Wil has made me think that there is a possible need for the d20 diet to be written. This is a “Get Exited and Make Things” project. So maybe we should start looking into it. And by we, I mean someone.

  33. I would so LOVE to do a d20 diet!
    If walking and hiking is your thing, there is Walk to Rivendell http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/Walk/walk.html It takes the mileage counts provided in Tolkein and lays out how far you would have to walk to match Frodo (measurements are also provided for The Hobbit.)
    But something that incorporated physical activity (walking and other) and diet would be fabulous.

  34. Should we… should we gather somewhere to talk about making this D20 Diet thing happen? I have some writing / web dev skills and would love to help on a cooperative effort!

  36. Gamer diet FTW! Someone, and by someone I mean YOU, Mr. Wil, get on the ball and write this thing. Oh and to Mikesperry, Steroids would be a “cheat code” , Power-leveling would be a gastric bypass.

  37. Ah, insurance. Our upstairs toilet ran and clogged at the same time, flooding the bathroom and part of the upstairs hallway, running down through the pocket doors through the walls into the kitchen lathe-and-plaster ceiling (ask Anne how bad that is) and down into the basement. It was spurting out of the woodwork. The next morning, the kitchen ceiling collapsed. And we discovered asbestos in the glue of the vinyl flooring.
    That said, the insurance company was relatively ok. Not good, but not totally evil. We decided as long as everything was fucked up, we’d remodel (hadn’t been touched since 1945 probably), and now we have an awesome kitchen. How awesome? Tell Anne we have Marmoleum floating tile and stainless steel one-piece counters and backsplashes (no seams!). She’d plotz, especially if she knew what we paid for the stainless steel counters. baaargaaiin!

  39. First, someone should totally get excited and make a gamer fitness program!
    Second, regarding insurance, you should see if you have a way to qualify for USAA insurance. I use USAA for insurance and used to use them for banking and they are, bar none, the best big company experience I have ever had. The trick is that to qualify you have to either 1) serve in the military (not you) or 2) be the child of a USAA member. So if you have a living parent who was in the military, just get them to sign up for USAA (it’s free) then you can. Or, if you have a living grandparent who was in the military have them sign up, then your parents, then you. It’s sort of complicated, but well worth it to get the most kick ass insurance company ever.

  40. You and Anne are so much like my husband and I, only I am the geek and he is the geek-adjacent. I love reading these stories. They make me realize I’m not alone. Funny you should talk about the Old today, though. In the past two days, I’ve recounted a tale of my childhood to two different people, and it deals with this very thing, in a way. See, when I was about twelve and my knees were starting to bother me (I had Osgood-Schlatter’s), my dad sat me down and told me that something would hurt every day from that day forward and that I had two choices: I could sit the bench or deal with it. He let me choose. I chose the latter, and that has made all the difference. We do indeed overdo things and hurt ourselves all the time, but it’s usually worth it. Level up, friend, and continue onward!

  41. My favorite part about my wife: she was mildly geeky when we met, but actually *encourages* (gasp) my comic book/renfaire/video game/D&D (which i addicted her to) geekiness. It’s always fun to watch her catch a reference and ‘get’ it. Last time I was laid-up sick, I was gifted with comic nerd movies and 3 tpb’s that I’d been wanting. I love that woman!
    I sympathise with the insurance BS. We’ve had issues too, but fortunately our agent is family …although it doesn’t help much. It really would be easier to not pay the bastids, and just fix things myself as issues arose.

  42. Sounds like a great day. I didn’t make it out for FCBD this year, though. =(
    And I’ll be playing in a game of Wits and Wagers at GenCon. Friday Night (Aug 6th), at 7pm.
    My wife is cool about comic books and games, but she’s not really so much into the games. She plays in a game of D&D that I’m running, but that’s pretty infrequent. I’ve always wanted to go to GenCon, but I’ve never been able to make it before this year… we’d always talked about US going, but she revealed to me this year that she doesn’t really want to go. Dragon*Con is good for her, because it’s lots of different kinds of geekdom, whereas GenCon is pretty well exclusively gaming.

  43. It sounds like y’all had a great weekend. I’m sorry to hear about your floor. Bonus being y’all get to redo some of your kitchen?
    Thanks for sharing your weekend!
    Cheers.

  45. You would think it would be great to have two geeky types in the house, but sadly it also means fighting over who gets to play Dragon Age tonight. (Me.)

  46. Hmmm… our water heater broke last week. But instead of leaking water, it only heated the top half of the tank — which meant for very short showers. And also since I rent, the repairs were kind of like free.
    Don’t try to pump the creative well. It will flow when it is ready. It is all part of the process.
    And to continue the water theme: I remember feeling really dizzy looking down into the water storage ruins of White City. My brain likes to generate horrible scenarios in an effort make me avoid them and all I could think of was falling into that hole in the evening with no one around and having to wait for someone to hike up the next day to help me out.

  47. I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned it, but Nike+ (http://nikeplus.com) has a lot of game elements. You’ve got single-player grinding, unlockables, avatar customization, multi-player PvP challenges and tournaments. It’s pretty good, though the tech is a bit inaccurate for my tastes.
    Garmin also supports a geocaching game system (http://www.wherigo.com/) on their Colorado & Oregon handsets, where users can contribute location-based adventure modules. It looks pretty cool, and if there was a time element, it could achieve a lot of fitness goals. Might be something worth trying to replicate on more ubiquitous GPS-enabled devices.

  48. You and Anne sound like you have a great relationship. My husband and I have been together for over 25 years, and while I am the “geek” of the two, we have noticed over the years that we have taken on different aspects of each other. He still does not understand how I can watch 14 + hours of Firefly, or the entire Star Wars franchise at one sitting, but someday maybe…..
    And as far as the insurance company – I just got my flood insurance bill – First glance? only went up $7 woo hoo – wait NOOO – My deductible just went up $1500 — I am right there with you. Wil – as always, thanks for sharing your weekend!!

  49. I could definitely use a geek fitness plan!
    And you should tell us the name of your jerky insurance company. That’s how people know not to do business with them anymore. Capitalism requires access to information! 🙂

  50. Must be a bad week for floors. Master Filker Tom Smith had a similar experience recently.
    As far as fitness program, @GeeksDreamGirl has something going called Fit For Gencon. I don’t have details handy, but give her a Tweet and I’m sure she would be happy to share them with you.
    @Elderac

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