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.
Insurance doesn’t cover those things, my A/C leaked cost me about a grand to fix part and floor.
Nintendo Wii… the geeks fitness center, get with it.
Stories like the one about your kitchen floor and bastard insurance companies make you even more real and “just that guy” to whom the same things happen as the rest of us.
Thank you for sharing them.
Yes, I think games are an excellent “infection vector”. Certain family/board games like Settlers of Catan can easily be used to bridge the gap to more geeky games like Smallworld.
“Die in a fire, you motherfuckers”….I ’bout pissed my pants! That totally cracked me up!
I’ve always heard that Weight Watchers was like D&D for weight loss. The points system and everything.
No idea about going to the gym.
My husband and I recently rediscovered ChoreWars and it has made cleaning up the house much more fun.
Forms of insurance have been around since Antiquity 🙁 Unless you want to live off the grid, or in an unstable nation, there’s no getting away from it Wil!
As for your current writer’s ‘funk’, I’m sure inspiration will come your way soon – it often happens when we least expect it.
In your Memories of the Futurecast episode when you talked about making the Mug, and how the internet allowed you to collaborate with someone far away and finish it in 90mins… when you said “if that doesn’t inspire you” it really hit home to me – it even motivated me to start my own blog about Art History – which I’d been pondering for *years*
The reach of the web is always inspiring – and you have a captive audience, based on your great writing to date.
I’m sure this is more of a reflective respite than than a funk 🙂
Thanks for sharing.
H
*sigh* living geekishly through you. Can’t wait for May The Fourth Be With You day at my school. Wondering if any students will surprise me by quoting Star Wars. *shhh* I have a treat for them if they do.
I’ve done Weight Watchers and it does have gaming elements but your points go down not up. I lost 70 lbs and, after wobbling a bit, I’m back down. I still need to lose a few more, though but I got really tire of the meeting spiel. I didn’t try the online version which is probably better suited to me. What about WII fit? I suppose combining the two might increase the geekiness.
We’re in a fix up mode right now ourselves. Our back porch roof collapsed due to the weight of snowpocalypse. Luckily, our insurance company paid up. Now we just have to find a decent contractor that isn’t scheduled out to next fall.
Gaming is indeed a prime nerd vector. It certainly reactivated latent nerd modules in me. Awesome art is another super-sneaky infection medium, but you’ve got to be a special kind of crazy for that.
There are moments in life where you either have to sob or to laugh. In this vein, nothing is more amusing than home maintenance stories. Basic rule of Home Repair: roll 1d100, 1-99 means you’ve triggered the Tomb of Horrors.
BTW, the couple we tricked into playing D&D with us loved it and are coming back next week. 😀
Agree! My roommate in college was actually quite fond of my now-husband (then-friend); however, upon discovering his intent to pursue ME instead of her, she promptly told him, over the phone one night and subsequently repeated on her blog, to “die in a fire, you bastard!” Hearing this (somewhat) all over again brought back some obscure sentimental thoughts for me, haha!
Sucks about the floor. Sucks about the asbestos, too. Good call on just going overtop of it – if you planned on pulling it up, you’d literally need to get guys in hazmat suits to come and take it out for you.
If you guys (read: Anne) are planning on putting your new floor in yourself, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. My husband has installed flooring for 20 years and is a weatlh of information. If you want, just let me know where I can send you my email address and you can get in touch anytime. We’ve seen plenty of people run into issues over the years – it can be good to have someone who’s been there to help out.
Good luck!
I love the apparent respect that the two of you have for one another. It’s okay to have different interests, but if the respect for your partner and his / her interests isn’t there, the relationship deteriorates.
Reading about your special relationship with the missus makes me very happy. It proves that it IS possible.
I am pretty sure I have bradhicks@LJ to thank for this pointer, but now I can’t find his original post. “The Hackers Diet” is a great book, and also available free in electronic form. I didn’t read the diet bits though… I went straight for the chapter on exercise.
Basically the author advocates a daily workout of calisthenics (jumping jacks, running in place, etc) that you can do daily, in your home. He lays out an escalating ladder of how many to do of each, and after achieving that comfortably in the time allotted for a few days, you try the next step up and see what happens. (He doesn’t call it “leveling up” but it basically is). Eventually you reach a comfortable level and stay there.
I ended up not sticking with it, mostly because I have knee problems. But it is basically what you said: A simple exercise program with “levels”. All you need is a roll-up yoga mat and a pen and paper.
(I also heartily recommend bradhicks.livejournal.com even though it contains forbidden lore… perhaps *because* of it)
Isn’t it nice when geekiness is not only appreciated but embraced?
I think that would be min/maxing, and you really don’t want to “min” those.
Hmmm, I am both a dietitian and a long-time D&D gamer. I never thought about putting the two together. Great idea!
I hadn’t thought about treats, but now I’m going to have them. My students know I’m a huge SW geek.
A 17 year old gamer wrote a book about how he cut his weight in half by inventing a video-game-style program for exercise and dieting. “In devising his Ultimate Fitness Game, LeBaron calculated how many calories — converted to money — he had to spend each day. He set about going through a maze of rooms without running out of dough; for example, eating a cookie would cost him 200 points. Exercising upped his cash reserves.”
It sounds really cool, I’ve been meaning to buy his book, but I just can’t get off the couch to make it to a book store.
Here’s a link to the msnbc article and video: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34845477/ns/today-today_books/
Thumbs up! I have the complete Star Wars potato head collection staged artfully atop my cabinet behind my desk, and there are still students who ask (months later, mind you), “Mrs. W, do you like Star Wars?”
*forehead slap*
Insurance companies are crooks. Their hands are out for your money but they will try their best to cheat you if you dare to make a claim. DIAF indeed!
In a similar non-geek girlfriend having a geek moment, My Star Trek & Doctor Who watching but otherwise non-geeky girlfriend spotted that Wil Wheaton guy drinking tea and texted me about it over the weekend. 😉
I hate most jokes and stories about geek VS “normal”(enough to blog about it at http://meltei.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/geek-geek-geek/ )if someone is interested), because I don’t get it why geeks think they are inferior to “normal” people and even idolize them.
Is “Anne is starting to enjoy games and gaming. I’m not entirely positive,” an answer to my questions? Does it translate to”Hey, you are supposed to be my hot, non-geek wife, get your hands off my geek stuff?” ?
Ok, the Wheaton inspiration card has worked again: I’ve started work on a game-style fitness program. I’ll send you a link once it’s up.
Woah. Really? Okay, to verify: where was I?
It means that Anne has never been particularly interested in boardgames, but after all the years we've spent together, my enthusiasm and affection for playing them seems to have rubbed off on her.
It has nothing to do with geeks vs. normals; it has to do with shared interests, and mine just happen to be fairly geeky.
I think being a ‘geek’ is more about celebrating shared experiences than anything intended to be derogatory, but sometimes I wish there was a prettier word for it!
Down here in Australia, I’ve noticed we use the word “nerd” more frequently – mainly to denote a high degree of knowledge,passion and application to a particular subject. I’ve been called a ‘Star Wars Nerd’ a few times, my cat Astro is a Tuna nerd. 🙂
H
That diet…..I’d follow that for sure.
BTW, nice blog! A friend of mine recommended it the other day and I finally got around to checking it out. Your writing style could definitely keep me entertained for hours! Makes me want to read your books!
Everyone is a geek in some aspect. I don’t think it necessarily HAS to be gaming/comics/media centered. Your wife happens to be a home-reno geek, much like my wife happens to be a theatre and literature geek.
I think I’ve got some crossover geekiness – I love renos, but I love my comics and media, plus I also love walking trails. If I had a weekend like you spent with your wife, I’d be a pretty happy guy.
I find it very refreshing to read about someone who celebrates their marriage rather than complaining about it all the time. I too am blessed with a wife who is willing to share in my geekier pursuits from time to time. She even just recently starting playing in my Monday night D&D game. She enjoys it, but I know she’d be happier sewing or playing piano.
What can I say? That woman loves me.
We are truly lucky men, you and I.
Ok. 🙂
PS.I think it’s both amazing and frightening that humans haven’t yet invented a language which allows us to put two words together without someone misunderstanding them.
Seconded. John Walker was [one of|the] programmer[s] of AutoCAD and has done a lot of refining of this plan. It’s also a free download. I’d like to see him rebuild it as a PDF or something, but you take what you can get.
You might also check out Eat Right For Your Type or the Eat This, Not That series. There’s another one that I’m trying to find but the title is slipping from my feeble little mind.
Perhaps someone could make a modified version of Chore Wars (http://www.chorewars.com) for foods? 🙂
I would like to add my voice to the chorus of “Geek Fitness, plsthxbai!”
That would be SOOOOO awesome. I have a friend who is in the process of trying to lose over 100 lbs, and she would dig the crap outta that. What a fantastically simple and brilliant idea.
It shouldn’t really come as such a surprise, though, that some of the geek has rubbed off on your wife. Your wife loves YOU, nerd warts and all, and as such it just logically follows that she would have at least a little inner geek in her.
Thanks for the post, Wil. It made me smile.
Tea was at Bird Pick on Friday Bozo : )
Since I started reading your website(long time ago), I have become more “geek filled”, too. So,thanks to you. I am sorry about your floor and sucky insurance company(been there). At least you guys made a good memory going out looking at new floor samples.
You have a pretty awesome life, it seems. The best to you! =]
Geek diets – the game night diet is the big one, isn’t it? My husband and I host Friday game at our house, so about every other week I toss something into the crock pot. Most of the gang don’t bring as much junk food when they know that real home cooking is coming. I don’t spend more than two dollars on fixings to make vegetarian red beans or hummus. They’re ridiculously easy to make and a good way to kiss up to the GM. I haven’t found anything else quite as easy and cheap.
I love how couples’ interests rub off on each other over time like that. My husband’s always been the bigger nerd, reading comics, playing games, etc. I’m the creative, artsy, animal lover. We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary this July and in that time frame have spent many hours sharing our specific loves with each other.
I’ve actually started reading a few comics (that aren’t just ElfQuest) and playing a video game here or there (I still tend to stick to stereotypical “girl” games, the exception being WoW, but in the past I shied away from all of those just because I had no interest/skillz.) My husband has been dragged to the zoo about 10 billion times and now initiates the visits, peruses music stores in downtown Seattle with me (not because I’m looking for something specific, but because it’s a nostalgic experience,) and goes to art museums where he may not drool over beautiful things, but he sure appreciates the craftsmanship.
And now, we play a weekly D&D game with a bunch of friends and take (almost) daily walks to coo over adorable baby ducklings.
Actually, in writing this I think the culmination of our interests bleeding over into each other came when we got Beatles Rock Band. I saw the original Rock Band premier at PAX, and thought it looked neat, but had zero interest in trying it, ever. My husband was gung ho, but never got a chance to try something like it until the following PAX where he and a friend tooled around on Guitar Hero, me still staying my distance. Then last year, at PAX 2009, there was Beatles Rock Band in all its glory! I didn’t get a chance to try it (I had a baby on my back the whole time,) but I could tell it was meant for me. Christmastime rolled around and Santa brought us the whole set up. Since then we’ve been bonding by playing it over and over, we’ve since purchased several other Rock Bands, along with much DLC.
Anyway, this has gotten much longer than I anticipated, but there’s definitely some truth to the geekiness rubbing off on others, and as you demonstrated it goes the other way as well.
Bird Pick (which, if it wasn’t you, and you like tea, you should totally check out!)
And if it was you, do you have any recommendations?
(There’s a new tea place, well, a tea wing on a spice place, at Sunset Junction now too: The Spice Station).
I love your wife, Wil. I’m a reasonably geeky girl who married an even geekier guy, and it has totally pulled out the geek in me. It’s actually at the point where I’ve created a Girls Are Geeks blog to help reconcile being a woman and being a geek, and we at the blog think Ann is awesome. You too, of course.
As for geek fitness and achievements and such, me and my husband are avid don’t-want-to-be-fat-anymore-ers, and I use Wii Fit because the cute little balance board asking me why I gained a few a pounds is good motivation not to, and my husband uses Nike Plus with his iPod touch which gives him stats and levels. I’m considering putting together a dice related workout for my blog though!
BTW – Maybe Ann would like our blog, you should find out! It was inspired by PAX East.
Girls Are Geeks
I’d love to see an exercise program like that.
Insurance companies ARE the devil. I had a recent head injury (at work) and now they won’t cover my CT Scan because I wasn’t “disabled”. Jerks.
I am excited to hear your wife is getting into geekier things! It’s a huge bonding thing for my husband and I now (I think you actually saw my blog on it) and it always makes me happy to see other couples having the opportunity to do the same with gaming.
I think (tangent) that it can really give the opportunity to learn about each other. I’ve learned a lot about my husband from his GM style AND the characters he plays. We have discussed philosophy – like actual legitimate philosophy – while watching Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, and tons of other geeky shows, and while reading comics like Watchmen, Transmetropolitan, and even Batman and Superman. He’s taught me about neutrinos and pulsars for my astronomy class, and we’ve learned that if he explains it in a dumber way, I can translate it into an even easier to understand concept. I’ve been able to inspire his art, and vice-versa (which is why we are KICK. ASS. at Pictionary).
It’s awesome. I love what it has opened up for us, and it’s exciting to see that in other couples we know and admire. 🙂
The only thing I have seen remotely close as a geek exercise is someone rigging a treadmill bike to race across Azeroth on WOW. I tried to add a link but the video was removed. 🙁
What other types of comics do you collect? Honesty, in the area where I live comics are not that popular which is unfortunate because I believe they are a great creative outlet for kids…and adults. I don’t like how everything is going to electronic format and how everything printed is disappearing. If anyone reading this has any TMNT comics they want to sell let me know Ha!
Have fun and good luck on repairing the kitchen floor. While your are doing that, I will be repairing my front porch ceiling.
Uh oh, something seems to have broken the formatting. Everything is in italics/bold.
…which seems to have corrected itself in the time it took to write this comment. D’oh!
So, I am sure you have seen the gamer review of outside here (scroll down to the comment by aeschenkarnos – I hate that there’s no way to link directly to comments on MeFi), but just in case you hadn’t, I felt it my duty to bring it to your attention.
I loved this story, because I not only laughed at “free scrap lumber day”, I also thought “What an AWESOME idea”! I go to Free Comic Book Day as willingly as my spouse, but I refuse to take him to Home Depot because I feel that would be cruel. As he has said, “I know how to repair something that’s broken. I call a repairperson.”
Oh, dude, I feel your pain about the water heater. My kitchen was torn up for a month when mine decided to go the extra mile and helpfully use its hot water to heat the kitchen floor.
As far as diets and hurting my Old – every weekend at Faire, I break myself gigging. Throwing myself around dusty rocky paths and tree roots was cool and fun when I was 16, but I’ll be 37 on Sunday. I don’t remember it hurting this much. I love the chance to do improv in the street with a couple thousand people (although most of my bits can best be described as epic fail), but I blame the rocks for hurting my Old. Faire is a great geeky diet, though: you get to walk miles each day over rocks; sweat to death in 20+ pounds of clothing; and eat almost nothing because it’s too hot. Oh, and there’s the free ab workout you get from weed- or dust-induced allergy sneezing fits! Watch the inches come off!
I’m going to haveexperience FCBD through you and others reporting on it. I as looking forward to it, but the weather decided that we were going to get disaster-level flooding instead. After a weekend of just dealing with the local problems, it’s nice to see that not everyone’s weekend got rained out.
Hey! That’s MY game shop!. Though I do also go here from time to time, and I’ve even been known to wind up here.
Like a lot of people commenting, I’ve also borrowed your ‘geek adjacent’ designation and applied to my significant other. It’s funny how she is so much better (and more interested) in fixing up the house than I am.
M
Regaring your insurance policy:
You see, you unfortunately plumped for our ‘Neverpay’ policy, which, you know, if you never claim is very worthwhile…but you had to claim, and, well, there it is.
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode17.htm
Wow, that is just crazy. Now, I’m a geek-adjacent. Geek friendly. Grew up on Nintendo, I like Big Bang Theory. However, every time I sit in front of Empire Strikes Back it magically puts me to sleep (sorry!) Husband is definitely way more geek than me (he’s 37, and D&D, comic book, etc geek, like you).
But I am the home improvement queen. Nothing pleases me more than working on little home projects and Home Depot is my everything. I’m crafty. I’m good at it. I put up a note online recently: “spent 12 hours building bookshelves and rearranging and painting” to which friends say “where is your husband?” to which I say, “playing video games, why?”
Games make him happy. Home improvement makes me happy. Everybody wins.
I’d be very interested to see what you did with the floor. My kitchen floor desperately needs to be burned with fire, but I don’t know what to do with it after I set it on fire.
Thanks!