The Nintendo Quilt

Okay, no long blog today because I was busy cleaning my house and playing with Zuul, but I just stumbled over this quilt online and I had to share it.

I'm pretty sure I could make it but I really hate sewing tiny squares together so I am not sure I would have the heart for it.  I am really feeling the 1up though, so maybe I could make a throw pillow of something cool like that.  But I still haven't finished the quilt I started for Zuul so it may be a while before I get the time to do something new.

Profile of a Geek: Jai

JAI

Giving me a grumpy face for taking too many pictures in a train ride to NYC several years ago.



My husband Jai grew up in rural Maine (think mountains, moose, and hour and a half long drives to the movie theater).  He may have been a geek from birth.  Family lore is that at the tender age of three he would watch nothing besides his Star Wars movies.  Now this may have had something to do with the fact the you could not get cable in rural Maine in 1986, and dishnetwork did not exist (to my knowledge), or it could be that he was just born to be a geek. 



If he wasn't born a Geek, by the time he left for college he was a card carrying member of geeks anonymous.  During his high school years he was the founding member of his high schools Audio-Visual Club.  Now, I thought the AV club was just something that only happened at TV, like 28 year olds in high school, but not only was my husband a member of his club, it was his idea to start it.  Like any good geek of the late 90's he played Magic, The Gathering with his friend (that's singular of course, because it was not cool to be a geek in the late 90's) and talked about whatever Anime was currently on the top of their awesome list.  Sadly, this was far before the days of digital cameras, and I don't have a scanner, so I cannot share any photos from these early years, but he did get his senior picture taken with this really big sword:

Zuul added for scale.

 and I think they says it all.





Zuul wants to be just like Daddy

In college, he met one of my very best friends Renee, and they continued their geeky journey together.  Anime started out as their vice of choice (subtitled of course) and they quickly moved on to Dungeons and Dragons, Computer based RPG's and Bad Scifi movies.  Renee then introduced him to me and 6 months later he moved to Michigan to mold me into my geeky self.  



Jai, Me, Renee and Cook at the Lafayette Cemetery.



Now of course, when we first met he was trying to impress me and I was in my Goth/Punk phase, so he pretended he was really into that too.  But deep down in his heart he was a geek and was plotting to turn me to the dark side. 

At Michigan State University, where he got a B.S in Science (Okay, Microbiology, but I like to just say he does science for a living), he met a whole new band of geeks.  He stayed up till the wee hours of the night playing Marvel, a superhero based Dungeons and Dragons for those of you not in the know, and he begged me to play with him.  I, of course, refused, for two reasons.  First, I have a feeling I would have been treated like this:

And second, I don't know if you have ever played with hard core gamers but every gaming session pretty much ends up like this:



Also, I insisted that if I was a Mutant for his super hero game my only ability would be to turn purple, because I am a firm believer that not all X-men like mutations are going to be super helpful.  He insisted I would just die all the time and finally stopped asking me to play.

After he graduated from Michigan State we moved to New Haven, CT so Jai could get his Masters Degree in Science from Yale.  He could not find a new D&D crowd there so he threw himself into video games, reading comics and sci fi TV.  He spent the next four years rewatching every episode of Battlestar Galatica, Farscape, Babylon 5, Star Trek, and Stargate, (SG1 and Atlantis),   playing endless hours of Ratchet & Clank, Elder Scrolls, Neverwinter Nights and Civ IV, and reading Sandman, The Watchman (before it was a movie), and pretty much anything super hero related he could find.  Some of these things he made me do with him, and I have to admit Farscape is a damn fine show.

Once we moved to Memphis in 2010, and finally had some extra money he begged to play World of Warcraft. He had always wanted to play it and after watching a few seasons of The Guild he really had the itch. So he spent the next two years Raiding and leveling up, which was great because it still doesn't have any D&D friends. Sadly, money got tight was we prepared to welcome Zuul into the world and Jai hasn't played WOW since she was born, but now he has a whole new little geek to play with and one day, when she's a little older he may just get that D&D buddy he's been longing for.

He's off to a good start geeking her up.  Zuul is only 4 months old, so we don't let her watch TV.  But Daddy is always quick to add "Except for Dr. Who."

Halloween 2013: I Am Going To Need Some Tardis Blue

Yes, I know Halloween 2012 hasn't even gotten here yet, but last night while in the shower I came up with the perfect costume, but we are too poor to buy the parts right now and with half my life taken up playing with Zuul, there just isn't time to make it this year.  So what is this masterful Halloween costume that will take over a year to construct?

Dr. Who and the Tardis

Now, we did talk about Zuul being Dr. Who for Halloween this year, but were faced with two problems.  1. where do you find a tweed jacket for a 4 month old, and 2. we didn't want to spend all night explaining who the baby was supposed to be.  But, with the addition of a Tardis and ample time to sew a baby size tweed jacket I am almost certain I can build a Tardis that Jai can walk around in with the following parts:

PVC Pipe

Blue and White fabric

Mesh or screen fabric

Heat and Bond, and

An Awesome tardis quilt pattern I found online

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Tardis-Blanket/#step1

When I start construction, some time in 2013, I will document it all for you.  So, if Jai is going to be the Tardis and Zuul is going to be Dr. Who I am trying to decide who I can be to fill in this Dr. Who tastic, halloween.  Jai is pretty crafty with woodworking, so if I ever actually get a job, I may make his try his hands a construction a Dalek.  I feel like we would need some plywood, foam balls, a few plungers and a lot of gold spray paint.  Also, possibly some wheels so  I could move around in it. 

My Daughter Zuul is a Pretty Little Boy

  My daughter Zuul is a pretty little boy. 



 I know this to be true because every time I take her out in public, complete strangers walk up and tell me so.  Now, I am not faulting complete strangers for not knowing that my infant child is not a girl.  She is not dressed in pink bows and lace after all.  However, what this does is create a super ackward moment for me where  I must either tell them she is a girl and go through the embarrasing ritual of them apologizing and backtracking, or I can let it slide and hope that the conversation doesn't progress to "What's his name?" In which case we are back to the whole embarrassing backtracking and apologizing. 

I know that this could all be corrected if I just took her out of the house in gender identifying colors more often.  However, I am not a huge fan of pink.  I  put her in a whole pink outfit one time when we were just sitting around the house and I just couldn't bring myself to do that to my child again.

I think the sheer look of terror on her face says it all.  How could I do this to my sweet little baby girl?  So, I guess I will have to keep walking the fine line between embarassing people and embarrasing myself and come to peace with the fact that my daughter zuul is a pretty little boy.

Geeks Make Chicken

Today, while Zuul was napping Jai and I decided to try our hand at roasting a chicken.  Let me start out by explaining that I don't eat meat off the bone, let alone raw meat, but for some reason I got it in my head to roast a whole chicken, stuffing and all. 

Since I was terrified to touch the raw chicken, an we only had the one glove, I decided to go out it with a fork and knife. Finally, after much sawing, I am victorious, though disgusted by the chicken I have wrestled from its plastic case.  You can tell from my face that I was terrified of the dead Birdb

I was super proud of myself when I finally managed to get the bird from the kitchen sick to the counter.  My spirits were high until I read the recipe and realized that I had to reach my hand inside of the dead thing and pull out its neck and organs.  And as if pulling them out wasn't bad enough, the recipe calls for me EAT THEM!!

 

 So I pull out the neck and stick my hand all the way in there and pull out the heart and liver.  By the way, I spent a semester in college working in a morgue, sticking my hands in dead people and pulling out their organs and yet, that is the face I make when asked to stick my hand up the butt of a dead chicken. 

So, ffinally I centered myself, taking a deep breath and asking myself if Ellen Ripley would have screamed in terror and let the chick win, or just reached up there, grabbed out that liver and survived.   She would have kicked that chickens ass and so would I.  If I could get it in the pan without dropping it that is.

Since I had done all the really gross work already and since I lost my glove, Jai agreed to stuff the stuffing in the bird butt for me.  The stuffing was fantastic, fresh bread crumbs, rosemary, chives, thyme and a honey crisp apple.  I have very proud of myself.

 Zuul woke up while everything was still cooking, so she had to hang out with her penguin for a while in the circle of neglect.

 

Finally, it was ready to go into the oven, and yes, that is bacon you see draped across the top and it was awesome

Drum Roll Please...

Ladies and Gentleman, we have a chicken!!!  All and all I was pretty damn proud of myself.

My Transformation

My name is Jane, and 12 years ago I was not a Geek.  I certainly not "normal" but I wasn't a Geek!!  I had never watched Star Trek, I did not know what a Stargate was, and I had never Battlestar Galatica'd.  I had never read a comic book, let alone gone to a Comic Con.  When I met my husband I was a goth dressing, depressive poetry writing, and listening to angry guitar playing women opine upon the inequalities of life. 

My husband, on the other hand, watched Anime religiously, played Magic, the Gathering, and had seen every episode of Star Trek.  For about six months he followed me into my world of black cloths and cemetery visits, before slowly pulling me into his world of geek.  I already loved Star Wars, so maybe I was primed to transform into a geek, but now after 10 years, I am looking up patterns for Dr. Who Tardis Quilts, making a super hero costume for my baby and drooling over Firefly swag on etsy.  I am officially a geek and this blog will follow me as me and my husband raise our daughter "Zuul" and live as a happy geek family.