Hard day

I really know why they call it the terrible 2's. Emily has been very cranky today and it's been very tiring

I know she is trying to push her limits but it gets old day after day. Thank goodness tomorrow my dear husband will be home and able to help out.

No Privacy

When you are a mom, you get used to not having any privacy. My dear daughter likes to follow me into the bathroom when I have to go, which getting a little annoying.

I went in there today, and she followed me in per usual. I said, "Can you please leave so Mama can go to the bathroom?"

She looks at me with her adorable brown eyes and replies in her adorable toddler voice, "No way!"

Sigh - hopefully she will outgrow this in a year or two!

Trek Trax Atlanta Review

I attended the very first Trek Trax Atlanta this past weekend. It was a small con, but it was very fun.

I took Emily down on Friday night, even though it was after 5 pm when we got there, there wasn't really much going on. I'd really like to see more programming early on Friday for next year, because most of the stuff didn't seem to start until pretty late that night.

I got to the con a little before 10 am on Saturday, since the first panels were starting at 10. I went to a couple costuming panels right off, and then visited the dealer's room.

The dealer's room was pretty small but I managed to spend quite a bit of money. After that, I went to the Tim Russ (Tuvok from ST:Voyager) panel which was pretty good. After his panel, was the Duras Sisters (Barbara March and Gwynyth Walsh), though that panel started late.

After that, I was starting to get tired. I did a few more panels and watched some videos in the video room. My phone rang around 7 pm and it was my husband, so I ended up leaving then (I walked to the car as I was talking to Todd) because I was getting really tired.

 I didn't attend on Sunday, because of choosing to go home early to be able to game Sunday afternoon.

My main issue with this con is that I wish that there had been more programming on Friday (and earlier in the day) and that Sunday hadn't been a full day of programming since even if I had gone on Sunday, I would have had to leave rather early due to having to drive 3 hours back home. President's Day weekend isn't like Labor Day weekend and I'm sure most people had to work / go to school today like I did.

All in all, it was a pretty fun con. Depending on the guests for next year, I'll probably go back.

Cons!

I love going to cons! They are just so much fun as you can dress up as  your favorite character, sometimes meet celebs and just get to be around fellow geeks.

Trek Trax is this weekend and it's my first con of the year. Fanaticon will be in May (though I'm not sure I'll be able to go to that one), ConCarolinas in June and then Dragon*Con in September. I think it's the most cons I've been to in a year.

I'll post a con report of Trek Trax on Monday!

Game On!

Yesterday, Todd, Emily and I went to our friends' house to game. Emily got to play with our friends' daughter (who is about 13 months younger than Emily - but they play together remarkably well), and we got to game for about 7 hours.

It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait for the next game session, which will be this coming Sunday.

We had worried some about how the kids would handle it, but besides attempting to eat / steal our dice off the table, they just have fun playing.

It was also nice to play with people who are used to having kids around - so when we had to take a poopy diaper break (twice *L*), everyone understood that we had to pause the game until the diaper was changed.

I'm just excited to be gaming again!

First Fandom

When I was young, I went through a rather brief period when I thought being a geek wasn't a good thing. This was when I was in the 5th or 6th grade.

The thing that brought me back to geek-dom was Star Trek: The Next Generation. My dad was a big TOS Star Trek fan, so he started watching TNG.

Once I started watching TNG, I was hooked. From there, I started watching TOS and then the movies. Star Trek was my first real fandom.

Also my first con experience was a Star Trek one. My dad and I went to several one-day cons in Grand Rapids. They usually had one star (I got to meet James Doohan (Scotty) and George Takei (Sulu) ) along with a teeny dealer's room and some viewing rooms.

But when I was in the 9th grade, we went to a 3-day con. The stars were Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (Nurse Chapel from TOS, Lwaxana Troi from TNG, and the voice of the computer) and John De Lancie (Q). There was also a massive dealer's room that anyone could go into. My mom and sister had come with us but didn't have badges to the con. But they were allowed to go into the dealer's room.

It was a great time, and it was the first time I cosplayed as well. I had a TNG uniform shirt.

So Star Trek was my first fandom. It's not my main fandom now but it still is one of my favorites.

Gaming Gateway Drug

When I was a kid, I loves the cartoon, "Dungeons & Dragons" so much, and when I found out it was based off of a game, I had wanted to play it so badly.

I didn't get a chance to play D&D until I was in college, and I loved it. I really consider D&D my gaming gateway drug because I am probably a little addicted to roleplaying games.

I gamed a lot the last few years of college. I LARPed (Vampire: The Masquerade mostly) almost every Saturday, and I dabbled in other table top games like Star Wars and White Wolf.

After I left college, I couldn't find a gaming group. I went to a LARP in Grand Rapids once with my friend, Sara, but it was odd and I felt out of place so I never went back. It would be several years before I would game again.

When Todd and I moved down to NC, we met Alice and Josh (they were online friends with someone I was friends with), and they introduced us to Hero Games. I love, love, love Hero Games system so much because it focuses more on the roleplaying than the combat and system mechanics.

We played nearly every week for several years, until they moved out of the state. Their move also was when I was about to pop with Emily, so I wasn't going to be able to game much with a newborn anyway.

Even engrossed in new motherhood, I really missed gaming and really wanted to get back into it. When Emily was almost a year, I went to GA to play in a LARP with my cousin and his wife. It was different than any LARP I had played in before because it was a boffer weapon LARP.

Since it was my first time, I was an NPC, and I ran around all weekend fighting and dying. It was awesome! I played again a few months later, and now I can't wait until the first game of this year comes around.

To make things even better, my best friend's husband is a Hero Games GM, and we have figured out a way to play (we hope) while the kids play. Luckily, their daughter and Emily are BFF's and play together remarkably well for kids their age. This Sunday is going to be our first game and I cannot wait! I'm going to play a fire mage who is kind of like Harry Potter (in she probably will have to defeat the bad guy at some point).

And it all started with D&D - it's a gaming gateway drug.

Levels of Geekery

Now, I've been a geek since birth. Or at least since I was 3 or 4 years old and my dad started reading 'Lord of the Rings' to me. It really shaped who I've become.

As I grew up, being a geek or nerd was not cool and not something most people wanted to be. I was completely out in my geekery in high school though as I had a picture of the crew of Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation in my locker. I was also going to small Star Trek cons at this time with my dad.

I continued deeper into hardcore geekery in college as I started going to anime cons and gaming a lot - both table top and live action. Even at that time, it wasn't really very accepted to be a geek.

Now, being a geek is much more accepted than in my youthful days of high school and college, and some people associate themselves with that title that perhaps wouldn't have in the 'old days'.

So, it got me thinking about the levels of geekery. Here are how I could classify the types of geeks out there:

A aspiring geek is someone who watches a few sci-fi tv shows, thinks they are cool but doesn't involve themselves with the geek culture at all.

A casual geek is someone who may do some gaming, mostly video games, and watches the popular sci-fi shows.

A prevalent geek is someone who attends conventions, but doesn't cosplay. They also do the things a casual and aspiring geek does. - This is the type of geek my husband is.

A hardcore geek is someone who attends cons, who cosplays, who LARPs, who is involved in one or several geeky organizations (like a Browncoat group of a Starfleet chapter), among all the other stuff the other types of geeks do as well. This is the height of geeky-ness, and this is the type that I am.