What Nerds do when the lights go out

Reason #20 why being a nerdy mom is cool:

When your six year old decides that he wants to become an Imagineer for Disney instead of an astronaut you know that free passes to Disneyland are in your future. 

Hello again! Nicole updating you from the doctor's office. For those wondering, it's not a routine check-up, but my body's last chance at getting an infection before 2010 is over. Those that know me well, know that this is a regular thing with me. I have an autoimmune thyroid disorder called “hashimoto's thyroiditis,” and even when my thyroid seems to be functioning fine, I'm still susceptible to infection. Just in the past six months, I've probably made six visits to the urgent care alone, and all for different problems. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really a complainer, nor am I the type to tell you “my life is so hard, I'm so sick, blah, blah, blah.” I actually can't stand people like that. I'm the crazy one who, just thirty minutes before going on stage for a performance of “It's A Wonderful Life,” developed a sudden infection that I happen to be prone to, and despite the discomfort and pain, performed that evening, and did well enough to where the audience couldn't tell I was ill! I'm the crazy person who thinks that illness should not keep us from living, I try to keep going no matter what. I probably give TJ and our best friend Lucy heart attacks from the things I try to do while ill or in pain.

Anyways, as I'm waiting here in the room, I felt it would be a great time to get caught up on my blogging. Well the verdict is in, and I'm being referred for an abdominal CT scan and to see a specialist. Just a small bump in the road, things will be fine.

Now it's further in the day, and we're at rehearsal for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” There's a bit of down time in the first act, so I'm able to try and finish this post, we'll see if I succeed!

Yesterday we had quite the storm, as we were cuddling on the couch and about to watch an episode of “Torchwood,” the power went out. Apparently, someone had hit a pole which then cut out our power. See, here in California, people can't drive in the snow. After spending two years in Utah, where the snow fall is a lot more frequent and higher, I find it funny that people in California can't drive after getting an inch of snow.

While we were without power, and quite optimistic that the power would be back on shortly, we decided to play a game on my laptop. Not just any game, we decided to play something old school, from well, our school days. Who remembers “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” We have a more recent version and decided to play. After completing three missions, no Carmen Sandiego, and learning that the power wasn't expected to be restored until six in the morning, we decided to go to bed.

This morning we decided to finish playing the game, and would you believe that you never catch Carmen Sandiego? I feel so cheated. Now where can I find a copy of “Oregon Trail?”

Who's been feeding my kids Miracle Gro?

"It smells like teenagers in here!" -- As said by "Anakin" as we were walking into the Hurley outlet store to look for a hoodie for "Luke."

I seriously wonder where my kids get off by outgrowing their clothes just a few months after back to school shopping. Don't they know how expensive clothes are? Can't they wait until I'm ready to buy them some new clothes? Do they all have to outgrow their clothes at the SAME time? No? Oh well.

Obviously this is Nicole. I'm trying to get TJ to post something, but he has been feeling really cruddy due to his cold, so he's not feeling up to it at the moment. He will post something soon, I promise!

As you can probably tell, today's post will be about kids and their constant need of newer, bigger clothes. It all started about two weeks ago, I noticed that Anakin's jeans had turned into capris overnight.A week later, Luke's were starting to do the same thing! So we figured it was time to make a trek down to the outlet stores near my mom's home. Outlet stores are wonderful, they're like one awesome treasure hunt. So we had a goal in mind, get jeans for the growing boys.

On the way down there we stopped at TJ's parent's house for a quick visit. His parents are wonderful, they've already stepped into the role of grandma and grandpa, and they do it well. Grandma B made the boys quilts for Christmas and she completely supports the idea of video game play being a healthy development for children, don't you wish your grandma was like that? However, I'm getting a little offtrack here. While we were there I looked over at Anakin and noticed his shirt was a little short, I asked him to raise his arms and sure enough, his little belly was poking out.

Crap, add shirts to the list.

Before we made it to the stores we stopped to visit my mom at work, and while we were there I noticed that Riley's hoodie was also short.

Ugh, guess we'll have to get a hoodie too.

So we finally made it to the outlet stores and began to shop. We found a lot of wonderful deals, and I think one of our favorites was when browsing through the Hanes store, we found Star Wars underwear for the boys. A pack of three for $2.99! The employees probably had a good giggle when they saw two adults and two little boys digging in the underwear bin looking for the correct sizes while practically squeeing over the fact that we found Star Wars underwear. It was the kids squeeing... I swear....anyways, moving along!

While we were walking from store to store, Anakin felt the need to give me a talking to about why I should marry TJ. I've had many people try and tell me to marry certain people, but I've never heard it from my own son. It was an interesting talk, I've never gotten marriage advice from a six year old before.

All in all, it was a good day, my kids are clothed for a bit longer, until they decide to grow again, I just hope they wait a few months before doing it. Now off to wash and fold the old clothes so I can consign them, maybe I can make some money back!

Playing Dumb

Cool Thing About Having a Laptop #42: The ability to message TJ on Messenger or Facebook though he's only a room away and within earshot.

Cool Thing About Having a Laptop #43: Having webcam convos with TJ though he is still only a room away. The echo gets a little annoying after a while, so you decide to move your location from the living room couch, to the bedroom upstairs.

Nicole here. We apologize for the lack of updates, we've had a pair of sick nerds at home the past couple of days. We've all had a case of the lazies around here. The boys are hopelessly addicted to their Nintendo DS's and when TJ and I aren't on our computers, we've been trying to catch up on the 31 episodes of Mythbusters we have saved to our DVR. We're actually watching the Duct Tape episode as I write this.

We love Mythbusters, and I mean we LOVE Mythbusters. We love it so much, I was a proud mom when my six year old son who we will call Anakin (oh he'd be so happy if he knew), wanted to watch the Ninjas 2 episode with me, and then asked to watch more Mythbusters. Last night I told him that Mythbusters has science kits for kids and he asked for them. Ahhh....so proud.

Anyways, we have not had time to get caught up on our many Mythbusters episodes due to our incredibly busy lives. The three things that keep us busy these days are the kids (well that's a given), our Relay For Life team (our team name is "Nerds For A Cure," fitting don't you think?) and our love for community theater. Just earlier this month TJ had the tears flowing with his wonderful performance as George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life." Next month we will be in the musical "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," TJ is playing a protean, and I will be Philia, the virginal courtesan who cannot read, write, and confuses her threes and fives. In other words I'm playing an idiot, and it is a lot of fun. For the past week and a half, we've had a break from rehearsals, but that all changes tomorrow night, so it's time to catch up on Mythbusters while we still can! 

TJ as George and Nicole as Violet in "It's a Wonderful Life"

Wishing you a Nerdy Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Nicole at the helm! Now before I launch into the history of Christmas and it's origins being rooted in Yule and Saturnalia (guess who's an aspiring history major), I'd love to share with you some presents.

The kids so far have gotten a great amount of loot, the boys received Nintendo DS Lites, Pokemon games, Pokemon cards, books, and more Star Wars stuff (have you ever seen a Star Wars pencil in the shape of a light saber, pretty neat stuff). My daughter received books and princess and Barbie
stuff out the wazoo (the nerdy trait hasn't affected her yet).

TJ received every Carcassonne expansion that our local game shop had in stock as well as a pocket watch.

I had one present under the tree, and I'm typing this post on it! As an online college student and the online chair for our local Relay For Life, I've been in desperate need for a laptop, and this year two Christmas elves, TJ and our best friend who I will call "Lucy," made sure I got what I needed. Merry Christmas indeed, I feel like squeeing!

I know some of could be thinking "Wait, you're a college student? But your grammar is horrible!" Yes, I am a college student, and no, I have not taken my English 1A class yet (I'll be taking it this Spring), so please bear with the horrible grammar for a bit longer.

Now since you were kind enough to come over here and read about the nice little Christmas we had, I will share with you, the story of how I hit TJ's car.

Every year in Air Force JROTC, they have a military ball, it's like prom for cadets. Anyways, I was 16, had just received my first driver's license, and had a hell of a week. Just a few days before the military ball I had been in Idaho for my grandmother's funeral, my dad had disappeared that day (it was a usual thing for him, he had a "problem"), my mom was sick and left me to drive my date and myself to the military ball. See that wouldn't be a big deal now, but I was still in the restriction stage of my license, I was not allowed to have someone under age in the car with me. Also, I had only driven my mom's 1984 Z28 Camaro one other time, and I had never parked it in a parking lot.

So we drive to the military ball on base, and I'm pulling into the parking lot at Club Muroc, and I see a sweet parking spot, and I remember thinking, "Finally my luck is turning around." Next thing I remember is a loud crash, a huge thump, and a few other words that I won't repeat here. I hop out of the car, and survey the damage. I had grossly miscalculated how much room I'd need to park and scraped a red car's rear bumper with my front end. Nothing huge, but when you're a hormonal 16 year old that's had a bad week, it's the end of the world. I start crying and freaking out.
A fellow cadet came out and said "Oh my God Nicole, you hit a car!"
In my confusion I started crying out "I'm so sorry I hit your car!"
He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "No, you didn't. You hit TJ's car." In my panic and shock I turned to look at the car again and realized, oh yes that was TJ's car. How did I not know? A million things flooded my mind, how could I do this? Why his car? Oh my God, he's going to think I did this on purpose! What am I going to tell my mom? And the list goes on.
So finally, I had to go tell TJ the truth. I wanted to run away screaming, any car but TJ's! I went inside, found him and told him. He thought I was joking, and then he saw my tears, ran outside and started yelling "My car! You hit my car!"
He handled it pretty well, and we agreed that we'd go in, have a good time, and deal with it later. The whole night I had many cadets come up to me and say "Did you do it on purpose? That would be awesome if you did!"

Merry Christmas everyone!

Everyone's a critic and the benefits of raising nerdy kids

Yesterday afternoon, while still learning about this blogging business:
Nicole: Hey did you know if our blog became popular, we could make money with Google's Ad Sense?

TJ: Really? Cool.

Nicole: Yeah, we should work on becoming interesting.

To those that are still reading this, good morning! Nicole speaking, or eh... typing. Our first day as a blog went well, and we've been encouraged to continue on. However as a disclaimer, we will not delve into details of some parts of our past. Yes I had to sum up, leaving out a lot of details, but really it would have taken paragraphs upon paragraphs to go into the past, and I was already getting a discussion from TJ about TLDNR (too long did not read, for those that don't know, hey it's okay, I just found out yesterday). Furthermore, this is a public blog, and there may be people out there that don't want their dirty laundry aired. As you can see we don't name names, even my kids will be referred to by initials or nicknames or something. And as Forrest Gump would say, "And that's all I have to say about that."

Moving on now.

Sorry, this post interrupted by a small child flooding the upstairs bathroom. What was I saying? Oh yeah! 
As a very nerdy mother, of course I'd love to pass my nerdy traits to my children. Not only do the kids have a lot of books, they have huge books about dinosaurs, space, etc (gotta love Borders Bargains). I'm that mom that does math drills for fun, and thinks that the Castle lego set created a great history lesson opportunity. They have science kits, Pokemon cards, and enough Star Wars merchandise to make a fanboy squee. Thankfully, this appears to rub off on the kids. My oldest, who we shall call "Luke" is my engineer in training. He wants to be a paleontologist like Jack Horner (his hero), but I think he has the mind of an engineer. His lego masterpieces are so well engineered and constructed, it's hard to believe an eight year old created them. However, it was a simpler creation that I'm blogging about today. Last night while I was folding the weekly mountain of laundry, he came downstairs with this.

Yeah, nerdy parenting has it's benefits.

The Blog Is A Lie

Nicole: How do you want to do this?

TJ: I don't know! You're the creative one!

Nicole: Hey you're creative too!

TJ: I don't knoooooow!

Nicole: I have an idea....(starts typing script on conversation)

Hi, as you can probably tell, this is a blog about Nicole and TJ, and apparently we have no idea on what we're doing! You'd be right on both accounts. Right now Nicole (that would be me), is typing this, as TJ still has no idea on what to do. Uh oh, I just got a look for typing that. Anyways, this is a blog about us, two nerds in love, who knows if it will be useful. Hell, who knows if anyone will read it! Perhaps introductions are in order.

First, we'll go with my (Nicole's) story.

I've always been a nerd, ever since I was a kid. I was that kid who would rather read books instead of play with friends, joined band for fun, and asked for microscopes for Christmas. It carried on through middle school, where I was the victim of bullying and as a testament of survival I continued on in high school. In high school, I was an extra-curricular addict. I couldn't get enough of them. I participated in student government, journalism, academic decathlon, drama club, marching band, and then after transferring to a new high school my junior year, I found a great extra-curricular, Air Force Junior ROTC. That is where I met TJ, a senior at the time, who was also the chief master sergeant of our unit, the CA-944th. I was dating his friend at the time, and both TJ and his friend were also involved in Civil Air Patrol. I started attending meetings, and that is when I first noticed TJ following me around. Things had begun to deteriorate with me and his friend (hey we were in high school, relationships that last more than two weeks is amazing) and while TJ and I sat outside of a hangar at the Edwards AFB air show, he completely surprised me by asking me to marry him.

Okay, I know what you're thinking, that we were young and dumb and what did we know? Apparently we didn't know much, our relationship/engagement lasted one month. TJ left me heartbroken and asked for his class ring back. We didn't speak after that, well except for when I hit his car with mine at the Military Ball later that year (it's a long story, that I will save for another post). We went our separate ways, lived our separate lives. I made one stupid choice after another, and kept falling into abusive relationships and marriages. I gained two things from those relationships, a strength to fight the abuse and believe in myself, and my three beautiful children.

I had always wondered what had happened to TJ, wondered if he still hated me, wondered if he was happy. Back before everyone made a mass exodus from MySpace to Facebook, I found TJ and thought, "ah what the hell, send him a message!" So I did. I sent a paragraph, a month later he sent back one sentence. I immediately sent back a paragraph, a month later he sent back a sentence. I sent back another paragraph, two months later he sent back two sentences. Apparently, he wasn't that interested in talking to me. Or he didn't know what to say. I should probably ask about that, lol.

Okay, I had typed out more past this, but then TJ came by (he's been using the Wii Fit while I typed my story) and said "Wow I didn't know you were typing an essay!" So I've deleted a lot of it, and will now sum up.

We got back into contact, we met up again, we became best friends. I then was at risk for cervical cancer, and had to marry my then boyfriend for the insurance. I don't recommend doing that, it's not at all the right reason for marrying, but what a screwed up country we live in, for people to feel pressured to get married for insurance if they're at risk for developing cancer. I'll save that vent for a different day. Anyways, it obviously didn't work out, thankfully I'm not at risk for cervical cancer, I'm in the process of divorcing, and TJ and I realized that old feelings never go away. And what do you know, I have his class ring again! lol! I think I'll end this for now since TJ came by again, looked at the screen, and said "holy crap!"

Here's his story!



My story is about a young man reporting for a newspaper at a science lab. While he was there a spider escaped its cage and bit him, now he saves the city and the world from evil.... What?...... who is Spiderman?... a comicbook character?.... Are you sure?..... Ok, well I guess I will tell you about me.

I have not been the most popular person in my life, I have always been the weird one. I like computers, video games, science, science-fiction and fantasy. I have never cared about how I looked or what other people thought about me, that changed about a year ago.

I went over to this old girlfriends house for a Halloween party, I dated her in high school after stealing her from a friend, I broke it off with her a month later. After high school I did a semester of college and went into the Air Force, spent two years at RAF Lakenheath in jolly-ol-England. When I came back I sat around for a while and had various jobs, until I got a job that I have had until recently at Scaled Composites.

So she introduced me to a friend of hers and we dated for a brief time, after that we hung out for a while and found out we still have feelings for each other, we have been together ever since. We have done a lot of very important and fun things together, we make each other happy all the time, and we are most certainly in love.

Okay, it's Nicole again. So that is the story in a nutshell, check back if you want to read more! If you liked it, great, if not, I'm sorry we can't give you your five minutes of your life back.