Just Your Standard Rambling Post About Nothing

This post was supposed to go up Friday afternoon but my computer decided to be a complete twat. "Oh, you want me to open that link? Let me think about it... computer says no." So I decided that socializing with other humans was a better option than swearing at my computer. Take that, computer!

Then it was supposed to go up yesterday afternoon but my Internet decided to be a complete twat. "Oh, you want me to connect to the World Wide Web? Let me think about it... computer says no." So I went to the apartment Christmas party and unintentionally got drunk instead. Take that, liver!

Note to self: Eat dinner before going to the Christmas party next year because if you have as much fun as you did this year, you're not going to stick to your 30-minutes-chit-chat-back-for-dinner plan.

Part of the problem with not going up on Friday is that I missed the chance to talk about 'Wear Star Wars, Share Star Wars' Day on the actual day. Last September, Katie headed off to school with her Star Wars backpack. She got teased for liking Star Wars because it was just for boys. Her mom blogged about it, it was picked up by Epbot - a wonderful site for all geek girls - and it snowballed into a huge movement. Katie became the hero for legions of nerdy girls who had also been told they shouldn't like something because that's for boys.

'Wear Star Wars, Share Star Wars' is about more than just Star Wars, it's about showing your geek pride regardless of where your geek love lays. It's also to encourage people to donate a sci-fi themed toy to a local charity and make sure to specify that it's for boys and girls. It's about being proud about being a geek.

Just in time for WSTSST 2011, Jen at Epbot shared another story about a GGIT (Geek Girl In Training) getting teased. This time, Bryden dressed up as Spock for Halloween and was made fun of for dressing up as a boy. (Even one of the teachers made a remark about it which angers me to no end. A teacher should know better!) Once again, my heart went out to that little girl. And once again, the internet has proven what a wonderful place of support it can be! Go Geeks!

UPDATE: Um, awesome!
I found this BBC advert online Friday and shared it with facebook and twitter. Figure it's only right to share it here as well.

The natural world is such an amazing place, filled with so much wonder and beauty. It can be so easy, in our day-to-day lives to forget how fantastical the idea of life even is. All these plants and creatures that have evolved over millenia and adapted to their surrounds is no small feat and yet, here we are!* Something about this video must have kicked up all the dust in my apartment because something kept getting in my eye as I watched it.

Of course, I needed to remind myself that despite all that beauty, some people just don't like the world so I watched another episode of An Idiot Abroad. I stumbled across the show a few weeks ago and have been recommending it to anyone who will listen. The hilarity of watching Karl (who hates everything) travel to foreign places is just priceless. To get the most out of it, I'm limiting myself to two episodes a week. I tried to find a clip that summed the show up but ended up deciding instead to just share an advert for Series One. (Yes, they some how convinced him to do a Series Two.)

Christmas is in full swing around here. I've put up my one string of Christmas lights and I've blasted the Bing Crosby. Despite my love for Christmas, I don't do a whole lot in the way of decorations. Because the holidays are still mostly spent at my parents' places and I live on my own, I keep it pretty low key. (Also, we're not allowed real trees in our apartment building and I refuse to buy a fake one so...) At least I'm getting out to enjoy the festive season around me!

And on that note, I have to go shower and get out to enjoy the festive season around me!

*One of my biggest pet peeves about religious people's misunderstanding about those of us who are non-religious is that we can't appreciate God's work as it's all just science to us. It was realising that random happenstance of the interaction of molecular properties which brought us such beauty that helped me see how amazing this world is. When I still thought maybe it was just some guy in the sky, the world never was as amazing as I find it now.

List It Like a Boss!

I'm not feeling very creative with my writing right now so you get a lovely list of things I need to talk about. I make no promise for any sort of coherency in this post. You have been warned.

1. I just realised that I often end things with "you have been warned". Perhaps that should have been the title of my blog.

2. There was supposed to be another Ireland post today but then Al and I finally set a time for swapping photos. There's a certain section of today's post which really needs her photos. Words won't do it justice. Also, hard to believe I only have two more Ireland posts left.

3. Further to #2, I'm looking into the logistics of organizing a trip to Ireland in September 2013. Reasons and details here.

4. Further to #3, if Ciaran McMenamin knows what's good for him, he'll run like hell if he ever sees me coming. I will make him read an entire phone book just to hear his voice.

5. John Scalzi is my excuse for not doing anything last night. On Saturday night, Scalzi live-tweeted The Two Towers and Return of the King. Then, in case you missed it, he blogged his tweets (which you should totally read because he's hilarious and nerdy. Also, check out the Smegol dub-step fish slapping dance in the comments). I decided that I needed to rewatch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So I started that last night. Say good bye to my evenings for the next little while because I'm watching the extended editions.

6. It also means that my friends will have to put up me thinking I'm hysterical for the next few days when really, I'm just really, really nerdy.

7. I have to go get awesome pictures to make the next Ireland post even more awesome so I'm stopping my listing there.

I Can't Quit You

Shannon (mother of the awesome 'J') recently posted about her love-hate relationship with facebook and it got me thinking about my own love-hate with social media. Anyone who knows me INR (in real life) can attest, it's mostly a love relationship.

For all I cringe when I think about what some people are willing to share on the site (for the record, I keep my stuff on pretty tight lockdown but I also very rarely share anything that I wouldn't share on a public site... well, other than my last name), facebook has always contained many more pros than cons for me. As someone who loves to travel, facebook has allowed me to keep in contact with friends I've met along the way. For that alone, facebook is worth it.

Unlike twitter where I've made friends I didn't previously have, facebook is about connecting with people I already have a pre-existing relationship with. So imagine my surprise one lazy April morning in 2010 when I get a friend request from a name I don't recognize and a profile picture which doesn't trigger any memories for me. I check out our mutual friends.

She knows Cormac, a cousin from Armagh.

Cormac had moved to the States and married an Andrea; she had changed her last name on facebook only a few months before and I had received two friends requests for her in error. I am about to send a message explaining I was not the 'Andrea M' she is looking for when I realised that she's friends with Paddy. Paddy, a cousin originally from Dublin, lives in Galway and has never been to visit Cormac in the US. It was unlikely that this person was looking for the other Andrea.

I close the message box and went back to staring at the picture.

Nothing.

I let a few days pass while I mulled over who this person might be. Like me, her profile is pretty guarded so I couldn't do much snooping to determine who she is. I take the plunge and accept the request. If nothing else, it will give me a chance to snoop around her profile and figure out who she was before I unfriended her.

Chatting with my dad on the phone the next day, I ask if he knew who this Estelle-person was.

"She's Fonsie's youngest."

I had my answer. To the best of my knowledge, I had never met Estelle. In fact, I didn't meet Uncle Fonsie (Alphonsus, it has nothing to do with Happy Days) until he came to visit us in Canada when I was 15. My dad was the eighth child in a family of 11.* Fonsie was much older (first or second born, I'm not sure) and, according to my dad, had moved out by the time my dad was old enough to form a relationship with him.

Then there was some family drama. You know how large families are. Or maybe you don't which is why I have to write this. All I know about it was snippets overheard during conversations between my dad and his other siblings. I knew he existed but I only saw him when I was 15 and I haven't seen him since.

In short, Fonsie and my dad were never close and he was an uncle in name only.

And his youngest daughter (who is a few years older than me) wanted to be facebook friends.

Ultimately, that has been my biggest joy in facebook: the ability to develop relationships with my cousins independent of my father's relationship with them.

Living so far away from that half of my family, my relationships with them have always been through my dad's contact with his siblings. My knowledge was only what was passed on from their parents to my parents. If our parents weren't big phone buddies, well, I often didn't know they existed beyond "this aunt/uncle has x number of kids".

For the first time ever in my life, I don't had to be in Ireland to talk to my cousins, learn what's happening in their lives, and share what's going on in mine. I've learned more about my cousins as individuals in the last three years when I added the first one, than I ever did in the 28 years prior.

For that, Facebook, I will always appreciate you.

*We had to do our family trees for Grade 8 French and then present them to the class. Most people were done in two to three minutes. After five minutes, my teacher cut me off because I had demonstrated my knowledge of the vocabulary. I hadn't even had a chance to talk about my mom's side of the family.