Sand boxes and geek flags

Clearly blog posts are like anything else in life. They can't all be winners. And I have to fight the urge to delete, re-edit and what have you and just let it be.

Shoveling sand in the box. Sitting and putting words down, no matter how much I roll my eyes later, is still shoveling sand in the box.

This may explain quite a bit.

So whether it's truly vacant crap or something with honest potential, I'm trying to consider it all sand and temper the judgey voice in my head. While I'm still turning to blog posts on a regular basis, I've started diving back in to what I want to be working on. And aside from the agony and anxiety that goes into anything, it feels so good.

Patience, grasshopper, patience.

Switching gears, it's been a Netflix-heavy past week and a half. Have you seen what the television lineup is right now? Political pandering and slinging mud isn't my thing. So this election year I'm relieved to have streaming series to skirt the majority of the rabid attacks.

I have been casually making my way through Orange is the New Black. My husband started watching it just as I was beginning season 2 and a competition was born. I love my husband. And I enjoy watching shows and movies with him. What I don't like is when he's watched something first. Because, bless his heart, he's the king of spoilers.

He's not trying to be a festering carbuncle. (Sorry, honey!) He just wants to know what I'll think about a scene or a line and gets carried away. It's adorable. Really. In his own way. But it does make me want to put a few seasons between us as a buffer. I learned that after he passed me by while watching Kimmy Schmidt. It took me forever to get around to the second season, and by the time I did my husband had rounded second base and was halfway through the season I hadn't started yet.

So when he started OITNB this week, I decided to make some serious effort (Such a first world problem, Holy Pokéballs!) to get a season (or two) between us. Which is good (aside from watching much of anything rotting your brain) because I'm twitchy to get in deeper with Stranger Things. Which I cannot do until I'm done with OITNB for twitchy-itchy brain reasons. Ugh! Dear everyone making compelling shows, I hate the time suck but the entertainment value! Ugh, again. (P.S. Stranger Things is darkly delicious - what I've seen of it.)

Moving on...

I feel safe in saying that throughout my life I've carried both the nerd and geek flags. I haven't been a rabid fangirl (A relatively new term for my lifetime) since boy bands, immortal Scottish men, Mr. Medicine Woman, Seaquest and the like were riding high. And by riding high, I mean causing my laser focus to twitch (which may be a post for another time). I get a kick out of my own niece's fangirling as she's become an encyclopedia on a plethora of fandoms.

I am an equal fan of Star Wars and Star Trek. *Pauses to allow the internet to put itself back together again.* I grew up in a time when you had to wait *gasp* until Star Wars aired on tv to see it again. We didn't own a VCR until the end of the 80's. The struggle isn't waiting for your video to finish buffering from on-demand. The struggle was hoping your local video store wasn't out of both rental units AND the movie you wanted to see.

I've lived in a world before AND after Blockbuster. 

Also? Cassette decks. The meme both worked for my point and annoyed me. Now I'm distracted thinking about how much more difficult cassette tapes were to transport around than compact discs. See? Old AND cranky. Now get off my lawn!

Anyway...

Unlike the potential wait (and weekend usurping glory of a back-to-back movie marathon) of watching Star Wars, Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG, thank you very much) was a regularly airing series when I was growing up. And I loved it. Science fiction. Travel. Riker. Empathetic and smart female. (Who had a thing with Riker.) A female doctor. The brilliant glory that is Jean Luc Picard. People of just about any and all backgrounds having adventures for my weekly entertainment satisfaction. Yes, please.

Now, could I tell you the kind of details that hardcore fans can? Absolutely not. And I know this because I have friends who are hardcore fans. The kind of guys (yes, mostly guys) who worked hard to get me interested in engineering, ship schematics and introduced me to some of the backbone of intensive science fiction writing. And yes, all most of them own Star Trek uniforms. And yes, I mean that as uniformS, plural.

I have watched all the series, some better than others, up to the first season of Enterprise. (If that means absolutely nothing to you, don't worry about it.) I have not watched the original collection of movies. I don't know, maybe Shatner doesn't do it for me on the big screen, maybe I can only picture Ricardo Montalbán in Fantasy Island, maybe my Saturday nights were too full with Dr Quinn, SNL and cookies and cream ice cream. Who can say?

When the reboots started a few years ago, I was intrigued. Casting seemed sound & I was well versed with Mr. Abrams' work to date. I feel this is where I need to point out a simple fact. My husband? Doesn't particularly give two shits about Star Trek. He's got nothing against it necessarily, but the overall franchise doesn't do anything for him either. At least not anymore. I feel like he may have led me to believe he liked Voyager or Deep Space Nine when we were dating, but was ultimately ambivalent once we were married. A classic complaint in marriage, no? "He used to talk sci-fi with me, then once we were married, it's all action movies and rom-coms." You get it, I just know it.

So while my husband is a movie fan, he wasn't compelled to see the new Star Trek. So I picked up a copy once it came out on video (ahem, dvd), put it on the shelf and forgot to watch it. Second movie came out, I figured it would show up on cable, forgot about it. I really am a lackluster fandom supporter. Third time, however, was the charm. This weekend I finally watched Star Trek, lamenting the loss of Leonard Nimoy once more.

I enjoyed it. Good, not great. Pleasing to look at (the cast is obscenely photogenic). ST #2 is cued up for me to watch next. I go into it realizing if you're trying to make a movie that's accessible to a broader audience, some of the more delicate points are lost. But at least now I feel like I don't have this particular fangirl secret hanging over my head anymore.