The Captain (About Me)

My name is Bree, and this is my story.  One day on vacation, I was minding my usual ways when I was introduced to Toad.  I fell in love almost immediately.  Shortly thereafter on another vacation, I stumbled upon Yoda and was instantly smitten, no hesitation at all despite our species differences.  So began the two stages of my geek life.

Stage One:

When I was about 9 years old, my family was on vacation in Washington state visiting our relatives.  My mom wanted to catch up with an old friend from high school, so we went over to her house.  Her children were a few years older than me, but they were very polite and asked if I wanted to play Nintendo SNES.  I had never played Nintendo; what was this curious grey box of machinery that allowed you to play games on your TV?  I had heard of and even played a few games for the computer before (Carmen Sandiego, anyone?), but never a console game.  The children popped in Super Mario Kart, and as soon as I picked up the controller and started learning what those buttons did, my world as I knew it came crashing down around me so that it could construct a new one that involved such wonders as console gaming and delightful little creatures like Toad, Mario, and Bowser -- although, admittedly Bowser was kind of a jerk sometimes.  My little console incident spurred me to save my allowance money as soon as we got home from vacation, and a little while later, I was the proud owner of my very own Nintendo 64.

Stage Two:

My gaming life continuing to expand, I thought there was no way I could be happier with the geek and nerd worlds.  I think if I had known at that point what a hydrospammer was, I would have asked someone to throw one at my head.  Fortunately, I didn't know what that was just yet, but I found out very quickly when I was 11 years old and vacationing in the forests of northern Arizona one snowy February evening.  Since it was "cold" outside (when you're from Arizona, anything below 50 degrees F is cold), my dad decided to show my sister and I a movie he thought we would like.  He popped a tape into the VHS player and not literally ten minutes into Star Wars: A New Hope, I had the sensation of déjà vu, except this time I wasn't experiencing a rebuild of my world to introduce another gaming console.  This time, my world was crashing down to make way for an even more expanded universe, one that involved Star Wars and one that would now welcome into its arms anything having to do with the geek and nerd worlds in general.

Where I Am Now...

My "Amazon warrior" costume for
the Renaissance festival.  'Cause
this is totally what Amazons wore.

I continued to grow myself as a geek, nerd, whatever-other-title-is-applicable through my grade school, high school, and college years.  I tried to read, view, write, and generally experience any geeky/nerdy stuff I could get my hands on.  Unfortunately, due to my heavy involvement with academics, extra-curricular activities, and jobs, I did not have as much time as I hoped to develop my geek side.  Now that I'm an adult, I've found that being an adult consists of having a full-time job, and having a full-time job does not allow for me to spend as much time playing Xbox games, reading the next sci-fi novel on my list, or creating my next costume as much as I'd like.  However, I do what I can in my free time, and this blog is one of the ways I hope to use my free time to grow my knowledge of all things geek (see "The Ship (About Blog)" for more information).  I'll post about anything geeky and/or nerdy, like how I hope to someday attain a Master's degree in science fiction studies -- yeah, that's totally a legitimate college degree now.