dr4b | dancing on the table, Mabel

Yay! Thanks to

elletweedy, we now have a kitchen table. It is pretty cool, it's a nice octagonal table that has an extension thingy you can put onto it to seat a bunch of people. Thanks, Laura!

I thought it would be really funny to get a big red tablecloth for it (since it's an octagon and all, like a stop sign) and get white trivits shaped like letters. Except instead of spelling out "STOP" in the middle, it'd be backwards and spell out "POTS".

Anyway, Laura came over and we played DDR for a bit. Although Laura probably thinks she sucked at it, I was really happy anyway because we cleared enough songs to get two more hidden songs, "DXY!" and "Radical Faith", both of which are very cool songs music-wise, but which have sort of nonoptimal dance patterns.

I've just gone off into a weird meta-brain mode where I have all of these weird, vaguely connected thoughts about female geekiness. Like, there are very few women I meet and immediately think "ah, this woman is a fellow geek like myself." I think a lot of the times I think, "ah, this woman hangs out with geeks, but must be their bridge to reality by being an art or humanities person." Of course, what's sad is that my degree is technically in the humanities (though I have that 1337 minor in CS that should have been a major if I wasn't such a wuss). So I'm a big ol' hypocrite. Hmm. Of course, I think that I, and other female geeks, do sometimes have this whole "I am so cool because I am a girl geek, and most girls are stupid, so they are so uncool compared to me." mental image thing. So there's a bit of edginess in meeting other female geeks.

For example, in almost every RPG group I've been in, I've been the only female player. I'm used to that and I sort of like it, being the token female. (This is why I think Knights of the Dinner Table is so damned cool, because I *am* Sara in so many ways except the hair.) I'm not sure why, but when there's another female player, we both get sort of edgy. This happened with Joy and me last year in Tal's campaign, and I bet if Alisa and I were actually in the same Ragnarok group it would happen again. Although, when I was in high school, my favorite DM was this girl who ran an awesome campaign wherein we were all apprentice researchers for an insane wizard. It was really puzzle-brainteaser oriented, rather than combat-oriented. That was cool.

Reading this, I'm thinking "I'm the psychotic one who gets edgy and the other person has to deal with it, right?" which probably seems pretty accurate to anyone reading it who's known me more than a few years (since I *think* I have mellowed out a little bit in the past year or three about this sort of thing). Like, I almost feel guilty about going off on people like Barbara and Laurel, a few years ago, now. But back then I was just lashing out in my sadness over feeling old and unwanted. Since then, I've just realized: freshmen women are *always* going to be more attractive than you are. Deal with it.

Though, I can think of one particular person who I honestly think deserved every word I said to her. Anyone who reads graffiti bboards at CMU will know who I mean, and anyone who doesn't, doesn't need to know.

Since I have Eli, and he is wonderful, I guess that brings up another thing: I no longer feel a need to be competitive with other women. (Did I mention that yesterday was our one-year anniversary?) I think that was a big part of my bitchiness in earlier years, especially my junior year at CMU when I was in several bad flings and relationships and was not dealing well with feeling like a failure after failing my first class ever. It felt like there were so many other cool, wonderful perky smart women around that it was hard to feel like someone unique, special, and cool. But in retrospect what I should have done, and what I've tried to do since, is become better friends with those cool perky smart women, because having no female friends also sucks, especially when you need to go clothes shopping and stuff. (Even though I've been sort of unlucky every time I've gone shopping with Laura and Lori, I've still majorly enjoyed the trips!)

I keep getting mentally sidetracked as I write this, thinking about random crap. And Eli has finally hooked up all of his keyboards, so I want to go play music in a bit. But at any rate... hmm, I guess most normal people wouldn't share this much on LJ. Then again, I don't know if I'm normal. And maybe this will serve as an apology to some people, that they know I feel awful for how I've been, and that I do want to be better, and that I think I am getting better. I guess I'll LJ cut this or something.

I blame

alternatkittyn for this (not in a bad way!) because we had a convo on AIM tonight that was interesting. She's working on a web site that's for reviews, comics and other stuff from geeky females. Therefore I began this entire mental tangent of, "Geeky females? What an odd group we are..."

So there you have it. I've pretty much wasted the evening now, which is a shame, but I guess sometimes it's nice to just veg out and think about crap. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the rest of my weekend (I want to play board games, but I'd settle for shopping. Heh.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Usually it's my insanity that causes people to rant. However, I just thought I'd drop a comment. I feel your pain. My take on it is a little different. People assume I know nothing. People assume I'm some cute little girl who has no clue what she's doing when it comes to technology. It takes me whipping out all my electronic accoutrements and discussing the advantages of Sophitia over Xianghoa to make them say, "hey... something's not quite right here". Sure, I can use eyeliner, but I also code HTML for a good two to three hours a day. The world's not going to change because I get pissered off about it. No one's going to stop judging me on the way I look and just assume I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground (thanks mom!). I just thought I'd share that, all geek girls go through their own "being a female in a man's world" issues. And let's not even start with fanboys... *sighs* "No! Stop humping my damn leg!" However, it seems that, luckily for us, though I've never met Eli (I don't think) and I don't know you all that well (though I truly hope to get to know you better when I get to Pittsburgh), we've found people who love us and appreciate our geekiness. I love that I can call up Isaac and discuss ASP with him and he doesn't talk down to me. We just chat like geeks. Then he laughs and tells me how great it is that we can talk like that. People wonder why we're together, why we're happy together... it's those moments where it's all just perfect. Where you're like, "hey! for once, I found a guy who understands me and is cool with the fact that I can kick his arse at certain fighting games!" He claims I'll be able to beat him at DDR now. We'll just see about that...
Now I'm ranting! =^.^= Although, to be fair, I tend to rant quite a bit in LJ. It seems to lend itself well to that for me. However, I need to go print out those CMU job descriptions before I start on some real work.

Hmm, interesting (both of you). I've always been kind of a geek (knowledge/attitude/interests more than toys, though), but I was never in the situation of having it be masked by something else. Let's face it; I have never been physically attractive. Let's just say I've never had the problem of guys ignoring my brains while ogling my body. :-) So I also never had any incentive to hide it; my (CMU) graduating class voted me "most likely to be found in the computer room" or some such and that was fine with me. And it has helped the folks who can't deal with geeks (or female geeks) self-select away from me.

So now I have a geek husband, coworkers who are happy to have me wrestle over design issues with them, and rabbis who encourage an analytic approach to problems. And no one expects me to wear makeup or high heels. I'm happy.

ack! LJ gets replies all out of order!

yeah, I guess I've sort of felt the "hmm, I'm not attractive, so people assume I must be smart" thing too... but, to put it in D&D terms, Charisma isn't all about looks (:

and most of the time, i've felt like i'd rather be smart than pretty. because if I really wanted to, I could diet, wear makeup, get a cute hairstyle, and wear trendy clothes, and still be smart. I've just not had the time, desire, or energy to do so...

Hey, there's nothing wrong with your looks.

I'd rather be smart than pretty, too. If "pretty" came easily and didn't cost any "smart" (or health or pain) I'd certainly take it, but I'm not going to fret about it. I'm not really down on myself here; I'm happy with most aspects of my life, after all. And developer admiration is much more fun than cat-calls would be, anyway. :-)

I am finally at the point in my life (and have been for a few years) that I am *happy* I was more smart than pretty. it was fairly easy to weed out the guys that wanted to get in my pants instead of into my head :) not that there have been terribly many....oh well *shrug*

I do find, sometimes, that guys will assume I don't know as much about the prroduct as they do. although the new people learn that pretty quickly and they come to me for answers.

my boyfriend frequently addresses me as 'hey gorgeous', which just completely baffles me.

Yeah, I have that too. At my job, since I'm a "technical writer", a lot of new people assume that means I'm just some english major or something. Then I go in and start telling them about the code samples I've written and put up, and ask about what they're working on and actually know what the hell they're talking about, and then their tone changes... this even happened with one particular guy at my current company, who was reluctant to talk to me when I said "Hey, I'm just here to talk to you since you're a new user and I want to tell you about documentation and crap," and after I did a long spiel about the current state of our API and answered all of his questions about the code pretty well, was like "Do you have a background in engineering or something?" and when I replied "Yeah, I was a computer science major at CMU for three years," suddenly he was like "Oh. Hmm. Cool."

and hey, you're ahead of me - I don't know how to use eyeliner!

yeah, having read your LJ i noticed that you post a lot when you're angry or ranting about isaac or other stuff. on the other hand, i mentally filled it in with "but whenever she's not ranting, they're obviously really happy together!" heh. it's so easy to just lose yourself in thoughts and put them online...

Somewhere there's Dancing Queen playing... kinda creepy.
About the Isaac: Yes, there are a ton of rants from this summer. I have issues dealing with my family, which makes me coming back here one of the dumbest things I've ever done. I would use up all my patience dealing with them, come to him for solace, and then he'd do something that drove me crazy because I'd have no patience to put up with his natural Isaacness.

In general, however, as anyone who knows me will tell you, up until about age 18, I did rely completely on my brain. Let's just say I had to grow accustomed to my body. I was tall, lanky, flat-chested, your stereotypical nerd. People didn't take me seriously then either. I was Sarah Plain and Tall. I come back from my freshman year of college and everyone stands, mouths hanging open. They can't believe what I'd become in one year. I became the woman you see today. I don't know... right now I'm in this huge mess of thoughts on what appearance and sexual openness has to do with the way people react to you. I don't know. So very very confused as to what my point was. Work zaps all rational thoughts.

dancing on the table, Mabel

me? inspiring people to rant? never...

Re: me? inspiring people to rant? never...

Re: me? inspiring people to rant? never...

Re: me? inspiring people to rant? never...

Re: me? inspiring people to rant? never...

Re: me? inspiring people to rant? never...

Re: me? inspiring people to rant? never...