Sunday, July 25, 2010

The Weekend Report: My Inner Nerdiness

Every so often I'm surprised by my own nerdiness. And for some reason, it emerged in full force this weekend. 

Case in point: On Thursday night I got tickets to see a one-man show of Lord of the Rings.

Just so you know, I LOVE Lord of the Rings. I first read the books in junior high, and by now the trilogy is up there with Going Solo as my most read ever books.

So I was getting pretty excited about this LOTR show situation. I didn't really know what to expect, but I've had good 1-person show experiences before, and it got good reviews, so I was excited. 

My words really can't do the show justice - if you ever get the opportunity to see it, please do so! It was super-fast paced...even with my extensive LOTR experience there were parts I didn't quite follow. If you go to see one of these shows (the guy also does a Star Wars Trilogy show - something I am decidedly not nerdy about). But I really did laugh hysterically for the whole 70 minutes. (You can watch some of it online here.)

After the movies came out, LOTR went mainstream and many people became fans, which is great. But I loved LOTR long before then. How am I a huge LOTR nerd? Oh let me count the ways...

  1. I know the lingo. For example, me: Oh well yeah, that's the part where the Fellowship leaves the forest of Lothlorien and enters the realm of Gondor! Oh...wow...I just said that...
  2. My ipod's name is Pippen.
  3. If I could have a crush on a fictional character it would be Aragorn - not the movie version, but the one in my mind. He's a bad-ass mountain man, and I appreciate that in a person. (And I wonder why I'm single...) Or Legolas. I love all elves! they're so happy and their presence is so comforting! (And again, kinda embarrassed to type this...)
  4. I've read the books multiple times (maybe 5?). And The Hobbit of course. But here's the ultimate-nerd part...I've also read The Silmarillian...which is pretty much like reading the Bible. And I've read The Children of Hurin, which is elf lore. Yep.
  5. I know things like Gimli hates horses, Legolas dances on snow, Treebeard is the youngest and most progressive of the Ents...

So there's that...to all of you people who love Harry Potter, not to be a Harry-hater, but please read LOTR. You will be blown away by the extreme awesomeness. 

AND THEN by pure and perfect coincidence, LOTR was on TV Friday and Sunday nights. Done done and done. Those movies are long, and totally worth it!

But my LOTR obsession is not the end of it - remember, this was a whole weekend of nerdiness. 

I met up with my team for a long run on Saturday. We started from the Roosevelt Island parking lot in Arlington and ran out-and-back to Fletcher's Boathouse along the Canal (that was the first 6 miles).

By the time we returned to Roosevelt Island (my new favortie place to run! Each lap around the island is 1.5 miles) we had exhausted the usual runner talk of What are you training for? When did you start running? When did you join the team? etc. We then spent two lap talking about the possible outcomes of the upcoming Senate elections (which just makes us Politico nerds - not too rare around here).

The next two laps (miles 9 through 12) we talked about Russian literature. The pros and cons of Tolstoy v. Dostoyevsky v. Solzhenitsyn. So upped the anti in the nerdiness department.

Saturday afternoon I braved the heat and trekked to the Corcoran Museum's free summer Saturdays. There's a pretty awesome Chuck Close exhibit going on until September 12. I consider that more "cultured" than nerdy though...nerdy would be if I made the effort to thoroughly understand the intricacies of print-making. I think I'll leave that one to the artists and maintain my status as an appreciator. 

In other (non-nerdy) news, I returned to Bangkok Joes. This time I went with green curry, which was good but super rich (I hope I wasn't eating pure curry-flavored cream...but I may have been). The crab cakes appetizer is good, but for $10 you only get two very small crab cakes, so heads up on that. 

I also returned to Fro-Zen-Yo, which was everything I remembered (and better?). Cappuccino, Peanut Butter, Red Velvet, and Peach frozen yogurt (don't worry, I didn't mix them) topped with fresh raspberries, cake crumbles, slivered almonds, and chocolate sauce. Aka exactly what I need on a hot DC day! The only drawback is that Fro-Zen-Yo doesn't have seating and it was way too hot to sit outside. So 6x6 and I literally ran with our fast-melting fro-yo to Starbucks to take advantage of their overly air conditioned coffee-scented heaven. 

So there you have it - I'm nerdy. And proud. Hope you had a good weekend too!