Anniversaries!

First we celebrated our 2 year anniversary in May. We hadn't really celebrated our first year, so we made a fairly big deal out of the second, and went out to a lovely evening at Melting Pot. 

They were very good to us and gave us complimentary chocolate covered strawberries and champagne. We apparently failed to mention that neither of us drink. Oops!

Either way, we enjoyed the night and then went on to continue our nerdy life of playing Skyrim and Battlefield while yelling nerdy quotes across the house. No joke, this is our life, and when it isn't it is probably because someone is either at work, school, or roleplaying on skype, at which time it is not just us, but 4+ friends yelling nerdy quotes across the house. Life is good!

Then in June we celebrated 1 year with out precious Princess Leia. She continues to be a constant joy and while she has grown out of her young dog appearance, she acts more like a puppy now than she ever did before.

She talks now, and often interrupts role-play sessions with her chewbacca-esq  yodeling.  Because I am such a nerd, she now has her own blog, Life with Leia and a Facebook page too. I swear, I am not addicted... >.> If we get a smart phone for her, you should be worried.

All in all, we continue our Nerd Life and are preparing to close some chapters, such as school and Florida, and soon will be writing god knows how many new ones.  I admit, I am glad to have a partner who not only supports me in all the normal married couple endeavors, but also a partner who I can geek out about the new Pokemon games coming out.

And that's about it for now. More to come soon.

MegaCon - Where Dreams Come true.

This was our very first year at MegaCon and Oh my lord it was concentrated Awesomeness!

Friday

Friday was mainly our shopping day. We arrived around 11 right before opening, parked, road the bus over (made friends), and then got to skip the multiple hundreds of people in line thanks to being the last ones to purchase tickets for the Star Trek TNG Saturday event (during the purchase there was a massive glitch and we had to go to the badge booth with maybe 100 vendors, not the advanced admission booths with thousands in line).

So, here we are in line with Arne Starr, former DC Comic artist/inker (for Star Trek) and Marvel (Spiderman), just hanging out. It was fun! And then we were branded with our green wristband which doesn't come off. Not the most awesome part, but ok, we had to wear them.  We then waited in line with the massive herd until it was officially open. Charge!

Off to go shopping! We bought Tshirts (Tom = a cathulu with a juice box, a claptrap T and a firefly T and I [Sarah] got a Girl Gamer T and one with an xbox controller on it with hilarious explanations of the buttons), some art based on Star Wars (Storm trooper with a doughnut) Fallout (Muggy!), a Runebound Expansion (actually purchased on Saturday after pics/sigs), and finally a poster of a Map of the world from Game of Thrones. Along the way we saw Lou Ferrigno from the TV show Incredible Hulk. You can tell from the minute you see him what character he played. He is ripped and has a very square jaw.

We then sat down for a brief break, met some more awesome people, and then headed home (it took a lot longer then it sounds like, these were tough decisions!).

Saturday

When we arrived at MegaCon tons of people were walking through the parking lot. We drove behind them and herded them along. What's that you say? Why yes, we were in fact, Nerd Herders. Mwahahaha!

Saturday we had a Goal, Signatures and Pictures. The minute the crowd was released we were off to get in line to have our picture taken with Michael Hogan, who (if you don't recognize him by name) played Colonel Saul Tigh (XO) in Battlestar Galactica.  While in line we took pictures of cosplayers but it didn't take long before it was picture time! Hogan was very friendly, smiled, asked us our names, shook our hands, and then recited his famous line "So Say we all, Goddammit" right before they took our picture.  We thanked him and then moved on to waiting in line for Patrick Stuart's photo session (2 hours early and we weren't the first). We were glad we waited early however, because we were just 2 of probably over 500 people who lined up. We got the job of telling them "no, we're not the end of the line, go around the corner and it continues. "

Then it was time. We were up at the front, Patrick Stuart was smiling this soft gentle smile and welcomed us over. He put his arms around us and we smiled for the camera. For the record he was incredibly soft and cuddly, if I do say so myself.  We left practically bouncing up and down and grinning from ear to ear.

We were then off to get signatures. We walked up Michael Dorn's booth (I was proud to recognize him before Tom did, then again his character has lots of facial prognostics). Michael was very friendly and clearly a much gentler personality than his character (and more refined). We then met with Michael Hogan a second time and  had him sign our picture.  He was very sweet and funny.

Next  was lunch which we had brought from home (Tea, Chef Boyardee, and chips) and relaxed for a bit before going to a Star Trek TNG Panel featuring Gates McFadden (Doctor Crusher), Marina Sirtis(Dianna Troi), Daniel Stewart (Son of Patrick Stuart), and John DeLancie (Q).  It was HILARIOUS. They shared stories from the set, Marina's hesitance to laugh at one of Wil Wheaton's jokes which wasn't actually funny. The shared about how they didn't like working on DS9. How they got celery while other casts got croquettes, and how John DeLancie is now a voice actor for My Little Pony. It was a great panel but the best was jet to come.

The Star Trek TNG Event. The Panel featured Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard), Jonathan Frakes (Commander William T. Riker), Brent Spiner (Lt. Commander Data), Levar Burton (Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge), Gates McFadden (Dr.Beverly Crusher), Michael Dorn (Lieutenant Worf), Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi), Wil Wheaton (wesley crusher), John de Lancie (Q), and Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar). It was AWESOME. Good Q&A, Hilarious stories. One about having to crawl through dirt with cat poop in it and how Patrick then ended up laughing his butt off because he couldn't figure out how he got from refined British acting to crawling through cat poop. 

Levar and Gates did stunts: Gates a basic roll and Levar reenacted a coolant leak in engineering ending in a dive and roll. They all shared funny stories did impressions of one another. Brent does an AWESOME Picard impression. Wil Wheaton walked like Riker and shared that he was sad as a kid to be left out of the Pez collection so he changed the Riker one to look like him. One girl asked them if they would like chocolate to which Marina jumped up, ran over, picked up the chocolates and passed them out to the entire crew. 

The last Q&A was a touching line from a young man who shared about how he grew up in a single-wide living on food stamp and minimum wage and grew up watching the show. He was given a diecast model of the ship. He shared that now, some 30 years later, he still has it and is now an engineer. He thanked them for helping us reach for greater. The cast was clearly touched and they ended the show with that. 



I am sure I will add to this blog as I remember more.

And Now the Tale of Two Nerds is a Trifecta!

Well in July our Family grew by one!

We'd been looking for a while and kept finding dog after dog and it never worked out. They were always adopted within the hour of me arriving at the shelter, or transferred, or rescued and we were about ready to just accept that this wasn't the time and go back to casual searching; you know, whatever fell in our lap. I went to the shelter that day to see two dogs. When I got there, one had been adopted, the other had been taken by a rescue. My heart sank and I just casually walked through to see the other dogs.... and then I saw her.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed she and her kennel-mate (a big black and white husky) were both very personable and very happy to have visitors (the shelter worker and myself). I found out that BOTH had adoption holds but I filled out the papers on her anyhow, just hoping I might have a chance.

Dog Rescue: The Adoption Wars began. The next morning I went back to the shelter and we were in luck, the family that was going to adopt both her and her kennel-mate had decided to just take her buddy (because they heard from the shelter how excited we were about adopting her and decided she would have a good life with us. To those lovely people, thank you so much for the gift of our beautiful girl.).

We knew before we ever met her what her name would be.  If we adopted a boy it would be Han or Chewie and if it was a girl, Leia! Well, she's a girl and her name is Leia. The shelter was able to tell us that she was an owner surrender, about 1.5 years old, and that she was surrendered because her last owner/family had a medical issue and was no longer able to walk her. So they gave her up, hoping for a better life for her.

Leia now gets 30 minute walks each morning, and sometimes we run on the tennis court or go for second and even third walks.  To her original family we also thank you for allowing her to complete our family.





Leia has settled in well in her first few months. She now has a little buddy in the complex, a yorkie and get this, his name is Obi Wan! No joke!

So the Tale of Two Nerds expands to 3!

Star Trek Paintball! - Trekkie vs Trekker

In May we participated in the Trekkie vs Trekker game at The Swamp Paintball Park. This was the first 26 hour paintball game The Swamp had ever held. We decided to camp out and sleep in my car during the course of the game which ran from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.

The premise of the game is that two students at Starfleet Academy decided to see who really was the better captain, Kirk or Piccard. Unfortunately, several holodeck glitches have made this fight interesting.

I played the clerk role, which was Guinan. Needless to say there was one little problem... I'm a little- light, to play Guinan. So I blamed this on a holodeck glitch which effected my graphical rendering.

I did go in costume, as you can see, and yes, when I went on the field I did wear that (talk about a walking target!).

I was lucky in that my character could simply demand that the generals and their representatives come to me, so for a portion of the game I simply remained off field and entertained myself by building castles and Vulcan embassy out of credits.

 Castles of Credits!

Tom portrayed Sarek, the father of Spock. Due to getting a job, he wasn't able to get a costume in time, but team Wolfenkow, his group of assassins, made him match them by spray painting his hair bright pink.

He and his crew quickly became infamous on the field as they constantly switched sides based on who was currently paying them (more credits).

They bought several special roles so that their almost entire team was outfitted with medics, technicians, pilots, and demo experts. Suddenly what was supposed to be a group of hired guns became a powerful giant.

  

Tom with Wolfenkow, the team of deadly assassins.

Our last adventure as role-players.
I (Dale Arden) wore a red formal gown and robe,
Tom (Dick Tracey) wore a dress shirt, slacks, a tie
a trench coat, and a hat.
Here we are with Spiderman and a gunslinger girl.

It turned out, that aside from the game directors,  I was the only one in costume. Most of the other role-players were just in their gear.

I felt that since I got free admission to the game, I owed the park owners and the people running the game and in the past when I was a role player both Tom and I dressed up (and so did every other role player, but it was at a different park.)

The game was well run, and we had a great time (despite my car being exactly one foot too short for us to sleep comfortably in).

The weekend at The Swamp was full of good firefights, great friends and did I mention that when they serve dinner, for $7 you can have homemade fried chicken, "Gator" burgers, hotdogs, potato salad, baked beans and oh man is it all good (That was one of the best tasting and best priced meals we have ever had at a field. When I asked about it, the field owner said "I feed my players!" I like his style!).

Needless to say we had a great time and The Swamp did a great job putting on their first 26 hour game. 

We can't wait to get back out there for one of the next ones!

Part of Final battle at the park!

Happy Birthday Honey! - The N7 Cake!

So, since it is May it is the month of anniversaries and birthdays. 

For Tom's Birthday I decided to make a nerdy birthday cake for him.

Now, this is nothing new to me. I've made several nerdy cakes in the past (some looked better than others) such as:

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• The "V for Vendetta" cake that I made with a team for a college cake decorating contest. 

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•  The "Star Trek Badge" cake for a friend's birthday.

 

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•  and the "Death Star" Cake for one of Tom's earlier birthdays

All of the past cakes were good for when I made them, The Death Star was one I was particularly proud of at the time, but now my skills have grown up a little more, and thanks to quite a bit of practice and several Food Network program I felt ready to try something new.

So, I decided  I'd make a cake that represented one of Tom's favorite video games: Mass Effect. 

My goal was to make a two tier french vanilla cherry N7 cake (which I will now walk you through).

N7 Cake

1. First, I bought two boxes Betty Crocker French Vanilla cake and made them in a 13x9 cake pan  as the box directed (That's right, I cheat and don't make cakes from scratch, sorry honey!).
   
   One helpful hint: Get Pam Baking spray, not just regular Pam. Pam Baking spay has a bit of flour in it which made it super, super easy (After waiting 5 minutes to let them cook a little) to get the cakes out of the pan.
   
   

   

   Bottom tier trimmed and dirty iced, scraps on right,
   second tier trimmed and cooling

2. I put the bottom tier on a cardboard base (Which you can get at almost any grocery store's bakery for a few dollars. Kroger sold me a plastic cake box and a cardboard base for $3.) trimmed it down and "dirty iced" it.
   
   (I took a sharp serrated kitchen knife and leveled the cake, you can see the scraps in a bowl on the right, don't toss them, I'll tell you why later so check out the very bottom of this post.)
   
   Dirty icing doesn't have to be perfect, there can be crumbs in it. Just smack some icing on there.
   
   An additional hint, when leveling the bottom tier of a cake you intend to fill, dip the center a little bit to make a shallow bowl for the filling. I only dip the cake about 1/4th of an inch but it makes a difference.



Bottom tier filled, top tier leveled

3. I trimmed the second tier and let it continue to cool
4. I put the cherry filling on the bottom layer and spread them evenly, leaving a small boarder  around the sides so the filling wouldn't squish out.

   

   Bottom tier filled, second tier iced on the trimmed side

5. I dirty Iced the second tier on what would become the bottom (which was the leveled side of the cake. That way you have a nice smooth surface for the top of the cake {which was originally the bottom of the sheet cake}).
6. This step is a bit difficult. It's time to flip the top tier, icing down, onto the bottom tier.
   
   I used the cake box, flattened, to slide under the top tier and very carefully and quickly flipped it onto the bottom tier, adjusting it as needed.
   
   For this step I have but one thing to say, GOOD LUCK!
   
   

   

   Top tier miraculously flipped onto the bottom tier, Thank God!

7. Next, ice the top tier so that all exposed parts of the cake have a thin layer of icing.
8. Next put a small amount of powdered sugar on the counter to prevent the fondant from sticking. Heat the fondant in the microwave for 5 to 10 seconds. It should NOT be warm, It just softens it a tiny bit.
   Roll out the fondant into a wide rectangle. You may have to put more powdered sugar on the counter or the rolling pin to prevent sticking. To put it on the cake, roll the fondant around the pin, then over the cake like a sheet over a bed. Smooth it down and trim the edges.
9. I then rolled out the white and trimmed it into the letter "N" and a "7" using a sharp knife and straight edge (I used a piece of paper but a ruler will work just as well). I used the right side of the "7"  to trace the line on the red "triangle" so it would mirror the slant of the 7 as it does on the true emblem.
10. Using a small bit of the white icing on the back side of the N, 7, and triangle, I secured the pattern to the cake (much like using glue for craft paper, a little bit goes a long way)
11. The final touch ups include smoothing edges of the numbers and using a paper towel with the smallest amount of water on it, to clean away any excess powdered sugar. (The cleaning step can also be done before step 10 so you have a clean surface).

The final product, which was then put in the cake saver
shown in the upper left hand corner.

And that's how it's done. The cake is not a lie and now you can make one too!

As to the cake scraps, crumble them up with a fork, add a lump of icing, mix with the fork and then roll into balls and refrigerate. Honestly, they're great.

Some Nerdy Hanukkah Fun

I know it doesn't start until the 20th, but still, you have to love it.

Two Nerds do Christmas

Well it is that time of the year again; Christmas. Lights, trees, candy canes and... a nerdy flare!

Our first Christmas in Florida we found ourselves in need of a tree. While live trees may smell nice, we have candles for that, and decided to go the route of artificial. At Walmart we looked at some pre lit Christmas trees and others which had no lights. but the one we settled on was a 32 inch fiber optic, for a whopping.... $12.88! It glows through the colors of the rainbow and is just the right size for our apartment.

Over the past 2 years we have collected a myriad of ornaments, most of which are from some of our favorite movies (I apologize for picture quality...)


(Blog continued bellow initial pictures)

Star Wars

 

Indiana Jones

Other more "traditional" ornaments

Well, as with any Christmas, there has to be a little drama right? Well... one of our Star Wars ornament's has raised some eyebrows. If you've been watching Star Wars since the very original movies you might remember  George Lucas's decision to change the scene in the cantina where Han and Greedo have the conversation about Jabba's money.  Originally, Han didn't wait for Greedo to fire a weapon. Being a bit of a rogue, he shot him first to save his skin. 

Well, Lucas changed that in later versions of the movie while adding in extra scenes and tweaking the graphics. In the new version, Greedo takes a shot (and presumably he is a terrible shot despite being a seemingly seasoned bounty hunter) and then Han shoots him.

When we first posted a picture of the ornament, and mentioned it talked through the scene, the question immediately came up, "does Han shoot first?" Admittedly, while we had listened to the ornament before, we hadn't really listened to it, so we checked it out to be sure, and then proudly posted that this lovely ornament followed cannon and Han, did in fact, shoot first. 

 I look forward to doing a follow up post later about who gets added to the tree this year. If you enjoyed the start of our Christmas tree (yes start, we intend to continue to nerd it up) You should also check out this article and see the trees some of our fellow nerds came up with. rather amusing: Geeky Christmas Trees [Pics]