Jezebel put up an interesting post last night about nerds, and what is and isn’t a nerd, et cetera and so forth. I didn’t comment then – I’ve found myself commenting less and less on blogs lately, not that that has anything to do with this – but after ruminating on it last night, I commented on it this morning.

And now I’m posting about it. Because that’s how I roll.

The post and the comments are all about how popular culture examples of female nerds aren’t actually nerds, and something about that bugged me. Rachel Berry from Glee isn’t a nerd. Tracy Flick from Election isn’t a nerd. Willow Rosenberg from Buffy isn’t a “reliable” nerd. And if you ask what a nerd is, you get a fairly stringent list of characteristics, and no list is the same.

That’s the problem with reclaiming a term that’s used as a taunt in adolescence. Each of us who were called nerds or geeks or freaks in junior high and high school have our own experiences and therefore our own mental definitions of what qualifies. I’ll use myself as an example.

I wrote research papers for fun. I had my head in a book anytime I could get away with it. I was the know-it-all who permanently had her hand up in history and English. I was in choir. I was in drama. I was in speech. I was in academic bowl. I spent lunch hiding in the bathroom or the music room.

I’m pretty sure that makes me a nerd.

I didn’t like science fiction and fantasy. I had never seen anime before I went to college. I didn’t pick up a comic book until I was twenty. I never played Dungeons and Dragons. I didn’t like video games. I read romance novels and Seventeen.

According to a lot of definitions of nerd-dom, that makes me very much not a nerd.

I try not to define myself anymore, and it’s easier that way. It means that I can love Chuck and Glee, but find Lost ridiculous. I can love going shopping for both shiny patent shoes and handheld electronic gadgets. I can pick either Sephora or Midtown Comics for my lunch break.  I can write fanfiction and read Elle.  I don’t have to fit in a box. Life is more fun when you don’t try to force yourself into a box, let alone the box you lived in in high school.

Personally, I prefer to live without stringent definitions. I’d rather just be me.

1. You need a surprising amount of stuff for a minimalist tradition
2. If I ever have any hope of creating a zen corner in my apartment, I need to get rid of some of my crap.

Since I’m currently living in somewhat reduced circumstances, I’ve started on the latter, and so far this morning I’ve pitched a cardboard cat house, two bags of trash, and one bag of recycling.  Later, when I’m dressed and can brave the freaking cold again, I’ll take out more stuff.

I’ve also been brainstorming how to create an altar without spending a whole lot of money.  I already figure that one of my pashmina scarves (purchased for $5 on a corner) will work for a cloth.  I may be able to use one of my many bowls as an incense bowl, but the purchase of incense, incense ash, a Buddha, and a candle will have to be purchased, but shouldn’t be too expensive.

The only other problem is where to put all of this…

They didn’t, so I called back.

USPS employee: The ticket is still in process, which means they’re still looking into it.  If you don’t hear by tomorrow, call us back and we’ll start another ticket.

Me: *doesn’t understand how starting a new ticket helps anything, but knows that arguing with a customer service rep with a crappy government agency is an exercise in futility* Oh, ok.  Could you tell me who my delivery office is, so I can follow up with them?

USPS employee: Certainly.  *pause* Your local office is Pompano Beach, on Atlantic Boulevard.

Me: Uh, okay.  Thanks.

Pompano Beach, I think; that doesn’t sound right.  It sounds kind of tropical.  But it is New Jersey, there are beaches, we are on the water – I guess its possible.  So I check the list of local post offices.  No matches.  Check for post offices on Atlantic Boulevard.  No matches.  Hmm, I think.  I google Pompano Beach.

Pompano Beach, people, is in FLORIDA.  As has already been established, I live in New Jersey.

So I call back, and use their office locator to figure out my delivery office (the real one, which is the Bergen South branch on Martin Luther King in Jersey City) and call them.  They’ll deliver my mail tomorrow.

To Jersey City, not Pompano Beach.

We spent Christmas this year at my brother’s country house outside Grand Rapids, Michigan and on the day after Christmas we went to Holland to browse the tourist trap stores.  Holland is pretty much like any other tourist trap across the country; they sell Michigan-specific crap, Stonewall Kitchen mixes, and many candles.  We spent most of the time in one store, where the furniture was made out of fake driftwood, the fabrics all depicted moose and bears, and the scent was relentlessly piney.  There was nothing in there I found even slightly interesting, but everyone else seemed compelled.

I finally escaped the store when the pine candle smell got to be too much for me.

I’m sure the love of the look comes from our family vacations in the Boundary Waters, and since the most I remember getting out of them is muddy and miserable, it’s not surprising that I’m very much into it.  Just surprised that everyone else seems to be, I guess.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before
I visited continental Europe.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I resolved to exercise more, and I did! Until about July.  Not going to bother renewing the gym membership.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Also no.

5. What countries did you visit?
United Kingdom and Portugal

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

I’d like to be a little more comfortable financially than I am right now.

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory and why?
January 4, 2008, when I left the hell that was my previous job.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting a new job and leaving the really bad situation at the old one.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I’m not sure.  I had lots of little failures and little stresses, but nothing huge.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, not this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My MacBook.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Mine, especially in this last month, and Amy’s, due to the shit she had to put up with.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Personally? I can’t think of anyone.  Politically? Sarah Palin, Rod Blagojovich and Eliot Spitzer.

14. Where did most of your money go?
My MacBook, romance novels, and shoes.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Presidential Election.  I used to be a big political junkie, but it had depressed me for the last several years.  Now I’m excited again.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Carmelldansen.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Much happier.

ii. thinner or fatter?
Maybe a little thinner.  But about the same.

iii. richer or poorer?
Poorer, unfortunately, despite the fact that I now make more money.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinating.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
In Michigan with the family.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
No.

23. How many one night stands?
That would be….0.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?
“Chuck” and “30 Rock”

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Not really.  But there are some who started to annoy the crap out of me.

26. What was the best book you read?
“Acheron”

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Sleater-Kinney.  Yes, I know I’m about ten years late to that party.

28. What did you want and get?
A new job.

29. What did you want and not get?
I can’t think of anything, actually.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
I didn’t go to many movies this year, so I’ll have to go with one of the two I did see: Definitely, Maybe.  It was silly, but didn’t try to be more than it was.  I want to see Rachel Getting Married before the end of the year though, and I suspect I’ll love it.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I went to work, and I remember it as a really awful day for the most part where I was almost in tears for a long time.  But they did buy me a cake at the office, and I was 28.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Telling my former boss where she could shove her attitude.  Didn’t, but man.  I would have enjoyed it.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2003?
In 2003? Jeans and tees and sweatshirts.  I was in grad school.  In 2008? Comfortable professional, with a bohemian twist.

34. What kept you sane?
Daydreaming.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Rahm Emanuel.  Shut up.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The presidential election.

37. Who did you miss?
My family and my friends.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Some (but not all) of the people at my new job.  The New York Jezebelles

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Never let them see you crack.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

For instance, I was watching the first India episode of The Amazing Race Season 5 earlier this evening with Mura, and she was pointing out the horridness of the train in Mumbai, and I said “Actually, that’s about what the 4 is like in the morning.  Except we don’t have people hanging out the doors.  The MTA frowns on that.”

The Metro-North was much easier.

Tomorrow at lunch I need to go Christmas shopping.  I keep meaning to do so after work, but after work I just want to go home.  So I do.  And no shopping gets done.  I need Christmas cards.  And presents for people.  And I want to get it over with as soon as possible.

It’s 1:56 am now.  I think I’m going to call it a night.  The shuffle should hopefully be charged enough now to get me to 42nd Street tomorrow morning.

Nevermind the last balanced budget was under Bill Clinton’s administration, and the national debt first went out of control in the Reagan years.

My brother is an accountant, and he probably voted Republican too.  My sister is apathetic and didn’t vote at all.  My uncle, Dad’s brother, also voted Republican and has nothing but snide comments for people who work off the “taxpayer’s back” like my parents, who have spent their lives working for pennies in the public education system.  It should be noted that Uncle Don works for a company that gets the majority of its income from government contracts.

(This isn’t the same, apparently.  He’s performing a service. Unlike teachers, who are after all only educating future generations.)

Mom said to me this morning that my parents and I are probably the only liberals in the family, she didn’t understand what was wrong with people, and then we hung up.  I had to do laundry.

I called her back 20 minutes later, after I arrived at the laundromat and put my laundry in to let her know that here, in a working class neighborhood in godless liberal New Jersey, we were watching Obama’s acceptance speech again.

It made her feel a little better.

I mean, I hate chopping onions with every fiber of my being, but I’m not going pay $4 a pound for pre-chopped onions.  And $5? For dried pasta? Are they serious?  $8 a pound for ground beef?  I haven’t had so much sticker shock in a grocery store since I initially moved to the east coast.

All in all, even though commuting sucks, it made me glad that I choose to live in the suburbs.  Jersey City is less exciting than New York to be sure, but my rent is much lower and my grocery bill at Shop Rite is a lot smaller than it would be if I had to shop at Whole Foods instead.

I’ll be making bolognese sauce today.  If I’d gotten the ingredients at Whole Foods, I would have spent enough that I might as well have just gone out and ordered spaghetti bolognese at a restaurant.

I’m on vacation right now, and after spending this past weekend down in D.C. doing all the tourist crap and eating my way through Penn Quarter, I’m home again finishing with the redocorating, such as it is.  I hung almost all my pictures today, set up my internet after shrieking at Verizon for the better part of a month, and made dinner.  Tomorrow is laundry, hanging the last picture, and making a list of things I need to buy for additional storage.  Thursday is a shopping spree for said storage items, a fun trip to the vet with Dom, and putting all the stuff together and getting rid of all the damn boxes.  Friday is a hair cut.

Then Monday it’s back to work.  Yippee.

Good times.

In other news, I still don’t have phone or internet in my new apartment. I’ve been going to bed early a lot.