The Second Nerdiest Thing I've Ever Done

I've spent the last month or so obsessively reading the MarkReads reviews of Twilight, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings, as well as the MarkWatches reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So when Mark announced that his first ever tour, "Intensity in Ten Cities", would include a stop in Boston, i naturally RSVP'd on Facebook immediately.

None of my friends were available to go with me (translation: no one else wanted to spend three hours at a table of strangers just to talk to a relatively obscure blogger and a bunch of MMRPG-playing basement-dwellers about Harry Potter), so i decided to go alone. At the last minute, interest was so great that Mark reserved a room in a Hilton near the original location.

I walked in the rain to the train station, rode into Boston, walked in the rain to the hotel, and sat in a room full of strangers for three hours while we talked about Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of the Rings, and similarly nerdy topics. We also read aloud from terrible novels (like Knight Moves, a time-traveling erotic novel that has only seen the light of day because the author owns the publishing company), and acted out particularly-poorly written action scenes in very bad Harry Potter fanfic ("Harry pulled Draco away from Ginny as Hermione pulled Ginny away from each other.")

Afterwards, a sub-group went to a vegetarian/vegan diner, where i ate my first meatless burger (chickpea and mushroom) and vegan ice cream (coconut-based vanilla). It was all delicious, although there is simply no good substitute for ground beef. Shut up, turkey burger. There were fourteen women and Mark, all sitting around one table. At one point, M and i wanted to discuss an upcoming event in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but since Mark is currently watching that series and has a VERY strict no-spoilers policy, we couldn't talk about it. So we settled for acting out an elaborate pantomime of the upcoming events and our feelings about them. As i sat across the table from M, using my hands and facial expressions to tell her how excited i was to see Mark freak out about THAT ONE THING, it struck me that i had never been in a position quite like that one before.

In fact, the only time i have ever done anything nerdier than i did that night was October of 2001. The first Harry Potter movie came out that November, so while people were aware of the characters, they weren't yet instantly recognizable. This did not deter my siblings, Agelseb, and i from making our own Harry Potter costumes. One of my sisters wore a Sorting Hat costume made of (clean) garbage bags and paint, and i dressed as Hermione, even carrying a massive copy of Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible for added realism. So, yeah.