Nerd Trifecta

We had a list of errands to run that amount to us being the biggest nerd family there is. I referred to these three items as a Trinity of Getting One's Nerd On. Our To-Do List this afternoon included:

• Go to the comic shop for Pokémon cards promised to Aleks last week in a tense negotiation for alone time with adults (yes, that basically amounts to a bribe, but we were going to do it anyway after the place had been recommended to us, so, it was less a bribe and more a bargain. Okay, it was a bribe. Sue me.). Playing this game is what little nerds do before they grow into big nerds who play Magic the Gathering or whathaveyou.


• Buy crickets for our leopard gecko, Esteban. Owning lizards that eat bugs is totally nerdy. Naming your gecko after a character from a Wes Anderson movie probably makes it worse.


• Buy tickets for next Thursday/Friday's midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. It wasn't until I developed a Harry Potter obsession that I even became an official nerd, so it goes without saying that Harry Potter is nerdy. Buying tickets for a midnight showing of anything is also likely to land one in the category of Huge Geek/Dweeb/Dork/Nerd, depending on your favored descriptor. Buying the tickets a week in advance could also imply that we are over-eager nerds and need the time between now and then to "totally geek out." This will be Aleks' first time attending a midnight showing, so I think his path to Nerdom is nearly complete. We will additionally be in costume. That really puts the nail in the coffin there.

First, the comic book store. It turns out they don't sell individual Pokémon cards, so we ended up purchasing a complete pack instead. We were informed incorrectly. Aleks had wanted to get a bunch of energy cards too, so that doesn't work out so well. It felt like kind of a big moment for me. Like this made it super official that we like nerdy things. There were a bunch of nerdy teenagers in the place buying Magic cards and being socially awkward. The guy behind the register though was a cool older dude who reminded me of Paul Rudd or Brad Neely. Both nerds.
Aleks has been wearing this suit jacket lately as he thinks it makes him look like Artemis Fowl. I wouldn't know because we were listening to the first book in the car, but Aleks took the iPod and zoomed through the next three-quarters of the book as well as the next five books. I'm left in the dust to get the hard copies from the library and read on my own, slow time. The sunglasses also add to his looking cool.
I ran in for the crickets on my own. The dang things have gotten expensive. The price went up and the number of crickets per bag went down. I also noticed today that they stopped separating the different sized crickets so I'm paying more for a mix of big and small crickets rather than just big crickets. This may explain why Esteban is hungry all the time now.

Then it was off to the theater to get our tickets. We are very excited. I decided to not take Bastian to the midnight movie because there will be too many people. I'll likely take him to a matinee during the weekend instead so he can still see it and not be too upset. Plus our one friend who I always go to the midnight movies with is unable to go that night, so she may go with Bastian and I.

To wind down from our afternoon of nerdiness, we went to the park. I chatted with a friend on the phone while the boys and the neighborhood children all played some crazy train wreck game on the big slide. Then both boys rolled down the hill over and over again for about a half hour.

It got dark and was time to go home to dinner. Bastian asked what was in the sky, waving and pointing.
Turns out it was just the moon, but he found it particularly exciting for some reason. He does know what the moon is, so I'm not sure what was so puzzling about it.
Someone's headlights in the parking lot illuminated Aleks in a spooky way.
Coventry was busy with rush hour traffic.
At bedtime, Bastian and I played our own version of dominoes. He demonstrated excellent counting and color-identifying skills and was completely thrilled at our game. He also won by running out of tiles first, though we did not divide them evenly at all and merely took turns. I don't think this is actually how you're supposed to play dominoes, but the directions were really unclear.

He thought this particular grouping of tiles looked exactly like a sea monster. I'm not certain why, though it may be in reference to sea monsters we've made before, like the one Aleks put on Papa's Father's Day gift wrap.
For bed, I read him half of our Beginner Books collection and drank tea. He fell asleep during Green Eggs and Ham while Aleks built with Lego and listened to Eoin Colfer's Airman on the iPod.