Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

The boyfriend and I call each other the above terms pretty regularly. Come to think of it, I seem to be involved pretty regularly with people who use—and situations that involve—one or more of the words nerd, geek, and dork.

Thanks to the Nerd? Geek? and Dork? Test, I can now definitely calculate out the mix of my being.

I know there are various ways to differentiate the three, but in the generalist of terms, here are my understandings:

• nerd—loves the book learning and the being a smarty at large
• geek—really, really good at and into something that’s on the fringe of everyone else’s consciousness
• dork—clumsily unable to act according to the rules set by society

So what am I?

Modern, Cool Nerd
83% Nerd, 70% Geek, 35% Dork

Why thanks, Test! I couldn’t have hoped for a better result.

The write-up:

Nerds didn’t use to be cool, but in the 90′s that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn’t quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and “geek is chic.” The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgeable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

A’yup, that’s pretty much me. :) What are you?

Tags: Life by Ms. SP
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I think almost every girl who reads Little Women by Louisa May Alcott identifies with Jo. She certainly helped me develop my confidence as a young tomboy whose only lovely feature was her hair.

Little Women was the first book I ever bought with my own money. This book was mine, and the first addition to what was surely to be the magnificent library in my future.

I recently read a review of this book at Page Turners, and it brought all these memories back to me.

I remembered that for years, I would come back to this book. During middle school, high school, college and beyond, I would reread Little Women for the pure enjoyment of it.

Then one year, and I don’t remember how long ago it was, I couldn’t make it through. I got annoyed with it. Did it somehow lose its resonance with me? Was I so changed that I no longer wanted to read what is arguably the most influential book of my life?

I still don’t have that answer. It surely can’t be that I’m too old for it or that its simplistic world view no longer applies to my life can it?

I’ve gotten rid of a lot of my book collection. That dream of having a Henry-Higgins-like library has been replaced by others, but I still have my original Little Women. Surely it will come back to me.

Tags: Books, Life by Ms. SP
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Look what my awesome Chicago artist boyfriend gave me for Valentine’s Day!

Here’s a photo of Thunder dog. You can see in the painting just how much more gray he has around the muzzle now. The poor guy is getting really curmudgeony for all his cuteness. He’s grumbling more and finds puppies annoying. I’m sure he’d tell the punks to get off his lawn if he knew the cliche.

Thunder has an arch-enemy in our building. The boyfriend did a holiday art commission of that dog and commented how much they are really built alike. We people have always known that, but somehow the two dogs believe they are worlds apart.

Tags: Art, Life by Ms. SP
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