The Chronicles of Dating, Installment #4: Dungeons and Dragons

I, admittedly, am a bit of a geek. And by "a bit of a geek," I mean that not all things sci-fi and fantasy are lost on me. In fact, the three things that I feel I may know too much about that classify and fully illustrate my geekdom:

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And trust me, it doesn't stop there either (though it does stop solidly before World of Warcraft).

Sadly, my geekiness has lead me to be set up on some rather unfortunate, "she must be willing to deal with this guy's nerdiness if she wore hear headband over her eyes when she was 10 and had a Star Wars marathon for her 12th birthday, and pretended her chapstick was a lightsaber in Jr. High" dates. There is, however, a distinct line between geekiness and nerdiness:

"A geek is someone who has the knowledge of the geeky type stuff and has social graces...A nerd is someone who has the knowledge but not the social graces, and a dork is someone who has neither."

Applying this definition, I am certain that my Christmas Eve morning, 2007 was spent in the company of a nerd.

My awesome friend, Ken, took the opportunity of the holidays to set me up with his technical writer brother-in-law who was in town from Wisconsin or something for Christmas. Because of the shortness of his stay, we doubled for breakfast on Christmas Eve...at IHOP.

At the time, I had platinum blonde hair with a dark brownish-purple in the back. My date told me, in perhaps the most monotone voice I have ever heard, that he wasn't sure how he felt about the color of my hair, because it reminded him of eggplants and he got sick from eating eggplants once.

There were many more stories told and comments made that his monotone voice prevented from being stored in my long-term memory.

I was coming down with the flu that day, and the overly-packed atmosphere at IHOP was pushing me further over the edge while my date was practically nudging me down the cliff face with a stick. If you have never been to IHOP for breakfast on Christmas Eve, never do. However, judging by the amount of people there, you must have been there with your entire extended family, as the majority of the state of Utah was crammed into patent leather booths (sadly, not boots), sticky with maple syrup and kids.

After breakfast, a failed attempt at going ice skating led to a fun-filled date of window shopping at the mall with my date, Ken, and Ken's very pregnant wife.

Our first stop was the sword-and-random-Asian-trinkets-store. I spent 45 minutes looking at painted chop sticks, velvet pictures of dolphins, and statuettes of dragons holding crystal balls while the brothers-in-law debated whether or not a certain square-ish sword was a replica from World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons, or some other weaponry-specific, epic cult game.

The flu was quickly taking over my body and attention span.

From there, our fun-filled day took us to Build-A-Bear. After five minutes of us girls cooing over teddy bears and puppies and kitties and polar bears, Ken asked my date if they had his favorite animal. "Do you see a dragon?" was his Napoleon-Dynamite-tone-of-voiced reply, "but I guess if I have to pick my favorite animal in here, I'll pick the wolf."

I don't really remember the rest of the date, because I'm pretty sure I was getting a fever (and who knows, the whole date may have been a hallucination).

My friend, Ken, later apologized for the set-up, saying that he wasn't sure what happened to his brother-in-law since he moved to Wisconsin, or wherever.