frak you, i'm a dork...

so, i watched the final episode of 'battlestar galactica season 4.0' last night, and i enjoyed it wholeheartedly. the sheer sci-fi ecstasy i experience when i watch this show begs the question, am i a sci-fi geek? have i always been one and not realized it? like the final five cylons who were unaware of their internal machinery until a switch turned on in their heads as the galactica passed through the mysterious nebula? ha. okay, that previous sentence just confirmed my booking on the nerd train...

i think i have always had a secret fascination with sci-fi...i have the entire collection of 'star wars' action figures (original, mind you, not re-issues), which are kept safely in a black and red star wars collectors' case made especially for action

figures. i have two luke skywalkers because my dog dutifully chewed the arm off of one of them. so, i have pre- and post-clash with vader luke...the only figure that i am missing is princess leia in white, which was always printed on the back of the box as part of the "collect them all!" advertisement that was both a challenge and a suggestion. my collecting took place in days of yore, pre-internet and ebay, when one actually had to travel to exotic locales, like nashville and jackson, find the one missing action figure. no matter how hard my parents and out-of-state relatives looked, they could never find princess leia with the white dress. curse you, hasbro!

i was also fascinated by the star trek movie - 'star trek iv : the voyage home.' i think this was mainly because spock and kirk came back to earth to save the humpback whales, which is the only real thing i remember about the film. this movie made me want to be a marine biologist for a few years.

i love 'the x-files.' i love '12 monkeys.' those are relatively mainstream, the latter starring a psychotically disheveled brad pitt, and are not considered as geeky as star trek.

the book, 'the hot zone,' made me really afraid of ebola and hemorrhagic fevers when i travel to sub-saharan africa. this fear reared its ugly head (love that cliche, and what the hell, this is my blog) when i was traveling in ghana, near kumasi. not that this region has ever had an ebola outbreak, but i have always been somewhat of a hypochondriac about exotic diseases,

including pregnancy. i have never been as

sick as i was in kumasi. i was so sick and pitiable, that the hotel owner took me to the clinic and paid for my care. nevermind that the previous day, my travel buddy, peter, and i had been in close contact with primates of various ilk -

going as far as touching them and receiving a few scratches...the following day, the day of my hospitalization, i wake at dawn with violent vomiting, diarrhea, and a nosebleed. not to mention, that it is also my time of the month.

**flashback to 'the hot zone'**

review of ebolaesque symptoms and epidemiology- contact with monkeys (check!), vomiting and diarrhea (check!check!), bleeding from every orifice (check! just about...). oh god! i have ebola!!

as you may have already guessed, dear reader, i didn't have ebola, and i am here to tell the tale. but, i credit 'the hot zone' with informing my decision to go to the doctor in a strange country.

oh - and i almost forgot...in my 13th year, i went to space camp. yes, the space camp in huntsville, alabama. this experience convinced me that i wanted nothing to do with space. not that i didn't have a blast (pun fully intended), but i got really motion sick on all the simulators. the fact that one of the main astronaut training activities includes taking a ride on the "vomit comet," was enough to keep my career options terrestrial in nature. also, so much of space travel is about calculating your weight in anti-gravity situations, and i'm against any activity that forces me to calculate my weight, even if it is on the moon, where one weighs significantly less. i totally dig dehydrated food, though, especially astronaut ice cream, neopolitan flavor, and i still wear the sweatshirt when i am having a schlumpy day.

so, maybe it is a geekery gene that has expressed itself throughout my life that i have chosen to downplay and ignore. maybe, had i known all along and embraced my dorky tendencies i could have had a prosperous career in science....nah! either way, i love me some exotic intestinal diseases and the idea of sex in space...