The Motivated Nerd Life

All I’ve been doing this past week has been playing Crash Bandicoot. As I’m sure most of you know, the remastered N. Sane Trilogy of Crash came out on June 30 th of this year. Of course it was right before the weekend and I work every single weekend of my life currently, so I saved game play for this past week. I will admit that I did not play the original Crash Bandicoot when I was younger, however I did play a lot of the side scrolling platform games like Mario and Donkey Kong. Playing Crash Bandicoot did give me that nostalgic feeling I had when I spent hours playing Mario, and dying, repeatedly. The anger of dying repeatedly is so real, even after all this time but I really wouldn’t replace it for anything.  Disclaimer: I haven’t beaten the game yet. I started solo on the first, then to make it co-op my husband and I started the second one and just have been switching off every level or when we die, which is unfortunately a fair amount of the time. So here are some of th

A couple of weeks ago I did a handful of presentations for my friends’ S.T.E.M class. If you don’t know what S.T.E.M, that’s ok because I also wasn’t aware that a program like this existed until my friend asked me to present. The program “is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach” ( http://www.livescience.com/43296-what-is-stem-education.html ) It’s a fantastic program, once my friend explained what it was. My audience was multiple classes of female high school students, yikes. I remember being in high school and having guest speakers and just being bored out of my mind. So I decided to make my presentation blunt. I presented on what I currently do for work, what my likes and dislikes were and my daily tasks as a Lead Scientist Quality Control Microbiologist for a Pharmaceutical Company. However, I told them “Most of what I do at work is yel

                  The world of Harry Potter is amazing. I have loved reading the books ever since I was eleven and picked up “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. This book series actually helped me learn to read and actually make me want to read which is something I will always be grateful for. And just like I’m sure most of you have, I have done countless Harry Potter sorting hat quizzes both on and off Pottermore. For the majority of the time I get Slytherin as my house, with a couple of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws mixed in. However, one part of the book always stands out to me: When Harry is getting sorted and asks not to be put into Slytherin. Part of me does get upset at the prejudice the house faces but the main point I try to take away is that, the sorting hat takes Harry’s feelings into account. Just like in life, you can choose who you become. So if I was up at the front of the Great Hall getting sorted (still waiting on that letter McGonagall), instead of asking the

I love my husband and his cooking very much. He has taught me to be an adventurous eater and I love, love, love trying his new recipes. However, he does have a problem. He always makes a massive amount of whatever he’s cooking. Which is fantastic when we have friends or family over but…..for the most time it’s just the two of us. And trust me, I would love to eat it all (so tasty) however I would also like to fit into my clothes. So, with my husbands’ help I have been trying to carve out a healthy eating style without sacrificing his cooking talents. Here are some tips that have been working for me:  1) Portion Size. When Sean (my husband) cooks, I could figuratively eat it all. However, even when I try to contain myself I still feel like I ate too much. So what I’ve found that works is to take the portion you want, then cut that in half. When I first tried this out I was really sad putting food back, but now I feel like I’ve eaten enough to make myself content but don’t feel stu

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. I heard this saying so much when I was growing up living with my grandparents. I remember not understanding, Men can’t be that different from me, can they? Yes, yes they can.           It wasn’t until I started dating my husband (who was only my second boyfriend) that I began to understand that his views, upbringing, and demeanor was absolutely different than my own. I found that fascinating and frustrating. We’ve fought and we still fight from time to time but that’s more out of pure stubbornness than it’s anything else. We have been dating for 10 years and married for 1, and in that time I learned a few things that have helped our relationship last that long. 1)    Communicate. I understand that is an obvious one but I swear it’s the most important. Talk about anything. Talk about why you’re upset, talk about what turns you on, talk about the damn weather. Just talk. No one should be expected to mind read so don’t expect him to.

This did not happen in real life. My character Nina; a Necromantic G enasi, which I was playing as, in a session of Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) received very helpful information by braiding a dwarf’s beard. I started playing DnD so I could have more in common with my husband. He’s been playing for a very long time and he enjoys it immensely.  I wanted to share that joy with him so I started to learn. I have to say for some who did not grow up playing DnD or even really any games, it’s very imaginative and enjoyable. Playing as the only female (in game and in real life) in our party gives me a unique ability to see what the other party members have missed. So back to our adventuring last night: the party, after our little mini dungeon quest headed to a town to start our next adventure. The town use to be a dwarf mining industry but all the dwarves have since left, except one. Our party’s Hobgoblin suspects he finds the only remaining dwarf in town but can’t confirm that it is one du