Major geek girl here. My passions are many, and I am passionate about all of them. Proud to be counted along with the rest of yez.
Geek Girl checking in.
I must say, having switched from the tech industry to teaching, there are far fewer geeks of great calibre. Is it the high burn out rate? The long hours that gobble up time otherwise spent on passionate geeking? The geek teachers I’ve met, however, are by far the best teachers I’ve seen.
I was under the impression that he’s Matt’s friend, not his “um, friend”. **
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Yea, HC (a.k.a. James, a.k.a. Hamish) is my friend-friend and my roommate-roommate, not my um-friend or euphemism-roommate. 
Pfft, step off, mere girl-geeks. I am the Geek Angel. Or so I’ve been told. 
[sub]Er, Matt, not to quibble here, pumpkin, but you did screw up the quoting in that last post. Please forgive my insolence for pointing this out, you wondrous creature. [/sub]
Nice OP.
Matt, give Hamish a (Platonic, since we seem to be getting into the oh-so-cute euphemisms here) hug for me.
– Poly, proudly geekish since 1959
l a n g u a g e s & l i n g u i s t i c s
There are very few more beautiful things to me than a phrase fluently expressed in a second language of mine; few things as exhilarating as finding the perfect rendering for a particularly difficult piece of translation; few things as fascinating as the examination and consideration of how we communicate with one another.
The love of languages (I currently speak about four, depending on how you define “speak”), the sacred pact of the translator, the precise, crystalline boughs of a syntax tree surround and thrill me.
To speak is holy, to learn languages an act of devotion to the most deeply human part of me. It makes me more than I am.
c i t i e s & u r b a n i s m
Let others long for the clear unspoiled vistas of nature. I get nervous in situations I can’t get out of in a taxi.
A city is a thing of beauty. Cities are the nexi of our civilizations, the nodes and snarls in the flow of people and information. Citizen, civics, civil, even civilization, all come from the same root as city.
Conversely as the vast Americanized spread of people dissolve into the suburbs, having so given up faith in their fellow folk that they must live away from them even as they realize that this is impossible - so the most vital and diverse cities are tens of thousands in an urban core, sharing space and resources, focusing their forces together, realizing that humanity is a thing to be loved and rejoiced in, not fled.
I have the pleasure of living in a city with one of the highest downtown residential densities in North America. This, along with our mixes and paradoxes - bilingual yet francophone, North American yet European, the second-largest French city in the world on an English continent - is responsible for Montreal’s unique geist, the animist coherence and soul my city has. And I do love it here.
A city is a living thing, the genetic product of our gift of sentience, a steel-and-cement expression of our faith and citizenship and civic trust in one another, and at best the place where we may show off our mastery of the technical and ethical lessons we as a society has learned.
t h e m e t r o
You’ll get my metro pass when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Of all my obsessions this is the one that seems the strangest. Who’s interested in the metro? People flow through it like water, not stopping for a second to look up around them. Isn’t it just a humdrum, everyday city service - as the French say, métro-boulot-dodo?
Well, no, it’s not. It’s a monument, if I have anything to say about it. It’s as much a work of magnificence and a product of expertise and toil and love as any cathedral, and as worthy of awe and veneration.
My city is graced with one of the most beautiful public transit systems in the world. Some of our stations ought to be in expensive coffee-table books of fine architecture. And yet trains flow through its arteries in metaphorical as well as literal obscurity; familiarity seems to have bred contempt.
The metro has few devotees, few people to pause and study it, know it, give it the respect and love it deserves.
But there are some. And I am one.
I think the fact that I spend half my life on my computer, am absolutely obsessed with Buffy and do live-action as well as tabletop roleplaying games resigns me to being a geek for life.
But I don’t mind. All my friends are geeks too, and they’re pretty cool.
I did Knowlwedge Bowl in High School (came back last year for an alumni match and single-handely kicked the butts of the student and faculty teams). I was also part of the mock trail team my senior year. I read history books for fun (as well as linguistics books now that I’m in college). Used to play role-playing games but kind of got out of it when I started acting. I don’t make friends easily.
I don’t, however, bite the heads off live chickens or snakes, which was part of the original meaning of the word geek. A carnival sideshow person who bit the heads off live chickens and snakes and other disgusting things.
I do identify with the sentiment in the OP.
You don’t know girl geek until you know my pal’s girlfriend. She is a good webpage designer though. Check her page out here.
She has a cyberstalker, and she gets people sending her pictures they painted of her. It’s kinda groovy. Especially considering she’s 15 and looks like she’s 12, and her last TWO boyfriends have been juniors. I don’t see where the appeal is, but hey, apparently others do.
Lucky Charms (Formerly MarxBoy)
Ahem, Previewing is my friend.
Lucky
Sorry, I’m a nerd, not a geek.
Henceforth, I as leader of the Nerds, declare war on all geekdom. Fear us and our pencil-necked wrath.
Yeah, I’m a geek, what else is new? I earned my geek stripes in 1975 when I was pulled out of Kindergarten after six weeks for being belligerant. I cemented the deal by spending the entire first half of First Grade sitting under my desk. When the frizzy, uncontrollable hair appeared on the scene in 1979, I wore it like a crown. Taking up a band instrument was my confirmation. Having a computer in my house from 1982 on gave me all the geek cred I’lll ever need.
You want geek? I gotcher geek, baybee…right here.
(said in the Irish accent from “The Commitments”)
I too am passionate about the things that interest me, and couldn’t care less if I really tried about the things that are all the rave with followers of style. (The two mesh very occasionally, which pisses me off, because I don’t like my interests to be subjected to the great unwashed.) My free time is my most valued possession, and sometimes I enjoy it so much that I do absolutely nothing with it except savour it (and this is a wholly un-North American attitude, I am well aware). I don’t seem like a geek to myself, because I am so interesting to me. I love other interesting people, and have no time for un-interesting ones (which works out well, because the un-interesting ones have no idea what to make of me anyway).
[sub]How do I break this to her gently? I guess there isn’t a way.[/sub]
No, dear, they aren’t. They’re geeks and, by definition, they are not cool. For me, the turning point was when I accepted this basic truth and decided to not allow it to affect my friendships.
Once this acceptance reached across geekdom it created a geek chic, as described by featherlou. So your friends can be cool within those bounds. However, I never really saw that much difference between a gearhead (automotive obsessive, generally thought of as “cool” when I was younger) and a machinehead (geek), so I suppose there can be crossover.
I am not a geek. I’ve said it. I’m not exactly cool, but I’m far from geekdom. I have a ‘life’ and wear stylish clothes. I go out of my way to have the ‘cool’ people like me. BUT I AM NOT SHALLOW. I like long, deep conversations and cuddling on stormy nights.
Instead, they’re shibby.