One of the best feelings in the world is that which you get when something just fits. That comfy old T- shirt you’ve had for 10 years, hearing the perfect song on the radio that says everything going through your head at the time, snuggling in on the couch with the person that just gets you. A moment in time that makes you feel at home. That lil sigh with a dash of giddiness one feels when things just fit right freakin’ rocks.

It was the search for a place for my monkeys and I that would give us that feeling when we walked in that has lead to UberDork Café. It’s a giant quirky chunk of me. I once had a very good friend tell me that I “suffer from poor marketing.” He further explained that I call myself a dork, I look like a dork, but I’m so much more than that. He’s right. I am a great many different things. But, I am still totally a dork. And as I am always true to form, Uberdork Café is so much more than just the café of an UberDork. Getting to know UberDork Café is like getting to know me. So allow me to introduce you to us.

In essence, UberDork Cafe is Art + Science= Geek in a family-friendly environment that supports local vendors and artists, the earth and gives back to the community not only by providing a safe place for youth to play and learn, but also in financially assisting future Art + Science= Geeks.
I can see the “huh?” bubble over some of your heads, don’t worry, Imma break it down more for you.

Café- Yuppers there will be coffee, geeky baked goodness and a simple but delish menu. Complete with grown up “happy meals.” Which I will of course have to change the name of so Mc Donald’s doesn’t try to sue my lil ole self. But, us grown ups deserve toys too! Oh and of course plenty of snacky “gaming food.”
Family-Friendly- Having a kid’s menu, some crayons and high chairs doesn’t necessarily mean kid-friendly. The goal is to have them, have families, feel welcomed. The plan is to have an actual kid’s section. Optional of course. But, an area where kids can sit and eat and play. With a menu that is more than just chicken fingers and fries.
Supporting Local Vendors and Artists- While my motivation may have been my monkeys, it’s all about my community as well. The goal is to use as many local vendors as possible. To showcase local artists and talent as well. Whether it’s someone guest-teaching a class, hosting a local knitting group, a comic artist lecture or meet and greet or allowing local artists to exhibit and sell their works, there will be much opportunity to support the great vendors and artists that my community (both in location and in spirit) has to offer.

The Earth- UberDork Café will strive to be the greenest business it can be in every sense of the environmental term.

Safe Place to Play and Learn- Besides the café section, the other two parts that make up UberDork Café are a game room and a classroom. Play is an important part of life that we adults tend to lose sight of as we grow. One of my goals is to not only nurture that play but bring it back to those that have forgotten it. No matter what your controller of choice looks like, no matter how many sides your favorite die has, no matter how your board is shaped, UberDork Café will embrace and try to offer it. Come roll how you want to roll. Play how you want to play. And for those of you who may have forgotten, there will be classes. Art and science classes that families can take together, adults and kids may take alone and all will be adaptable to those with special needs. (Yup, I was once a special ed art teacher. Which is something not many people know. It was also one of the best jobs I’ve ever had.) And if you’ve been eying up a 360 but have never owned a console before, well we’ll give ya an intro to it. Always wanted to tackle DnD but were scared to be a noob? We’ll cover ya too.

Financially Assisting Future Art + Science = Geeks- I’m a giver. It’s just part of who I am and one of my favorite parts of my goal with UberDork Café is to help foster our future. Each year, UberDork Café will offer three scholarships. They may not be huge at first, but hopefully they will grow. The basic criteria to qualify for these scholarships are simple. 1. The student has to be from the inner city. The reasoning behind this is I want to support those that are often under-supported. Those that often get lost in the shuffle. Those that could use someone to look them in the eye and say “I believe in you.” b. The student must be going on to pursue further schooling in: Video Game Design/Development, Science and lastly a Geek Girl.

So welcome to UberDork Café and welcome to me. ☺

Now just when will we be able to hang out at the awesomeness that is UberDork Café? (hee hee)

Believe it or not, a lot of that depends on YOU. Yup, YOU. If you read my last blog, you will know that UberDork Café was selected as a Kickstarter Project. One that launches oh…. TODAY!!!!

The fun of Kickstarter is this- I get to promote my project any nonspammy way I can. The more awareness I get it, the more chance I have of people seeing it and thinking “Jinkies that sounds swell, lemme back it with $1, $10… etc.” And when people back the project, they can get fun UberDork Café stuffs for doing so.

What does that mean? What can I do?

I thought you’d never ask. >;-)

Simple answer- as much or as lil as you’d like.

This means you can go big by visiting The UberDork Cafe Kickstarter Project Page and backing it.

You can go medium by helping me spread the word by passing on the link via any way you’d like (email, twitter, facebook, airplane flown over baseball stadium with banner, racing carrier pigeons, etc.) Here’s the link: Http://www.tinyurl.com/UberDorkCafe

You can go small by following @UberDorkCafe and/or it’s lil home on Facebook.

Or you could go wild by shaking it up and trying various combinations of all of them. #geeksdorksandnerdsgonewild

As I write this I am a total ball of excitement and a terrified mess. This is my dream. And it’s possibly one GIANT step closer to becoming a reality. None of this would be possible without the support I have already received from some REALLY great people. People that get my vision, that get what UberDork Café is all about and are wonderful enough to believe in me. There are far too many to list here but there are two that CAN NOT go unmentioned. @CapSteveRogers and @GeekWithSoul. When I was at my wits end with being too close to this to come up with a logo, they stepped in and completely kicked ass. Both have come up with a variation of the logo that I will be using. One for larger scaled projects, one for smaller things where the lil graphic element of me will be lost. And I completely LOVE them. The logos and the guys behind them are beyond awesomesauce. Thank you and the giant tally of *huggles*tm they have coming there way don’t even begin to cover it.

Thank you all for believing in a café that is more than just the café of an UberDork and a gal that is more than just a dork with a dream.

*MWUAH!*

My monkeys are getting soft… and they’re taking me down with them.

The fact that my girls could quote Star Wars at two and three years old didn’t surprise any of my friends and family. The shocker was they did it wearing pink.

“I thought you hated pink.”

Pink does indeed make my right eye twitch in many of its applications. The only proven documented cases of me donning pink are my sister’s wedding from Hell (think pink meets Carmen Miranda) and medicinally. I have the distinct pleasure of being allergic to mosquitoes and yet living in a place that jokes they are the state bird. Thanks to those lil bloodsucking bastards and Calamine lotion, every summer I turn into a pale pink spotted leper. My theory on the whole pink thing with my daughters is this- just because I have issues with the color doesn’t mean I’m gonna impose my view or distaste of it on them. I want them to be their own lil people and if that means them liking pink, so be it.

Alright, look, I was totally hoping they’d take after me. They had me pretty convinced I was in the clear for a while here too. Pink was a passing phase. Purple, red and black have replaced it.

But I am far from out of the woods.

I know my name has girlie in it. True to form, I am quirky with my girlie-ness. People have been known to receive surprise packages of homemade daisy sugar cookies lovingly decorated with M&Ms. But, eldest’s last birthday cake request turned out to be a life size Yoda. Which I blissfully tackled creating new cuss words as I built him. I’m almost always seen wearing lipstick. Yet the makeup and hair product department scares the complete shit out of me. Last year I am proud to say I learned how to put on eye shadow for the first time. Figured one day I may need to teach the monkeys that. Hairspray, however, is still a complete mystery to me beyond a fixative for charcoal drawings and a make shift self-defense device. You never know when an Aqua Net flame-thrower may come in handy ya know. I’m girlie on some levels, others not so much.

I had a close call last year when my phone rang at 7:15am on Black Friday. Panic ensued when a woman who is like a sister to me uttered ”Look bitch, my nieces are getting Barbies this year and that’s that. Suck it up.” And they did. It was less than a week later I got the joy of calling her and saying “Guess what hooker- your youngest niece just popped the head off her Barbie and chucked it at her sister. And she did the same back. That’s right, Barbie head fight all up in here.” Whew.

Still not out of the woods.

Last week during our drive home, eldest monkey was talking like 93mph about her day. Then gasps. “Oh my gosh mommy, I totally forgot to tell you- J CALLED ME HIS BFF TODAY!!” My brain so hadn’t processed yet and before I knew it I was all “Oh my gosh that is like way awesome.” And then she was all “Do you know what a BFF is? “ And I was all “Duh, it’s totally Best Friends Forever.” And then she was all “Wow. Mommy you are like so totally awesomesauce.” Then a voice of logic from within bitchslapped my neurons back into place. WHAAAA?? She’s only 5! I had visions of a 13 year old having body snatched my kid. And me for that matter!!! That night we had a “Goonies” intervention. Had to be done.

But it started to sink in. She’s growing up. They are growing up. And being exposed to BFF’s and lip gloss. I know girls will be girls. The dresses and skirts don’t bother me at all. I can even live with the fake plastic my first hooker heel dress up shoes they clomp around in. Well, until I step on a stray one. Them suckers hurt. The first rock star they met in person wasn’t someone from a Disney show, it was Maynard from Tool & Puscifer. They don’t want ballet lessons, they want to go to “Kung Fu School.” It’s been balancing out, but I’m scared of the scale tipping. Too soon! Not ready. There’s not nearly enough saved up in the therapy fund yet.

And then there was this Wednesday night. What started out like a normal Monkey Family Movie Night, quickly downward spiraled. Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakquel was harmless the first time we watched it. This time, it changed. While Simon is still their favorite, my safe lil balance was thrown way off. Thanks to those lil Chimpettes. Monkey Family Movie Night turned into me learning the words to some “you’re hot and your cold…. you’re yes and you’re no” song and Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” Not just the words, oh no, we went further down the rabbit hole than that. To sum it up, a knock on the door from the neighbor girls later and I had a room full of lil girls and somehow I was choreographing our own routines to the songs.

I am not ashamed to say I had fun. Their giggling is infectious. And it’s my favorite sound in the world.

But, I’m scared. I’m scared of that scale getting tipped long term to all that is pink and plastic and Barbie. To stereotypes and living up to peers’ expectations instead of being true to themselves and who they really want to be. They are my daughters though. I have faith they will settle into their own quirky girlie-nesses. Proud to be girls. Knowing that being soft doesn’t mean you aren’t strong. That having boobs doesn’t mean you don’t have brains. That life is a continual learning process and someday their daughters may teach them as they continue to teach me.

The next day eldest’s class went to the book fair they have going on at her school. She was given an envelope of money from me and told she could buy anything she wanted with that money. There was only one requirement- it had to be something SHE wanted. Not what she thought I would want, or her sister would want, or her BFF would want. What SHE wanted.

And this is what she came home with.

Obi-Wan, you are my hope.

So, I had me a lil moment on Twitter Friday morning. Ok, it was more like a Falling Down moment. I was Michael Douglas and I’d had enough. Now I know #twitterisalotlikehighschool, but my faith in humanity felt like it was being flipped off. And I snapped… just a touch.

You see, I logged in that morning and the number two trending topic was #getwellgaga. #Haiti was barely clinging to the bottom of the list. Admittedly, that was enough to bother me. Then I pulled up my faithful buddy Google to find out what exactly the well wishes were for. For a number two slot, I expected to find a diagnosis of cancer or, at the very least, a car accident or shot by a crazy stalker fan. I’d have MAYBE settled for a trip to rehab. Not that I’m wishing any of these on her. Instead I read “Lady Gaga cancels performance due to exhaustion.” You’re kidding me- right? Exhausted from cancer treatments? Exhausted from running from crazy knife/gun-wielding stalker fan? Exhausted from saving the world from certain doom? Jeebus give me something here!! Nope, just “exhausted.”

Over 3 MILLION people have just been severely affected in a nation that was already struggling with some pretty serious issues and people are more focused on sending get well wishes (that she’s never even going to see, let alone respond to!) to some goofy bitch that just needs to eat a sandwich and take a night off from partying?? Yeah, I went from bothered, squealed right on past pissed and landed firmly in Superfly TNT.

As I’d already blipped my morning love song to my coffee my second tweet of the day was:

“What the fuck kind of world do we live in that get well wishes for some obnoxious wannabe who is merely ‘exhausted’ out trends #haiti?!!??”

Followed by:

“Seriously. You know who is EXHAUSTED? The 3MILLION people affected by Tuesday’s quake and all the volunteers in #haiti trying to help.”

And I hit the ground running from there. I also refused to call Lady Gaga by her name as to avoid adding anything to the already trending hash tag. Then I went after the number one hash tag #OMGfacts. I kept it there so any of the people looking for their tweets may actually end up receiving a bit of education. I tweeted several facts regarding the issues facing those in Haiti. I am happy to report that MANY of my tweeps backed me. With comments, with RT’s, with DM’s, they supported my anger. My disappointment. My sadness.

I think people’s obsession with celebrity worship is disgusting. Believe me, I’ve met more than my fair share of celebrities and they are assholes just like the rest of us. In many cases, even worse. What have they truly done to earn such admiration and blind lust? What value does that worship truly add to one’s life? Actors and actresses may have done a performance that moved you. Ok, but that performance was written by someone else. That character is not THEM nor their creation. Furthermore, most of the time, that character isn’t even REAL. Musicians may be talented, but their music often isn’t written by them and they aren’t singing that song to you. Really, I hate to break it to you, but they aren’t. There are hundreds of thousands of wonderful, highly musically talented people in this world that will never be noticed. Are they just as worthy? Is it for the sole purpose of looks? There are beautiful people everywhere on this planet. Most of which are beautiful INSIDE AND out. Do they not beckon the same then? Don’t even get me started on the Paris Hiltons of this world. I think you’re getting my point.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not shunning all you fanboy and fangirls out there. I get digging a show, a character, a game, a movie and collecting stuff that goes along with it. Hell here in monkeyland we have a tank with a fish named Wonder Woman, a frog named Princess Leia and a snail named Chauncey The Wonder Snail. I’m not picking on you. Not at all my dearies. It’s the chicks that get the vapors and bawl for weeks on end because their favorite so and so is engaged. It’s the guys that wallpaper their room with posters of their favorite so and so and name their designated self love hand after them. It’s the people that all went suicidal when Michael Jackson died. It’s the people that take it to that whole other level. Like sending get well wishes to Lady freakin’ Googoo on Twitter.

< / rant>

Just like life, Twitter doth take away and it doth also give. While it flipped off my sense of humanity on Friday, this week it gave it a big ole wet smoochie. And it did so in #geekswithheart. Power to my geeks! Two of my absolute favoritest sexy ass sisters in geekhood @GeekGirls and @GeekyClean have come together to form Geeks With Heart, a fundraising effort to help Haiti. And yup, I just wanna hug ‘em.

All proceeds raised go to Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps mission: “Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.” Their motto: “Be The Change.” I LOVE that! Just some of their efforts to help survivors in Haiti to recover include “ ‘Comfort for Kids,’ a trauma-counseling methodology for children that (they) co-developed and deployed after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Sichuan Earthquake and other disasters.” Currently, they are “focused on immediate humanitarian needs: water and sanitation, trauma support and job creation.”

For those in doubt, while Geeks With Heart is small (for now!), Mercy Corps is big. This is what they do and they are good at it. They will know how to properly handle and disperse all funds raised to assure that they meet the greatest needs first. They’re pros y’all.

So, please, show some support. Show some geek love. Show some nongeek love. Just show the love. To do so…

Visit Geeks With Heart here.

Visit The Geek Girls Network here.

Visit Geeky Clean here.

Follow @geekgirls

Follow @geekyclean

Add a Twibbon here

Do me proud folks! This is the kind of moment I LIKE having!

It’s interesting the debates that exist over the differences between what exactly a dork is vs. a geek vs. a nerd. Truth is, I’m all of ‘em rolled into one on any given day. Hmm.. gnork? Out of all of them- geek is the one I’m called the most. So why not ÜberGeekGirlie? Cuz. UberDorkGirlie is actually a nickname I earned in an argument with a friend. Some may say I lost that one. I say it suits me just fine.

Nowadays it’s “cool” to be geek, or actually declare yourself as “geeky” or “a geek”, but I’ll hop on that whole soapbox later. Let’s back this to way back in the day first.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know this next part, so feel free to skip ahead. My quest for knowledge has always been there. When I was four, the birthday cut off for Kindergarten was December 1st. Mine is December 2nd. (Yes boys and girls, this is back in the stone ages when K4 did not exist.) Feeling I was more than ready, my mom gave the principal a call. She told her to bring me up and they’d test me. I remember getting a picture of a clown holding balloons. Each test I passed, a balloon received a sticker. I walked out of there with a big smile and every balloon filled with a sticker. Then my mom got the call. The “If we make an exception for her, then someone comes in with Dec. 3rd & 4th, where do we draw the line?”call. I won’t lie, I totally cried my lil heart out. Then, I woke up the next morning pissed. I grabbed all my lil Dr. Seuss books and sat down in front of Sesame Street and taught my geeky ass how to read. Screw them. So, next fall, I show up to Mrs H’s class all kinds of proud and twitchin’ to stuck up some knowledge. During story time each day, I raised my hand and asked if I can read the book to the class. Each day, she replied “No, Natali, you can’t. You don’t know how to read.” Each day my retort was “I’m sorry, but yes I do.” Come Friday, Mrs. H was irritated. So much so, that she yelled “FINE!” and threw the book at me. I smiled, picked it up and started to read. Mrs. H turned white, then red. Then left the room. I kept right on reading Mrs. H returned with the principal. “Oh shit!” I thought as I finished the story, just a touch shaky.

So, that Monday I was pulled out of my class and taken to a big, mostly empty room. There was a big conference table with four adults lined up behind it staring at me as I sat before them in my lil chair. I’d done a quick tally in my head of what I’d done at school the last week, including the couple of boys I sent to the nurses office and was thinking I was really in for it now. Instead, they began firing question after question after question at me. I remember only one of them:

Some Lady: “How many lives does a cat have?”
Me: “They say that cats have 9 lives, but I think that’s a myth. I have a feeling that they are like any other lifeform, if you kill it, it dies only once.”

Yup, total geek. That’s when they slapped me with the label “gifted and talented.” I was then only in my “regular” class room for a limited time daily. The rest was spent with Miss F and eventually more students were added. Miss F ROCKED! As much as I hated the label they gave me, the program was amazing. It’s where my love of Apple was born and my inner geek was nurtured. For example, for those of you that may not know, the Apple II “OS“ was only a built-in BASIC interpreter contained in ROM. So, any game or program you slipped the floppy in for booted directly on the hardware and either had no OS or one that was self-contained. I will so spare you the Commodore BASIC vs Applesoft BASIC and how Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was conceived and how it’s grown and changed to Visual Basic used today. The point of this lil BASIC tangent- in fifth grade, I taught an adult Apple BASIC class at night. My geek runs deep. By middle school I hacked the library computers and would access a BBS from there. And yup, I played the Island of Kesmai. (But by the time Legends of Kesmai hit AOL, I had already despised AOL 😉 )

My academic life was spent in accelerated classes, my electives in Japanese , other foreign languages and art. My freetime went to reading (seriously, I had reading contests with one of my friends to see who could read the most books in a week), drawing and playing Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on my beat up ole used Apple. My posse were the band geeks and the skaterboys. Despite being like the only betty in town, the most commonly used words to describe me growing up were “smart” and “weird.” They were titles I wore proudly though. I learned early on in life what it felt like to not be truly understood. Sure, some people got some parts of me and others, different parts. No one truly ever gets the whole picture though. Well, perhaps my daughters do. There’s a strip mall here in town that has a comic/anime store called Lost World of Wonders and a place called American Science and Surplus (seriously check out the site). If they added a B&N, a Micheal’s, Izumi’s for sushi and a Gamestop, I’d plant a double-wide in the parking lot and call it home like forever. (Note the B&N would undoubtedly have Starbucks in it to sate my love affair with coffee.) That strip mall is me in a nutshell. Someday I’ll find that counterpart that gets the whole quirky, dorky, geeky package that is me and want a piece of that double-wide. 🙂

Another thing I learned early on was that while being a bookworm was nongender discriminatory, the science and computer sides of geekdom were definitely male dominated in my time. When I was roped into being a last minute stand in on the science team for state, one of my teammates (who were all male) literally announced to a rival team during pre-round smack talk “oh yeah, well we brought boobs. And they’re actually attached to a girl who is gonna kick your ass in genetics.” In college, yeah, totally the only girl gamer I knew. The shortest lines in arena ladies room history could be found during my first Web Developer conferences. Hell, one of my geek-related nicknames is male! Will. Short for Good Will Hunting. But, thankfully, times they have changed.

Now, back to the whole “cool to say you are a geek” tangent. Through the years, the coin has flipped a bit on the rep of Geeks. Thank you interwebz. When it became clear the geeks shall inherit the earth, peeps started taking notice. Now, they are cool, but to an extent. I mean, let’s face it American Pie upped the street cred for our beloved band geeks, but you didn’t see the “popular” crowd rushing to join the band. And we all know about men’s fantasies about a “naughty librarian”, but outside the bedroom, different story. I’ve been approached by guys swearing they “love geeky girls” only to be told after a conversation I am “too geeky.” What is that?? Of course, my geeky ass then asks them to define the quantitative parameters that constitute “too geeky.” That never really goes over well. I’ve got many a guy friend that has experienced the same, or the flipside. Yup, the geek poser. That just makes me giggle. Geek poser. But, they so exist. My friend, C, found a girl who boldly called herself a geek. He asked her why and she declared herself a “web goddess.” Turns out that means she used Front Page to create a Paris Hilton fan page for herself and a Twilight one for her BFF. I asked him if that meant her friend was “totally goth” then. Turns out (cuz he’s so the male version of me) he asked her the same thing. She didn’t get it. * sigh * They are out there.

Not geeky enough. Too geeky. Poser. Legit. All are in the brain of the beholder. All I know is that because of people like GeekGirls we breast totin geeks are coming on strong. We are standing tall, head held high, glasses straight (ok, cept mine) invading your geek havens in all kinds of ways. If you’re one of us, shout it out. Let your geek flag fly. You’ve freakin’ earned it. It makes you, you. Throw your Star Trek fingers in the air and wave them like you just don’t care. Geek Girls FTW!!!

And I am creating a place for all of us to hang, to play, to proudly wave our lil geek/nerd/dork/gnork flags.

Click here to learn how you can help this dream become a reality for all of us and for future lil geek girls everywhere.

P.S. All my geek girl tweeps, please join me in support of @GeekGirls and add a twibbon here letting others know you’re girl, you’re geek and you’re proud!