September is a busy month — in fact in some ways it's one of the busiest months (and not just because of that school thing that seem to be doing), because everyone returns from vacations and hunkers down to restart whatsoever it may have been that was on hiatus during the summer months. And of course, this September is no exception!
Last night was the first Edmonton Girl Geek Dinner of the third season and it was a blast! Dr. Torah Kachur spoke about worms (C. Elegans) in Space and it was fascinating. I had heard of some small bits of that which she was discussing, but it was neat to learn in more depth about the use of GFP to study the neurosystems and gonads of these worms, the affect of space on muscles, and much more besides!
It was also neat to be able to bring Laury to his first girl geek dinner. The venue was Lux and the food was good (though I would have appreciated more vegetables — they were delicious! The ribs were good but there were so many leftovers). It was also good to see Maria, Glenn, Karen, Dana, britl and others at the event as I don't see them often enough.
And it was a good antithesis to the stupidity that female geeks often encounter. Yesterday I got a particularly stupid rude comment on my OK Cupid profile (and I'm convinced I wouldn't have gotten the similar had I been male) so that wasn't a great start to my day… I'm usually plenty capable of brushing the stupid off and moving forward. And so, I was… but I've noticed certain things lately… like the fact that while Your Turn, a board game documentary is a great explanation of why board games are awesome (THEY ARE!), there really aren't that many women represented. And it was mentioned that a woman has NEVER presented at DemocampYEG while we were at Edmonton Girl Geek Dinner… I've also been totally envious of all those folks who have been going to the AWESOME cons lately (Wendy was encouraging me to attend the Edmonton one in October on Monday night for example), and I'd really love to go to some awesome Geek Cons someday but I honestly don't feel like I'd be comfortable doing so without either a large group of folks or at least one good fast male friend to accompany me, because of all the stupid that occasionally goes on in these environments. Heck, I'm a woman but it's not like I'm only into the female-centric geek pursuits!
Maybe the worms have it easier… they get to go to space after all! 😉