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Sometime last week, I swung by a blog – alas, I have forgotten which by now – and found a link to a test called How Nerdy Are You. Naturally, I couldn’t resist and promptly took it. I am 46% nerd, a number which I was surprised to discover quite disappointed me. It appears that I take some sort of perverse pride in being a geek. So I sent the link to friends and family, fully expecting to be out-nerded by several people. So far, not so much. Two of my friends, who I think it’s safe to say consider themselves geekier than I, were 3 and 11%. I felt better. I think. Better or a little concerned, I’m not quite sure which. How nerdy are you?

Speaking of things geeky. For while now, I’ve seen mentions of the show Battlestar Galactica – the recent remake, not the original – but largely ignored a it, thinking I’d “moved on” somewhat from the sci-fi. I used to be a Trekkie (still am – do you ever really outgrow that?), although I preferred the newer shows. The original Star Trek wasn’t part of my childhood, so all I ever really saw was the atrocious acting and the styrofoam sets, without the patina of ecstatic memory. However, give me The Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space 9 and I’m as happy as a dog with two tails (that’s a family expression. I make no excuses for it). Then, in short order, I saw an article extolling the show’s virtues, a friend acquired a back injury while spending days compulsively watching Season 1 on DVD and last week, another friend told me that Battlestar Galactica surpasses Trek.

(Now I know that they may be some of you out there snickering in your coffee at these geeky obsessions. Please remember that I do not make fun of other people’s obsessions. Like stamps. Or yarn. Or really groovy lint collections. At least not today, I don’t)

This past Tuesday, as I was wandering around the video store, checking out the new releases, I saw that Battlestar Galactica had just been moved to the seven-day shelf. So I got the first one, the miniseries that started it all. And two days after that, I got the next three discs (because I couldn’t bear it if 3 & 4 were out when I needed them). And truth be told, I haven’t really had time for anything other than watching the damn thing since. I haven’t cleaned, I haven’t done anything on my to-do list (other then the things that were necessary for sustaining life), I’ve barely stuck my head outside. It’s really good. Really, really good. Within a few minutes of starting, something so incomprehensible and taboo-breaking (in terms of what you see on TV shows) happens that makes you realize how alien and threatening the Cylons are (the Cylons being the Big Bad of the series). The acting is great, the writing is fantastic, there are strong female characters and I am utterly hooked. I have to spend the next three days finishing season one, I have no life, but I don’t care. It’s that good.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my DVD player.