#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a ginger (and a nerd of all trades!)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Layne. I forget how we first started talking … I think it was on twitter, and then we totes became besties of Facebook, and then we started reading each other’s blogs and like commenting and like and like and like … this chick is RAD annndd she’s a ginger. No, seriously. Welcome to the world of Layne and the thoughts that are inside of her head. HIT IT GIRL! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover’s Layne Tanley

I am a nerd-of-all-trades. It’s sort of like a jack-of-all-trades, except with more cowbell. I love all things nerd. I have Carl Sagan and Mark Twain quotes on my kitchen towels. No, seriously. I am also a redhead, which for some reason seems like a personality trait rather than a description of appearance. I blame all the teasing as a child and innuendo as a woman. I was born in Kansas, lived in Jersey from ages 4 to 11 and then moved to Houston. I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could. I have a passion for photography, music, coffee, and a slightly co-dependent relationship with two miniature Australian shepherds, as well as a serious case of the road-rage.

I suppose if you looked at my kindle home screen, you would be further illuminated in regards to my varied nerd pallet. A mix of fantasy, sic-fi, nostalgia, and a dash of camp. I can’t really say where this came from, my parents are not particularly nerdy, per se. I think it stems from being a creatively driven person who also has an obsession with communication.

When I was in 4th grade, the school’s holiday fund raiser came around… you remember those, yes? There was a catalogue filled with nut mixes, cranberry scented candles, and random decorations. Basically, the “seasonal” isle at any local drug store right about… well, this time of year. Remember the page with the wrapping paper samples? By the time the every one in the neighborhood’s fingers had flipped through those samples, you couldn’t close the thing anymore. Anyway, you would get this other flyer with the catalogue showing the various “prizes” you could get based on the amount you raised. Each page had a price range (i.e. $0 – $24, or $25 – $60, etc) and a selection of bad crap, stupid crap, and ugly crap. But to me, the 9-year-old nerd… it was an opportunity. For on a page captioned with the price range of somewhere between 23 and 42 boxes of holiday trail mix and 10 rolls of holly leaf wrapping paper was a picture of a plastic point and shoot camera with no flash.

Something in me lit up and I had. to. have. that. camera.

Seriously, guys, that thing was probably worth $15 back then, but I had a goal, and I wanted that camera. So when I showed the catalogue and accompanying flyer to my step-mom that day after school, and informed her of my goal, I remember at some point making the decision to go to work immediately on the surrounding neighborhood and then she suggested I bring it with me to the bowling alley on the night when my father played in a weekly league. So, I did. And within days I had sold enough holiday crap that I actually surpassed the prize tier my camera was in and could have upgraded. The day I turned in my orders was pretty epic. I knew that in a few short weeks I would have that camera in my hands.

I ended up getting some film as a christmas present, and was told I would have to do chores in order to pay for getting my film developed. And so began my romance with documenting the world, and the ache in my face from squinting my eye behind a viewfinder. I also stick my tongue out of one side of my mouth, fixed in effort, when I am particularly vested in the subject before my lens.

One of my other biggest obsessions is the cosmos– my boyfriend is a rocket scientist at NASA-Johnson Space Center, here in Houston, and as such, I have enjoyed the many opportunities his access grants me. One of the best days of my life was spent walking around in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility aka SMVF, or if you want to get super native, Building 9.

Most of the public only gets to view that room from a plexiglass hallway around the second floor perimeter, something I remember doing as a kid when I visited Space Center Houston for the first time. NASA was having an open house for the department he worked for and so we were able to go see the real thing. Those are the ACTUAL mockups that Astronauts are trained on. So complete was my joy, that when I needed to take a break in the little girls room, between gawking at the SARJ (Solar Array Rotary Joint)– pronounced “sarge”– and drooling over the “roomy” interior of the Orion Capsule Mock-up, while opening the door into the ladies room inside Building 9 I turned to my boyfriend and said, “Am I about to pee in a bathroom that Peggy Witson (a female astronaut) has peed in?” To which he replied, “Probably.” And then I quickly grabbed my camera from him and took it INTO THE BATHROOM TO TAKE PICTURES.

Do you know who Dr. Peggy Witson is? She has logged the most EVA (space walk) hours of ANY woman in space. She also has the record for most spaceflight hours by a woman. She could probably kick your ass.

We also got access to the Apollo Control Room. If you take a tour of JSC via Space Center Houston, you only get to see this room through the glass wall of a “viewing room.” Being inside the room where history went down was astounding. Here I am sitting at the very console where Gene Kranz was when the words of Jim Lovell, “Houston, I believe we’ve had a problem here,” (those are the actual words, not the abbreviated version you hear in the movie) came down the line to the Apollo Control Room.

Another one of those “best days ever” was last October, when I travelled to Florida, to view the shuttle launch of Discovery for STS-133, which (at that time) was scheduled to launch on November 1st, 2010. I was a guest of the Shuttle Program Manager via the Rocket Scientist Boyfriend. You see, as a NASA employee, he got to put his name into a lottery to be chosen for the opportunity and I believe you’re allowed up to three guests. I was one of his three. This was a HUGE deal, as there were only a few launches left, and I had always dreamed of seeing a shuttle launch in person.

You have to provide your own transportation to the area, but you get a few perks which included a VIP tour of Kennedy Space Center, and a trip up to the launch pad. As a bona fide space fanatic, this epic moment could not have been prepared for:

Dudes! I was SO close to a SPACE SHUTTLE!

While traveling back from KSC on the tour bus, we had the chance to participate in an informal Q&A with retired Astronaut Bill McArthur. I completely geeked out and was super nervous to ask him to take a picture with me, because after all the awesomeness of that tour, I wasn’t sure if I could be trusted to act like a grown woman. I got over it, though, and he was really gracious and kind and excited that someone my age was excited about human space flight.

Unfortunately, the launch was scrubbed during multiple attempts due to technical issues, and finally weather forced them the launch to be pushed to February 2011, after the original launch window had passed. So, I never saw a shuttle launch in real life, but what I did get to see was amazing, profound, life changing, and I couldn’t help but me optimistic about NASA. Regardless of what anyone tells you, we should NEVER stop exploring. After 50 years of human space flight, we cannot allow it to end. It’s just too wonderful, too inspiring, too challenging to stop.

We haven’t even begun to reach our full potential, haven’t even scratched the surface of what is possible. Those days were two of the best of my life, if only for the moments when I realized the difference between dreaming and doing– that tiny actions taken in a specific direction can lead to changing the entire world.

This is also a metaphor for where I now find myself in my own life. That now, more than any other time, I need to turn my hopes and dreams into actions. I’m not entirely sure what it is I need to do just yet, or how to do it… as Carl Sagan said, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

So, yes. I am a nerd. And proud of it!