010 - Disneyland Plan (A List)

So it looks like my old High School compatriot and adulthood friend, Tina, will be joining us at Disneyland! Since our room has a fold-out sofa bed, why not? It will be interesting to see how this works out... will it strengthen our friendships, or sever them irreparably? Cohabitation, even for just a few days, can strain even the strongest of bonds...

SO! The stuff we need to take care of in the next two weeks (TWO WEEKS?!?!?) include:

• Book our ride on the Super Shuttle from the Airport to the Hotel (and back)
  
• Plan our first night dinner (oh PLEASE don't let us get suckered into dining at Captain Kidd's Buffet)
  
• Plan our outfits (four days = five shirts, two kinds of pants, lots of socks and underwear, one hoodie each)
  
• Get our Trading Pin Lanyards in order (100 new pins for us to take WOO!)
  
• Make a vest for Molly (she got a tablet with a data plan on it for Christmas, as a forerunner to her getting a phone some day soon. She needs an easy way to carry it around that isn't a bag that she could leave sitting somewhere, I propose a vest with a large interior pocket)
  
• Get tickets to Disneyland (still waiting to hear back from the person who was going to get these for us, so FINGERS CROSSED that all is okay there!)
  
• Get packed (this is all up to Crystal, she's awesome at knowing exactly what we need)
  
• Fill in Autograph Books and prep the new one (print out pictures, make sure we have a good sharpie)
  
• Load Molly's tablet with Comic Books (I'd rather have her reading comics than playing games)
  
• Assemble The Accessories (Choose which ears we're taking, gather our glow stuff, make sure there are batteries in the Bubble Gun, bring our multi-charger, extra phone batteries, lots of USB cables, Mio Energy Drink, pennies & quarters, autograph books)

011 - I'm A Huge Fan!

Earlier today it struck and confounded me that we have no gender-neutral term for "Fanboy"/"Fangirl" in the English language. The Japanese have the word "Otaku" which means "a young person who is obsessed with computers or particular aspects of popular culture to the detriment of their social skills" which is just *perfect*, but c'mon... this is 'MURIKA! We can do better than that!

"Geek", "Nerd", "Dork"... none of those really fit a Fanboy (or Fangirl) as it is completely easy to be any one of those things without any true connection to a fandom. Somebody suggested jut the root term of "Fan", but that doesn't work either; I watch The Flash on TV every week and own a T-Shirt because I'm a FAN, but a FANBOY/FANGIRL catalogs the continuity errors on the show and flies across the country to a convention so they can confront actor Grant Gustin with this information and demand an explanation.

Certain off-the-wall words were suggested, such as "Zealot", "Acolyte" and "Thrall", but those are too *fancy*. I'm looking for something more contemporary, something that's pretty common and slips in just fine with current vocabulary.

Eventually, we found the correct term; "Enthusiast". It has just enough of a creep-factor to it to impart that you are a step beyond the common fan, sitting on the razor-thin line between "Obsessive/Compulsive" and "Stalker". It has just the right amount of gravitas to bring it in step with the gender-specific roles of Fanboy and Fangirl :)