Starships, supersoldiers and steampunk.

Neon in the window
Sirens far away
News on the radio, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday

Concrete Blonde, Happy Birthday

Friday afternoon, and it's more or less the middle of my birthday.  As usual, I've booked the day off - generally I take the entire week, but in this case it's next week instead, I'm off to Ontario to visit my friend Colin. It's grey and rainy here in Vancouver, but I've had a pleasantly relaxing day regardless - a much needed break, work this week was a bit manic, to say the least.

It's a generally accepted fact that I'm a tough crowd when it comes to birthday presents, due to the fact that first, if there's something that I want, I tend to buy it, and second, my interests are a bit off the beaten path.  When you combine these aspects of my life, it's challenging to pick something which is both of interest to me and which I don't already own.

That being said, in the past few years people have stepped up in an admirable fashion that fully recognizes my geek-oriented lifestyle.  As an example, completely out of the blue yesterday one of my coworkers, Glen the field training supervisor, surprised me with a model kit for the Enterprise NX-01*.  Not too surprisingly, it's a snap-together model (they generally avoid letting people like me use model airplane glue) but at least I fit into the age range for the skill level.

After some negotiation, the Evil Doctor Smith weighed in with Captain America:  The Winter Soldier on blu-ray, an excellent movie that's just recently hit the stores, and one that I'm looking forward to watching again in high definition.  Hmmm...you know, I'm not sure that the good Doctor has actually seen this film.  If not, we'll need to plan a movie night - the combination of drama, martial arts and athletic stunts (with a pinch of parkour) should work really well for her.

However, I have to give my artist friend Norah the prize for the Geek Gift of the Year (pending late-arriving presents, there are still some districts that haven't reported in, as they say on election night.)

Last night Norah treated me to an excellent dinner at Cloud Nine, a rotating restaurant located on the 43rd floor of a hotel on Robson Street.  While we were waiting for our appetizer to arrive, Norah somewhat nervously (see above re: the challenge of picking presents) presented me with a hardcover copy of the first British edition of The Difference Engine, a collaborative 1990 steampunk novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, poster boys of the cyberpunk genre. 

Oh, sorry, that's not quite correct.  She actually presented me with a SIGNED first edition of The Difference Engine in hardcover. Given that she was only able to describe William Gibson as "that Canadian science fiction author who lives in Point Grey", to the person who was helping her choose a book, it's an impressive accomplishment to have come up with such a fabulous gift.

Thanks again for a perfect evening, Norah, and for future reference, you may now consider yourself a fully-fledged geek gift guru.

 - Sid

*  For non-fans, this is the Enterprise from Enterprise.**

** Ummm - did that help?