Last night my More Nerdy Teacher (I have two who switch off each week) had some difficulty explaining a concept that confused most of the class. I raised my hand to offer some information I remember reading in a book.

"That's totally different," he snapped. "And that did not help the discussion at all."

I sat there stunned. Did my mega-geek teacher just shut me down?

"Well, it (the idea) helped me...(Bitch)" I replied. (I didn't really call him a Bitch).

I stewed until the break when I unloaded on my friend who found the whole exchange high-larious.

"I think he just likes to hear himself talk," she said

I went back to my seat after the break imagining the scathing reviews I would write of his teaching skills at the end of the quarter. Have you heard of the Socratic method? Have you heard of "teaching?" It's not all about knowing the subject, you also need a strong dose of Give-A-Shit-tuitiveness, along with a passion for the subject. I considered yawning through the rest of his spark-killing lecture, but decided that I paid too much for the class not to try to learn something. However, it never got boring because I had the opportunity to watch my teacher have a meltdown.

First he got a leg cramp in mid-lecture.

"Ow, my leg just cramped up," he announced to the class.

We all waited for it to subside as he sat rubbing his leg. Then he began a stream of babble that seemed to bore even him. As people played with their phones, nodded off, or just spaced out he seemed to come to life in a sort of human, endearing, Anthony Michael Hall kind of beaten down, yet, still kicking way. But even Anthony Michael Hall didn't implode. It didn't take long to realize that his Teacher Act was over, he had ripped off the mask when he slammed his student.

He tried to wrap the class up twenty minutes before it was supposed to end. By that time I had forgotten about the scathing reviews, and found myself rooting for him to pull himself together. He had fried himself in his own pan of know-it-all nerdness.

I always felt that it was my responsibility to make sure justice was served in life. That's a really fucking tiring job. So glad I don't have to do it anymore.

Just for today, nerd karma lives.

My inner-geek has emerged as the result of my enrollment in a User Experience Design class. Theories about the web is like anger to Bruce Banner; my inner-babbling nerd busts out and next thing I know I'm spewing out my thoughts to anyone kind enough to listen. I know I avoid those people at Coffee Shops, but such is my karma that I now vow to pay that lonely old man shouting obscenities to his newspaper some time and respect. My mom was a librarian and while my research skills consist of typing some words into Google and waiting for the page to load, I must have some latent-Dewey decimal gene that threatens to turn me into a pasty woman who gets excited by categories (my mom - not me - always said librarians were weird).

Warning: Half-baked, unresearched ideas approaching.

So, the Information Age hit us like an asteroid, and, it seems that not only was the human brain not built to process so much data without going into permanent ADD overdrive, but neither are many of our existing data-viewing machines.

In the Stone Ages, we only had a few things to process, like, say how to turn wild Elk into dinner and bedding. Who to sleep with to protect you from the Woolly Mammoth. Where to go the bathroom without getting killed by a lion. All that maybe took up a couple of walls on the cave of hieroglyphics. Then came farming (I'm skipping some stuff) and we had to learn how to milk cows and rotate crops (I said I don't research), and then the Industrial Revolution arrived and we learned how to shop for washing machines and look at magazine filled with images that made us want to shop some more. Fast forward to Now, and how to hide that annoying person on Facebook, and all kinds of crap that has nothing to do with staying alive and procreating, and, yet, takes so much bandwidth.

Sure, I would rather search for buttons than kill a woolly mammoth, but is this how I want to spend my life?

This is the problem. More to come.

Just for today, I'm a geek.

I left my lights on (again) last night. This morning my neighbor had the pleasure of witnessing my mechanical skills first hand. Guess how I learned which cable is positive and which is negative? The good news is nothing exploded and I didn't drain her battery too much....(I'm taking her to lunch).

The weather today was a slice of heaven. I wanted to run out to the beach and fry myself up a tan. And then I visited my Facialist/Eyebrow Lady who furrowed her brow and said in a very serious tone that I have to stay out of the sun and wear SPF 50 for the rest of my life. Damn ancestral genes of blindingly white skin!

I did manage to make it through another Baby Shower this afternoon (I'm getting good at this). However, I failed to escape before the Present Opening Ceremony.

"It's all a bunch of crap," said my High School Friend/Experienced Mother Of Two standing next to me as we watched our friend display a state-of-the-art baby thermometer.

Glad to know there's a reason why I was bored to tears.

Came home and checked the Online Dating Site to discover that the love continues to flow. Recently, this gem landed in my mailbox.

"Sorry I had to say i saw your pic and seriously have to change my pants and stop
drooling!!! ;)"

Why thank you, Sir...(I presume he meant this as a compliment), but I don't know if I can handle this much love. My friend likens Internet Dating to shopping at Ross.

"You have to sort through all the riff-raff to get to the good stuff."

Yes, but $5 jeans don't send shivers down my spine and make lose faith in humanity. (although, maybe they should).

Just for today, I can make it through a beautiful Saturday.

Charlie Sheen is waving the winning flag, Obama thinks he's winning against the Republicans, and then there are the crazy people....the burden of Adulthood (whatever that is) for me hasn't so much been the responsibility to pay bills (though, that sucks, too) so much as the gradual awareness that on the continuum of Mildly Functioning to Losing Their Shit, a frightening high percentage seem to be working their way towards the latter. Or maybe they were already there. I think I was better at spotting them in high school. Then I got "mature," escaped to mafia America and, suddenly, talked myself into believing that things like "education," "success" and basic hygiene could separate the guy in an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt from a guy pushing a grocery cart and wearing a really old smelly A&F shirt.

My neighbor was always a little lost, a quasi-hippy surfer dude who lived off of his trust and hung out with all the other quasi-hippy surfer dudes. But he had friends and could hold a conversation about the weather. Sure, he didn't own a car, and spent a lot of time traversing the beach front neighborhood, but he moved in circles of people who talked, washed their clothes, exercised. Now he drinks from morning to night and doesn't look like he's changed his clothes in a week. He used to annoy me, then creep me out, now it's like watching the people on the Titanic. The edge was a lot closer than I or anyone thought.

Just for today, I'm grateful that I'm holding it together.

Because I'm a grain of sand in the crapped-on, dead fish smelling beach of our once-great, now questionable nation, I can't expect to function well for for any length of time before I start to go a little Charlie Sheen in my own way. Sure, I'm not going to smoke crack and trash my employer (though, it works pretty well for him) but I do have my own special gift for screwing up my life for no apparent reason. My specialty is leaving my car lights on in broad daylight. Apparently, AAA doesn't work out of altruism (NOTE: If you help a stranded woman get her car started, you're automatically mildly hot), and so after the first ten times of calling my trusted friends (for $65 a ride), I sprung for a jump start cable. Then came the fun part: begging strangers to help me jump my car.

"Why don't you buy a new battery?" said Helpful Man.

It's not my battery, dear Sir. It's my head. Who the hell is gong to jump start my head?

I'm fine. I'm gainfully employed and well-caffinated. How does everyone else hold it together who is barely making it?

Just for today, I'm human.