Geeking Out And Loving It

vancouver, Barbara Hodgson, vancouver museum

I think I'm well on my way to coming to terms with my innate geekiness. Embracing my inner "nerble", as my friend puts it. That's probably why I have no problem sharing with you the highlight of my Thursday (besides Lunchtruck, of course... and all those wonderful TT commentators - really, you oughta go visit them).

What's the highlight, you ask?

My after-work trip to the Vancouver Museum to view the "No Place For a Lady" exhibit.

Yup. I spent a summer afternoon wandering the halls of a museum. Again. I think I'll have to give my inner nerble a name soon. Not Sybil.

I've been wanting to see the exhibit since it opened in November, but life kept getting in the way. By the time I finally set a date to go with a coworker, I caught myself playing the rueful "I've built it up too much and now I'll be disapointed" mind game. But I shouldn't have worried. The curators worked with local author Barbara Hodgson to create an exhibit that would bring to life the stories of lady travelers from her book of the same name, and it works beautifully. They've created tableaus that capture the essence of thebook, and showcase different aspects of the lady traveller; scientist, writer, collector, archeologist, explorer, dilletante.

I had to laugh though. I visited the VM's website this morning, and it seems Barbara herself will be telling tales at the exhibit this Sunday, July 9th. Yes, the gods goddesses cats are laughing at me.

From the website:

No Place For a Lady: Guided Gallery Tour
Sunday July 9th, 2006, 1:30PM

Hear Barbara Hodgson tell tales about the courageous women who, "endured Russian bed bugs; unveiled secrets of Turkish harems; endured Africa's scorching heat... plagues of scorpions and traversed raging Tibetan rivers." A few travellers include: Alexandra David-Neel, the first European women to enter Lhasa, the Tibetan city forbidden to foreigners, archaeologist Gertrude Bell, exceptional travel writer Isabella Bird and Dutch mother and daughter explorers of the Nile River, Alexine and Harriet Tinne.

Barbara Hodgson is a Vancouver-based writer, book designer, photographer, traveller and collector. Her novels include: The Tattooed Map, The Sensualist, and Hippolyte's Island. Her non-fiction works include: Opium: A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon, The Rat: A Perverse Miscellany, In the Arms of Morpheus: The Tragic History of Laudanum, Morphine and Patent Medicines and Good and Evil in the Garden. She is also co-author of Paris Out of Hand, a fictional guidebook to Paris.

*****
Normally I don't follow horrorscopes so much as I chuckle at them, but this particular writer has the uncanny ability to write things that seem possible.

So you can imagine my thoughts when I saw this:

Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can the buggers is to use a larger can. So says Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics. I urge you to keep that in mind during the coming week, Taurus. You or someone close to you may suffer from a blissful mania or temporary insanity that leads them to think that liberating the canned worms is a wise idea. Maybe it will ultimately prove to be the right thing to do, but it could cause a ruckus in the short run. In any case, make it your job to have a barrel-size can on hand for the re-containment.

See this makes me a wee bit nervous. I've got family dinners this weekend (one with Lunchtruck's family, one with mine) and we're a fairly boisterous lot. The last thing I'd want is a can'o'worms at either one of these family functions.

Your turn - do you follow horoscopes or things of that ilk? Why or why not?