To ask what nerdy/uncool things really excite you?

[FiveFarthings]

Yesterday I took delivery of a new handheld cordless mini vacuum and I couldn’t wait for it to charge up so I could go and Hoover my skirting boards without having to drag the massive big Dyson around the house! I was so excited I was going round the house last night looking for things to Hoover up! My husband called me sad but I was so happy!

I also love buying anything new for the kitchen. I bough a multi bladed herb cutter the other day and oh it gave me such pleasure to use it on some parsley for dinner!

When I was at uni I used to love buying matching stationary which some people might think is a bit sad.

I am a married 33-year-old mother of one and this is my life now

What are your nerdy/sad/uncool things in life that bring you excitement/joy?

@Snoozysnoozy as long as you don't go around wantonly leaving cables trailing across walkways, I'm sure we'd get along just fine. I'm nice, really!

Genealogy and family history

Murder/mystery series on TV, but generally only British ones.
My favourite is Jonathan Creek; it's no exaggeration to say I've seen each episode hundreds of times. I also love Poirot, Marple, Midsomer Murders, Shakespeare and Hathaway, Death in Paradise and, lately, I've rekindled my love for Hetty Wainthropp Investigates

Oh god I've just thought of another thing.
I read a WordPress blog called Snark Valley in which the blogger reads and reviews every single Sweet Valley High book.

I have never read a Sweet Valley High book. I have no interest in reading a Sweet Valley High book. But this blog is brilliant and I'm obsessed with it

Oh yes to planes and post boxes. I saw my first VR post box this year but can't remember where it was now. Somewhere that surprised me. There's a beautiful GR one in Buxton. Is there a website that lists them?

I used to get the bus to Manchester airport as a young teen and go up to the top of the multi storey car park with my binoculars. Many a happy afternoon up there. Fighter jets are my big phwoar though. Top Gun has been one of my favourite films since I was 12. For the planes.

Watercolour paints. Not painting, which I have little talent for, but researching and organising and swatching out the colours. Plus watching YouTube clips of other people doing the same, of course!

Finding eco-friendly solutions to household and garden jobs. This week I bought a box of live ladybirds (sent via airmail) and a special bug net to tie to my roses. They vacuumed up about a million aphids overnight. So satisfying I could burst!

Can I say that this thread is tempting me to a life of complete social isolation. So many intriguing ideas to indulge my daggyness! Right, off to learn hieroglyphics in time for Xmas party chats.

@SeraphinaDombegh there's a website!!!

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:QueenVictoriaapostboxessintheeUnitedKingdom

Flasks. Could be food flasks or hot or cold drink flasks. I have loads. I find them fascinating and always have to look at them in shops.

Election statistics and graphics.

I stay up all night😂

My life is saturated in uncool.
Sewing
Knitting
Embroidery
Trains
Motorways
Geology
Technical drawing
Folk music
Church
Women's Institute especially competitions
DIY and fixing/recycling /upcycling
Storage solutions
IKEA
Uncool holidays like Wales
Lord of the Rings / Game of thrones etc

Honestly how people get by with no hobbies is beyond me.

Ooh thank you @KilljoysDutch I will check that out!

Honestly how people get by with no hobbies is beyond me

Agree. It's always good to have something on the go isn't it.

To the PP who mentioned the commemorative 50p coins - I love them as well! Although I've only got a few. I got a Sherlock Holmes one a few months ago - that's my favourite. I'm sure I read somewhere that Paddington coins were being minted but I might have imagined that...

Fivefarthings no it's not a Gtech - it's a Vax. But the joy it brings sounds the same!! I've got an Aldi one as well which I think is better than the Vax tbh - it's got a little torch on it for spotlighting the crumbs!!

Le Creuset pans excite me

Trees. I know all of them but it goes beyond that. I need to touch them, I feel an energy from them. They fascinate me because they're effectively immortal beings that look after each other. Trees will "send" nutrients to a struggling tree nearby even though it needs them too. They're amazing.

Also a flightradar geek.

Old pottery. I lift up the plates in restaurants, shout out the make when we’re watching a film and make a beeline for the dining room in stately homes. I also scour charity shops and car boot sales for one particular type.
Fabric in general and patchwork in particular.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

So another map nerd here. My masters is actually in that and I worked solely in that area for a while but now I use it about 30% of the time. I used to go to sleep and dream maps I’d been making that day. If I feel like I’ve smashed a map that day, I bring my laptop home and show DH who could not care less. He’s forever dragging me away from maps when we’ve visited places. Dunelm has a phase of stocking globes in and I would spend about 20 minutes turning each globe checking they were all right. My maps obsession also extends to spending ages looking on google street view. I once spent about 3 hours ‘driving’ around Newquay on google street view. I have also done my commute on street view - because the 1hr drive isn’t bad enough in real life, I had to do it on a computer screen 🤦‍♀️

I’m a huge geography nut (if you couldn’t tell with the maps) and I work in an environment field so I spend a lot of time telling DH about biodiversity, rivers, carbon capture of trees as we are enjoying a park somewhere. I get very excited by lots of stuff and a drive/walk anywhere ends up me telling him all about why it’s good/bad. I get even more excited when we visit our frequent places and I notice there have been improvement projects and I tell him about what they’ve done and why they’ve done it. Or one of my projects.

Excel but I don’t get the satisfaction unless it’s a well functioning and pretty spreadsheet. It has to have an appealing colour palette that is consistent throughout the sheets.

And one that most people here won’t get (and judge me for if they do get it), I like playing Skyrim (video game about dragons). There’s expansion packs and you can build your own houses when you reach a certain level. I’ve played many times now, doing the necessary tasks to get to the point when I could build my own houses. I like decorating and deciding which is the nicest house to move my game spouse and adopted child to. You can also make armour and I like making a full set of each armour and displaying them in my houses.

@Skittlesandbeer there has been talk in my field of pests that are resistant to pesticides but one of my favourite quotes is “I’ve yet to meet an aphid resistant to being eaten by a ladybug”. For a longer term solution, you could look at creating an area of garden that will attract ladybugs (as well as other beneficials depending on what else in your garden). Natural predators are amazing for your garden.

I feel like I’ve successfully outed myself now with this post.

I play a game called ingress. It's a location game by the same company as Pokémon Go (ingress is the original, developed before pogo). I get stupidly excited when I capture a new portal, complete a new mission or earn a new badge (I'm like an overgrown brownie). I've recently started going to social events to do with this game, and socialising with the other geeks makes me happy.

Neurology, Dungeons & Dragons, Cosplay....

I am rather excited by Tudor history. I tried to get ds1 interested and it worked for a couple of hours marching him enthusiastically around Hampton court palace - but alas, I couldn't keep him interested much after that

Walking around my garden checking the plants growth, thinking about getting it ready for summer or closing it up for winter (wrapping those olive trees in cotton wool)

WW2 books and history.

Collecting random bits of pretty and old china

Cutting expensive cosmetic packaging in half to get all the last bits out. So satisfying

MarineTraffic! It's like flight radar but for boats.

I started using it when dh was working on fishing boats so I could see where he was and I still use it when he's out on shouts on the lifeboat but he works on merchant navy boats now so I can't see him unless he's close-ish to a coast but I do still love looking at it when I can't sleep.

My favourite weird boat name I've spotted so far is 'Fuzzy Squirrel'.

Oh my god. There's a boat tracker app?!

Goes to the play store

For those of you that love FlightRadar or Plane Finder, try Ship Finder, just as much fun, but with ships!

I love politics. Bloody love it. Really got into it this year. Never miss Question Time or PMQs. Only good thing that's came out of Brexit, IMO

I also love fonts. Get made fun of all the time about it at work. Really love a good font.

Love excel spreadsheets also. Really satisfying. Everyone else thinks I should be annoyed that my boss keeps getting me to create spreadsheets that he doesn't even use. But I like it. Love learning new excel tricks.

I'm only 25. And I used to be quite cool. Not sure what happened to me?

I should say I'm also a bit of a lifeboat geek and know a lot about their different classes of boats.