My Nerdy Boyfriend

My boyfriend, Mike, is one of the best guys I know. He is sweet, kind, attentive (when he's not on his phone), has a great sense of humor, handy, communicates beautifully, artistic, extremely supportive, financially responsible, BUT he is quite nerdy (in a good way). He is a mechanical engineer getting his Master's degree at Texas A&M.

(Won a poster contest in the Mechanical Engineering Department, competed with 33 other Undergrad, Master and PhD students)

He is originally from Lawrence, Kansas, but moved to Texas to attend the best college in the US, where he has a 4.0 GPA for the 5 years he has been here. Smart? Yes! Nerdy? Yes!! We met at our church, Grace Bible, in the graduate and young professionals group in October of 2012. I would be lying if I said it was love at first sight since we both had crushes on other people in grad group. Thankfully those crushes didn't work out. We got to know each other at a grad group camping trip and that's where my attraction to him started.

He invited me to go bowling with his friends(which has been a Wednesday night tradition ever since) and we had a blast. I was definitely interested in him. Thanks to him I learned to bowl well and sometimes (rarely) even beat him! Proof:

(Yes, I am Glue Stick. Originally it started as Glow Worm and morphed into this somehow)

We hung out in groups for a while and then on October 15th he asked me on an official date. The rest is history. So, enough with praising my awesome boyfriend, let's go back to the nerdy side of him. At first I could tell he was smart and that he liked to figure out how things work. For example, we were sitting in a coffee shop one day and I was talking about something, probably really serious (jk), and he was just staring at the ceiling and the lights and I could see his mind churning. I stopped talking and asked him what he was trying to figure out. He said he was trying to figure out the engineering behind the lights and piping and whatever else there was to it. I let him think on it until he figured it out, or was happy with what he thought they did. :) This has happened many times. I don't think it is annoying at all, I like it. I like seeing his brilliant mind working. He also loves technology, maybe not as much as his brothers Juni and Issac, but enough to make him sound like he is talking a foreign language when he talks about it. I found out he was even more nerdy when him and his friend starting talking Star Wars and then.... Star Trek. Star Trek?? Really? Ok, I can overlook that as long as it doesn't come up in everyday conversation. He also is a book worm. He LOVES to read. He reads all sorts of genres of books, but he loves Epic Fantasy novels. The Wheel of Time series, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, etc. He also likes to work on cars; this is not nerdy, this is hot. He bought a 60's Mustang a couple years ago and fixed it all up and then sold it. Very cool if you ask me. Ok, so on to the main reason for this post. Mike enjoys all the Marvel Comics superheros (a nerd must). I believe he has read most of the comics so he was thrilled when the movies started coming out. He has seen all the movies based on the Marvel Superheros (probably more than once), so when Iron Man 3 came out, of course he had to go see the midnight showing. He bought tickets in advance, but was working on a related project even before the tickets went on sale. He started researching the Iron Man armor and got in his head that he would dress up for the opening night of the movie. I think he saw the prices/amount of time it took to make the suits and armor and decided on maybe just a helmet. He looked at pricing for helmets, but good ones were $400+. He was not going to pay that amount and decided he could make one just as good. He researched and found this method to make 3D objects out of  2D paper. It's called Pepakura. You can print out designs onto cardstock paper and cut them out then glue them together and fold the paper to make a 3D object. You have to reinforce the paper mold with some sort of hardening. He decided to use a mixture of bondo and resin as his hardening agent. He filled the inside of the helmet with the mixture and let it dry. He did a second coat just for reinforcement. Then he moved on to the outside. I got to help with most of it, and it was actually pretty fun. We bondoed the outside of it to cover up the ridges of the bent paper and he let it dry then sanded it down so it would be smooth.

He did another coat until he was semi-happy with it. He then painted it all silver and after that dried painted it gold and red and scratched it up a bit so it would look like the "after battle" helmet. He glued some sunglasses in the eye slits and it was complete. I think it turned out great! I was very impressed with it.

Mike and I had dinner before we headed over to the movie theater and I decided to wear it on the way over and stare at people as they passed by Mike's car. I also wore it into the place we ate at and ordered with it on. One old guy thought it was the coolest thing ever and wanted to know if I could fly. The cashier was so freaked out he wouldn't even look at me. So after dinner we got to the theater early to get some seats and Mike wore the helmet and his arc reactor he made for Halloween. Lots of people looked on admiring his work and jealous that they didn't have one. He didn't wear it during the movie since it was a bit snug and you could barely see out of it, but his entrance was great! I think I can live with his nerdiness as long as it doesn't get out of hand. :)