I love real nerds.  People who revel in something arcane or unusual or boring to others and feel no shame.  Me, I am a knitter.  I read knitting blogs.  People buy me yarn as gifts, and I like it.  I teach children to knit in hopes that there will be a new generation of knitters to follow me.  I can explain a purl, knit, seed, and rib stitch, but I won’t.  I am already boring the non-knitters out there.  Don’t leave yet, I’m just trying to show that I understand and appreciate dorky hobbies.

My in-laws are birders.  They will bore you with their fascination about the list of birds they have seen in their life (which has an official name that I can’t remember) because they are passionate about birds.  Recently they went to The Biggest Week in American Birding.  Did you go?  I bet you didn’t. It’s in Northwest Ohio, the warbler capital of the world.  Really it is.

For some reason I got curious about what was involved in this festival, so I looked at the agenda.  It was amazing.  Here is what you missed:

Session 1: Skydancing:  Woodcocks on the Wing

WOODCOCKS?  My in-laws told us all about this amazing bird without once giggling. Really, it’s called a woodcock.  When I told my parents about the session my dad said, “Woodcocks are good eatin’.” Again, hysterical!  In case you were wondering, no, my parents and in-laws are not close.  However, they do have in common that they are both more mature than I am.

Session 2: Bird Tattoo Contest

I was so excited to hear about this contest from my in-laws.  Were there people trying to put the best tattoo in a tiny bird?  Were they racing to tattoo some kind of numbers on birds to track them as they migrated?  Were they looking for the best tattoos of birds inked on people skin?  Were they live tattooing people with bird images at the festival?  (I wonder what body part you would tattoo a woodcock onto?)    Were they dipping woodpecker beaks in ink and having the birds peck designs into people?  (Holy crap.  Woodpecker is hysterical too.)  The options were all amazing.  The tragedy was that my in-laws didn’t go!  I had to look up what happened online. First off, I learned the tattoo contest was followed by karaoke, which made it that much better.  Second, the bird tattoo contest was people showing off their tattoos of birds. The winner was pretty impressive.  I wonder if they sang songs by The Eagles and The Byrds after the tattoos were displayed?

That’s what you missed in Ohio.  My brother is at Comic Con right now, so I’m going to go check out the agenda.  I wonder what awesome dorky things he might be missing right now.