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favorite things shopping technogeeky travel

Tokyo with Gate 1

Zojoji Temple and Tokyo Tower!

Short on time? Guided tours are a great way to see as much as humanly possible, as quickly as humanly possible, and Gate 1 Travel is a pro at it. I can’t compare them to other tour companies, as they are the only ones we have ever used. One thing I LOVE is that all of their tour guides are local. Seeing Italy? Your Roman tour guide will be accommodating but slightly aloof. England? A tweed jacket every day, seat assignments on the bus, meal stops are quick and comprised of recommendations for pre-made sandwiches. Scotland? Northface jacket and hiking boots, a lot of trust that since the tour group is comprised of adults, people can take care of themselves. Ireland? So much cynicism and distrust of the government.

And in Japan: our Japanese tour guide was very possibly the politest person we have ever met. But also, passive-aggressive and a little rude if you actually knew what she meant. It was hilariously awesome.

But I digress! Our first day with the tour group was a full day of seeing all the things in Tokyo. ALL THE THINGS.

First stop was right next door to the hotel, Zojoji temple. One of the beautiful things on the grounds were the Jizo statues: each statue represents a child who has died. These statues are often adorned with red hats and bibs, and they are protectors of the children who have passed.

Next stop was the imperial palace! Which you can’t get close to at all … so it makes for an odd choice for a tourist stop. Beautiful park and grounds, though. Complete with an ice cream shop! Very reminiscent of the DC mall, now that I think about it. (But no eating while walking in Japan! Also, no ice cream on the bus.)

Then it was back to the bus to head to Asakusa, with the Sensoji temple and Nakamise street. This stop was way worth it! So much so, we made sure the in-laws checked it out later in our trip. The temple was beautiful, and there was a lot of great tourist-shopping on Nakamise street. We only had an hour, so we went with a Conbini lunch.

Next stop, Meiji Shrine!! This one is a serious shrine, massive and beautiful grounds. It was a little bit of a walk from the parking lot to the actual shrine. This one is also well worth it, and a great example of a Shinto shrine (vs. the Buddhist temples we had seen previously.)

In Japan, people follow Buddhist AND Shinto traditions. Our tour guide, Katy, explained that the traditions are so blended, in fact, that the average Japanese person often doesn’t know where one begins and the other ends. She only really learned about the differences in her tour guide training. But quick summary: you get married in a Shinto shrine. Funerals are at Buddhist temples.

Our last stop of the day’s touring took us to another one of Japan’s sacred traditions: shopping! In stark contrast to Nakamise street, Ginza district is very up-scale shopping. We ducked into the Nissan concept store, and also the Sony concept store. Where we saw a $3000 robot dog. A seriously awesome $3000 robot dog. And people were coming in, with their $3000 robot dogs, for $3000 robot dog play dates. Japan, man. Something for everyone.

For dinner, we stopped at a very. fancy. Lawson. And bought pretty much the same stuff we had been buying. Plus, an Olympics 2020 pin! Which … I guess now isn’t going to be a thing … does that make it worth more?

And then it was back to the hotel! Where the husband promptly crashed from exhaustion. Into his twin bed. At 7 pm.

Oh. you. guys. Our twin beds! So our first room at the hotel, I booked through hotels.com. It had a queen or king-sized bed, appropriate for two people. But while we were out and about in Akihabara, they moved our bags to our new room. With two twin beds. Because in Japan: it is more normal for traveling couples to have separate beds. So most hotels are set up that way! We had requested a double bed for all of our accommodations on our tour, but … they are only able to do that when there are rooms available. Which there were not at the Prince Tokyo Hotel.

And so … twin beds. (We had this happen to us before on a guided tour on our 10th anniversary and … it was the best sleep we got that trip. So … separate beds? Not the worst thing …)

So I probably wandered around the hotel, stocked up on snacks at Lawson, and played emoji blitz till I was ready to call it a day.

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favorite things food knitting nerdly shopping technogeeky travel

Tokyo on Our Own

Prince Hotel PJs

The hotels in Japan all seem to come with Pajamas! Yukata, I suppose, but these are like extra long, button-up sleep shirts with 3/4 length sleeves. (Maybe they are full-length sleeves on a non-monkey armed person? Unsure.)

I of course had to try them out! And also there are slippers! They fit size 8 lady feet! They do not fit size 13 man feet.

Also: bidets. I had to work up the courage to try it, but, you guys? I think they are really on to something. They don’t understand how to sell a ticket online because they have been perfecting the bathroom experience.

Also: the hair dryer was incredibly underwhelming. I thought I had come to the land of my hair people (I have twice as much hair as your average human … and each strand is twice as thick … drying my hair is exhausting …) and so I was super excited about the hair dryer sitch. Alas, hotel hair dryers in Japan leave just as much to be desired as the ones in the US.

Breakfast at the Tokyo Prince Hotel? Awesome spread. Western food! Eastern food! Something for everyone at the buffet. So I did what any Asianish-American lady would do: served myself up a bowl of piping hot steamed rice, snagged some butter from the Western toast station, and added some sugar (meant for coffee, I’m sure) from our table. Breakfast butter-sugar rice! (Ok, so probably that has an actual name? I just know it as ‘how I like to eat rice at breakfast.’) Also I loaded up on bacon and fresh fruit. (Tip: fruit is really expensive in Japan. If you have a hotel breakfast buffet, take advantage!)

Y’all, I ate butter-sugar rice every morning we had a breakfast buffet. So good. Also a complete abomination? But so good.

Probably we stopped in the hotel basement Lawson (I LOVED that the hotel had its own Lawson!!) for some bottled water and snacks.

Before we headed out, we swapped out the husband’s sim card for a Japanese one. We had ordered it beforehand and had it shipped to us, just to make things easier. So we had internet and maps and access to google translate everywhere we went! Pretty awesome! And a world of difference from our 5th anniversary trip to Italy where we rented a blackberry so we’d have access to email. EMAIL. No internet. JUST OUR EMAIL. 10 years ago. The world is such a different place, in just 10 years!

Our hotel was a bit of a walk (15 minutes?) to the Hamamatsucho train station, but we had our maps, the weather was perfect, so off we went!

At the station, we struggled with the ticket machine for a bit. From his research, the husband knew we wanted Suica cards, and that we’d start out with $20 on them and add more as we needed it. The menus weren’t super intuitive, but we eventually figured it out and got our cards. (We later learned from another couple on our trip that you can order Suica cards ahead of time and have them shipped to you in the US. Probably for a nice up-charge, but, no fighting with machines!)

So we found the right train, hopped on board, and a few stops later we were in Akihabara. Nerd capital of the world, so, yeah, of course that’s where we started.

First stop was the Mandarake Complex, 8 floors of anime collectibles. Each floor was small, but crowded with … so much. Some of it I recognized, some of it I didn’t. Totoro, that fried egg with a butt, vintage video games, comics, just all completely unnecessary but oh-so-fun stuff! We stopped at a wall of capsule vending machines and found the perfect souvenir. Seriously, this little guy still goes with me everywhere I go.

Next up was Yodobashi Camera. So spacious! Floors and floors of department store goods, not just cameras. Also books, stationery, beauty products, refrigerators, phones, watches … if you want it, they have it.

Lunch at McDonald’s, nothing to write home about there …

And an owl cafe! Not sure why it’s called a ‘cafe’ (they do have a vending machine for drinks?) but they delivered on the owl front!

We rounded out Akihabara with a stop at Don Quijote. If Yodobashi Camera is spacious and classy, Don Quijote is … brash and cluttered? But you have to stop in, it’s like nothing else. The aisles are mazes, the store is floor after floor stacked on top of each other, you never know what you’ll find. It is claustrophobic, but also amazing! Snacks, toiletries, clothes, halloween costumes, toys, they got it!

We snagged some adorable toothbrush covers, they are open-mouthed cats that eat your toothbrush head when it’s packed away in your bag. But also, they eat the bottom of your toothbrush and stand it straight up on the hotel bathroom counter to dry. They are adorable and genius.

My fitbit history tells me that took us over 10 thousand steps, so we likely called it a day and headed back to the hotel to meet our tour group and for our Gate 1 welcome dinner!

We tried everything! Even liked some of it!
Categories
favorite things food life travel

Getting to Japan

October the 6th dawned bright and early, after we got on our first leg of the flight to Houston. Very quick hop.

At the Houston airport, we got some yen at a terrible exchange rate. Got breakfast … I seem to recall the first one didn’t work out … we may have eaten two breakfasts? Just pulled up the google maps of the IAH international terminal: Custom Burgers took a really long time and gave us random breakfast sandwiches we didn’t order. So then we headed to Pappasito’s Cantina for breakfast tacos … which I think we quite enjoyed. Google rates Custom Burgers at 1.9 stars vs. Pappasito’s at 4 stars. Checks out.

At any rate, back to the trip: we had premium economy seats! Premium economy on United, so, eh, but the husband wasn’t completely sardined in. The seats were arranged in a 3/3/3 configuration, so we picked D and E in the middle: an aisle and a middle seat. With no one to climb over us, because seat F is also an aisle. (These are important things to consider when on a 12 hour flight.)

Plane food was mediocre. (Seriously, United: other airlines give their premium economy guests the business class food. Just saying.) We arrived in one piece! Yay!

Made it through the checkpoints in our bleary eyed state, found our luggage, then on to find our driver.

Ok, so weird thing about Japan: you don’t book tickets for things on the internet. Like, there’s no e-commerce. Most technologically advanced country in the world, and there’s no e-commerce.

So to get transportation from the airport to our hotel, first I looked at the Airport Limousine Bus, as it came highly recommended by the dad. Their website is … well, not super helpful. They do list some hotels on their site, but apparently not all of them. I asked b2 to take a look at the Japanese version of the site and he confirmed, he did not see my hotel on the list. (Which they TOTALLY cover, I saw their bus at our hotel later. So *shakes fist*.)

Ok, so that was a bust. I then tried to google private car transport in Tokyo and … didn’t really find what I was looking for. I happened upon a message on Trip Advisor recommending this place. Where you enter your ‘massage’ in their contact form.

So … I filled in the form. Expecting a quote? I guess? Got an email back with a confirmation. Also a quote. But a confirmation? And … I never gave them any money. But they promised a driver who would be holding up a sign with my name on it.

I decided to roll with it. Worst-case scenario, there’d be no one there and we’d just get a taxi once we got there. No biggie.

The day before we left, I got another email with our driver’s name. Seemed like it might actually work!

Sure enough, once we were headed out of the airport with our bags, we indeed passed “a low fence where people are waiting. Our drivers & guides wait there also, with the passenger’s name on a board.” Ms. Kisugi was there, in her white gloves and sensible pumps, with my name on a board. And so we followed her to a car.

I had a brief panic that this was some kind of scam, that she’d charge us twice as much once we arrived.

But, nope, we arrived at the hotel, paid her with a credit card, and it was even a few yen cheaper than we were quoted.

So, yes: in Japan, you totally book things via email, and then pay for it later.

Checking in at the Tokyo Prince Hotel was a bit of an adventure. In Japan, people are very polite. But also: there is no customization. No “the customer is always right” philosophy. Our guided tour started at that hotel, and I tried to add on an early arrival through Gate 1, something they usually do. But … not so for this trip. So, eh, I booked my own room through hotels.com, and figured when I checked in, I’d get them to put us in the same room that we’d be in for the guided tour portion.

Not so. They would have none of that. But they did offer to transfer our bags to our new room for us while we were out and about sight-seeing. And so we took that option.

And then, they took us to our room with our bags! Which was a highly confusing affair.

First confusion: Our room had a main door, then a little vestibule? with a door to the bathroom and also a door to the bedroom. I know shoes inside in Asia is a huge no-no, and so I thought perhaps this was where the shoes needed to be removed? But also, the vestibule was tiny, not meant for two Americans and a Japanese lady, so as I paused to ask if I needed to take my shoes off, I really slowed down our progress. Some back and forth later: no, no I did not need to remove my shoes. So I continued into the room, she brought our bags in and explained the tv remote (there’s a language button! To switch all the shows into English? It’s magical!)

Second confusion: the tipping. I tried to tip. She was … embarrassed? Refused the tip. So I apologized, kept the money, she left, and we had the evening to ourselves!

Dinner was from Lawson’s in the basement. Yes, a convenience store. But don’t knock it till you try it! Conbini’s are all the rage, and their food is actually really good. Seriously. You are gonna hear a lot about conbinis.

Surely I forced the husband to stay up till 7 or 8 pm? That’s the typical travel-fight we have: I can sleep on the plane, he never can, we make it to the hotel and I force him to stay up till bed time. He’s always glad the next day, but man, that first night is pretty rough for us, not gonna lie.

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favorite things travel

40th Birthdays and 15th Anniversaries

On top of the world! Or at least Mt. Hakone

40th birthdays are kind of a big deal. Add in a 15th anniversary, and 2019 needed to be celebrated in a big way.

The husband turned 40 in February. Not time to celebrate.

And then April marked our 15th anniversary. Time to celebrate a book launch!! But … not yet time to celebrate the anniversary.

And then October came, my 40th birthday, and we hopped on a plane to Tokyo.

Now THAT’S how ya celebrate.

Before the trip, we did a little research, booked our plane tickets, booked a guided tour for part of the trip, and then did more research. Booked some hotels, more flights. Invited the in-laws who were living in that half of the world at the time. Did some more research, and filled in my infamous travel google sheet.

(Seriously, I make a google spreadsheet for all of our trips. They are pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.)

Now, we’ve done a fair bit of traveling, had some great trips, but this was our best one yet. I’m writing all this down 8 months late, so I won’t remember everything, but I’m sure gonna try.

We booked a guided tour for the first part of our trip, but arranged to arrive a day early in Tokyo, something we did with our last guided tour and I highly recommend. Gives you an extra day to deal with jetlag, and do a little sight-seeing before the rest of the adventurers arrive.

Our guided tour was with Gate 1 Travel, which I also highly recommend, especially for first-time world travelers. It’s a really good bang for your buck, and you don’t have to worry about a thing after you make it to the airport. Seriously, you don’t even know how much decision fatigue you suffer from until you take a guided tour.

And then after the guided tour, we met up with the in-laws in Okinawa for a few days, then back to Tokyo for a few days.

Tokyo, man. You could spend a lifetime there and not see it all. (We’ve been researching ‘how to move to Japan’ as an American … turns out there’s lots of hoops to jump through … so, uh, I guess we’ll have to just keep playing tourist!)

So that’s just the overview!! Don’t worry, there’s 20 more posts to go!

Categories
favorite things life money

Married? You might need an allowance

It may sound silly, but allowances are a great way to ease financial strain on a marriage.

Allowance. Sounds so restraining. So … childish.

But: Hear me out!

When you have combined finances, there’s a lot of work involved in managing it. No matter what two people are involved, there’s always going to be be a differing opinion on what the money should be spent on. It takes a lot of work to figure out that compromise. A lot of ongoing work.

But for the fun stuff? Everyone should get to do some fun stuff! Without judgment from others. Without guilt that the money could be going to something more useful.

Before we instituted the allowance, I did much of the money management. And whenever the husband asked me if he could buy something, my answer was yes! Unless the money wasn’t there, and then the answer was, not right now, but in a few months. But … I rarely gave myself that same permission. My default setting is to save. To feel guilty for being too indulgent.

And the husband often expressed doubt that we had the money for the things he wanted … and then guilt for buying them. Especially because he could see me doing a whole lotta not buying stuff for me.

It was not a healthy dynamic I was creating. We stayed in our budget, sure, but I was breeding inequality. Totally my fault.

Enter the allowance! Every month, we have two allowance “bills”. One for me, one for the husband. Each for the same amount of money. We used to use separate savings accounts to keep the money in, but now we use ynab to do it virtually.

And this allowance pot we each have? No rules. No judgment. No guilt. Spa days and yarn I’ll never get around to knitting? Go for it! The husband wants gaming laptops and xbox games? Why not?

It may sound silly, but it’s so freeing to have a little pot, all your own.

Give it a try. You might just that find you like it.

Categories
life money work

Downsizing: house edition

After the husband launched his writing career, he found himself highly motivated to be able to keep writing. The original plan was for him to take six months off to write a novel, and then return to the daily grind while he shopped it around to get published.

Six months, because that is how long I calculated our savings would last at our expenditure rate.

But a funny thing happens when you are highly motivated to keep writing: there’s a whole lot of budget analysis and soul-searching to figure out what’s really important.

And you know what wasn’t actually important to either of us? Home ownership.

But … it’s the American Dream!

But it’s also a whole lot of work. Yard work, house cleaning, figuring out how to fix stuff when it breaks or else hiring someone to fix stuff when it breaks. And all that stuff adds up: it’s time and/or money you can’t use to do other things that, let’s be honest, are way more fun. (Ok, I get there are some people out there who love mowing their lawn? I guess that’s a thing neither I nor my husband inherited …)

I wasn’t sold on the idea of apartment life when the husband floated the idea. I thought back to my college days of cinderblock walls and 20-year-old, filthy carpet. I looked around at my custom-built home with acres of wood floors. And I didn’t think I could take that plunge.

But, y’all: there’s a whole big world of apartments out there! With (faux) wood floors and actual tile. With upgraded appliances, open kitchens and floor-to-ceiling windows. With garages. With pools that you don’t have to maintain! With gyms! With fancy clubhouses for entertaining your friends! With package lockers, so no need to worry about porch bandits!

So we took that plunge, downsized from 3200 square feet to 1200. We got rid of 2000 square feet of … well, stuff. Stuff that we acquired for the sole purpose of filling up our American Dream. The American Dream that everyone told us was our dream, but … when we really thought about it … wasn’t the dream that made sense for us.

I know the apartment life isn’t for everyone. But for us? With no kids? With our serious lack of handy man skills? With our desire to live in a clean place but without a great love for cleaning? (Seriously, 1200 square feet is so. fast. to. clean.) With a desire for a pool, but no desire to change in a locker room or drive home wet … or the desire to maintain one?

It’s a pretty sweet gig. For us. No diminishment in happiness. A lot of time and energy freed up for the stuff we love!

And: it allowed the husband to get our budget into shape, so now he can focus on the writing. (Fourth book is out later this year!! Three years later with 4 published works? That’s some serious focus.)

Categories
life money work

The way it really happened

The husband posted yesterday about how he launched his novel-writing career. (I hope it’s a career! Fingers crossed!) But, he didn’t quite get our conversation right.

The real conversation:

TH: I don’t want to work any more. [Manly pout.] I want to write a book.

ME: MmHmmmm. [Log into YNAB.]

TH: Complain, complain, complain …

ME: Yeah, it sucks. [Run some reports in YNAB.]

TH: I’ve always wanted to write a book, I’ve started so many.

ME: Yeah, I want to know how the cable guy one ends. You stopped just when it got good. [Budget analysis in YNAB.]

TH: Retirement’s so far away, I wish I didn’t have to wait.

ME: Can you do it in 6 months?

TH: Can I .. what? Write a book in 6 months?

ME: Yeah, can you write a book in 6 months?

TH: I don’t … Probably? Probably, yeah.

ME: Ok, let’s do it. You have 6 months. But that’s all, you’ll need to go back to work after 6 months.

TH: Wait, you mean just … quit my job and write a book?

ME: Yeah. But only for 6 months. That’s when the savings runs out.

TH: Really? You mean for real?

ME: Yeah. But not forever, ok? Just, you know. 6 months.

TH: [Manly cartwheel.]

Ok, ok, so maybe that’s not how it really, really happened. I don’t know that there was any pouting and there probably weren’t any cartwheels. Probably. But, in any event, it all came from a place of careful calculation … not from anything like a ‘heart’. I’m not so noble or generous as the husband’s post would imply. But, I suppose, that’s the novelists’ prerogative.

Categories
life travel

Travelled out

I would have told you it was impossible for me to get tired of traveling, but I think it has finally happened.

In the past 12 months, we have been to Idaho (wedding!), Orlando (Disney!), DC 3 times, Houston 9 times, Ireland, Utah (wedding! and BFFs!) and Vegas. And then I went on two knitting retreats and to a knitting conference. And Josh had a guys weekend.

The crazy thing is, we didn’t even really intend for this to be a year in which we saw all the things in all the places. And ensured our cat sitter could pay all her bills.

First up, we suddenly had a wedding to attend! Mormons tend to have short engagements, and the sister did not disappoint on that front. So to Idaho we went. A welcome reprieve from the brutal San Antonio summer and also a wedding! A quick but lovely trip.

And then, Disney World. A friend had called up that spring to ask if we’d like to go to Disney with them, and at first I was all, meh, we were just there last year and we were thinking about going to Ireland anyway. And then she said they’d be staying in a Polynesian Bungalow, and I was like, oh, keep talking, and then I googled it and said OMG we are THERE. If anybody ever invites you to stay in a Polynesian Bungalow with them you say YES. And then you become BFFs for life. With matching Mickey tattoos. (Just kidding. We stayed at the Polynesian, have you been paying attention? She got a Lilo tattoo, mine’s a Stitch.)

And then DC – should be exciting, but that was just for work. Staying in a hotel, working long days, no site seeing. Nothing to report there.

And all the Houston! The husband’s mother moved to Kuala Lumpur earlier this year, so we had a few trips to see her before she left. Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA. Like on the other side of the world. And then the husband’s sister had a baby! So there were baby showers and a false alarm and the real alarm to attend to. Yay for babies!

And Ireland!! We’d been thinking about it for awhile and just took the plunge one day and booked the trip, before we’d had allll the other things on our schedule. An amazing trip, for sure, but it ended up being crammed in the middle of a year of utter madness. 10/10 would recommend Ireland. Muuuuch better food than their English neighbors.

And then b3 got engaged! With another short engagement! So to Utah we went, which had the added benefit of letting us hang out with our BFFs who left us. Not the Disney ones, but our crazy nerdy gaming ones who introduced us to a whole new world of games and then MOVED out of the STATE so now we have NO ONE to play with. Ok, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but in any event, it was fun to see them and introduce THEM to Mysterium. And we played another Time Stories expansion! And also there was a wedding, blah blah, it was beautiful, one of the best I’ve been to, blah blah, mazel tov! (Just kidding, I adore my new sister in law, I’ve had to stop myself from inviting them to visit San Antonio over and over again, I mean I’ve already issued an open invitation and I don’t want her to know I’m a crazy person just yet. Hmm, it just dawned on me that she’s a professor, she’s not stupid, she probably already knows I’m a crazy person … )

And then Vegas. The 30th anniversary of Star Trek TNG was a big draw, of course, but the clincher was that there’s a DS9 documentary in the works. Aaand the husband indiegogo funded it and we got tickets to the convention as part of his ‘donation’. So to Vegas we went, and it was awesome!

But now, for the first time in maybe forever, I just kinda want to stay at home. While I plan my trip to Malaysia, of course.

Categories
favorite things technogeeky

Fact: the average person only brushes their teeth for 20 seconds

Ok, so I have no idea if that’s really true or not. My hygienist presented it as fact at my cleaning today. But I do know that it’s certainly true of me! Which means my dental visits are the worst and I’m always finding out I need root canals!

Enter the Quip toothbrush. It was all over my Facebook for like 2 weeks. Which means I bought one, duh.

And I just had the best dental visit of my life. Even though it’s been 7 months since my last visit, and my dentist has me on a 4-month schedule because I do not take very good care of my teeth.

So what’s the trick? How did this magical toothbrush change my dental world in 20 seconds a day?

It didn’t. The trick is, it convinced me to spend 2 minutes brushing my teeth every day. 30 seconds per quarter. It buzzes every 30 seconds to let you know to switch quadrants, and then shuts off altogether after 2 minutes. Which is a frickin’ eternity, yo! If, you know, you’ve only been brushing for 20 seconds.

Also, in all fairness, I’ve been flossing … more. I won’t say daily, but I’ll say more. I had another root canal last November, and I’m motivated to avoid going back. Because root canals suck, but also because, as it turns out, the oral surgeon my dentist uses goes to my church. And sits in the pew in front of me. Awwwwkward. I guess I can feel good about the fact that I’m helping to put his kids through college?

Anyway, reviews on it say that it is better than a regular toothbrush, but worse than a Sonicare. So, uh, don’t replace your Sonicare with a Quip. But if you’re a 20-second brusher who wants a snazzy, travel friendly toothbrush, then give it a shot. You may just impress your dentist. And never have to meet an oral surgeon in his office.

Categories
girly nerdly tv/movies

Feminism and Star Trek

Those of you who know me, know that I’m kind of a raging feminist.

When did this happen, you might ask? I can trace it back to when I was 5 years old and my dad told me I couldn’t be a cub scout. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how a feminist is born.

But I digress.

So, Star Trek portrays a future in which humanity has transcended all the things that divide us and it’s just all a happy joy fest.

Or … does it?

It’s been 30 years since Star Trek TNG, and the actors seem much more willing to talk about the dirt.

Like, why did Beverly Crusher leave after the first season? Because Gates McFadden wouldn’t shut up and stay out of the writers’ room. She kept pointing out that Beverly Crusher is a doctor, a research scientist, no less. With a genius son. Which surely means that she would have intellectual discussions with her genius son. And would it kill them to put some of those intellectual discussions on screen?

Yes. Yes it would. One writer in particular issued an ultimatum to the show runners: she goes or I go. And so she went.

But the fans! The fans would not have it. She came back for season 3. And lo and behold, that writer was no longer there.

That is a principled feminist. She lost her job over it. This story has a happy-ish ending in that she did get her job back, but she had no reason to think that would be the case when she was fighting her fight.

Enter Marina Sirtis. Now, I know when actors get on stage in front of thousands of people, they put on a show. And at a Trek convention, it’s reasonable to expect representation in the crowd from the Red Pill community. So I won’t hold her to all of her words, but based on the things she said on stage … she sure didn’t sound like a friend to woman-kind. She very much sounded like she is fighting no fight, and is quite content to watch others duke it out.

Statement 1: She admitted that the TNG crew is quite clique-ish, and they don’t let new people in. Except for Karl Urban and Nathan Fillion. Because new, good-looking men are always welcome – but not new ladies.

On the surface, that does sound very feminist. Men have harems, right? So we ladies should have harems, too!

But, lets couple that with …

Statement 2: Women producers are not helping women! They rise to power, and then they aren’t any better than the men! They aren’t hiring more women.

Well, consider this: If a woman has risen to power, but has only ever surrounded herself with men in the process (which, may have even been instrumental in her success, even) then how will she hire more women? She doesn’t know any.

Feminism means different things to different people, I get that. We all have different ideas as to how we all get a seat at the table, and whose responsibility it is to make sure everyone gets an invite. And there’s certainly something to be said for not turning every moment into something combative.

But as for me, I’m tired of waiting. I’ll take a fighter. I’m happy to know there are others out there making a difference, and I’ll keep fighting my fight in my own tiny bubble of the world.