Pie Are Squared: I am a huge nerd

The Goal: to bake pies on a fortnightly basis, in the hopes of making them both delicious and beautiful, since I have heretofore been a terrible pie maker. (Swish. Two olde English words in once sentence!)

The Contender: I am a 26-year-old stay-at-home mom/part-time therapist/editor-of-a magazine/soon-to-be pie maker.

I'm not sure if I ever would have considered Lucy Liu to look anything like me, except for three completely isolated incidents:
1. Shanghai Noon came out, and a high school friend told me he thought we looked alike. Of course, he still referred to me as "Kenta's sister" instead of my name, so that casts some doubt on our ability to trust him.
2. There was this guy at BYU who would shout "Lucy Liu!" every time he'd see me on campus. That was weird, especially since he didn't even know I was half-Japanese or anything.
3. Just last week, Joel's boss told me she'd watched Shanghai Noon and "gasped" at the resemblance.
So there you go. I'm the one in the middle, in case that wasn't glaringly obvious.

The Plan: I knew I would need some motivation to stay dedicated to this; I also knew that a pretty, shiny cookbook would be ample motivation for me. But guess what: Pie cookbooks are kind of hard to find. I went to Borders, and they had way more homemade ice cream cookbooks than pie cookbooks; I thought this was weird. They actually only had two books devoted to pies and one was $50. Anyway, a thorough internet search prompted me to order Sweety Pies by Patty Pinner. I'm excited to use it, though I can't promise that I won't occasionally stray to other, non-Sweety Pie recipes because 1) Sometimes I'll probably make some savory pies, and I'm not sure how many of those this book will have, 2) I just found a delicious looking recipe in a magazine, and I can't not make it now that I have a pie goal.
Beyond just wanting an excuse to buy a new book, I will also admit that I am not feigning humility when I say I am a terrible pie maker. A good crust--pretty much the make-it-or-break-it part of a pie--has always eluded me. Especially in comparison to my mother-in-law, an expert pie maker, my pies are not good. But I now vow to stop telling my husband that I will leave the pie making to his mother. I will make pie.
And, just to be true to the nerdy name I have given myself, maybe my pies will sometimes be square.