<human>: I am a 24 y/o male with a huge crush (is my age beyond that terminology at this point?) on a female of the same age. I came out of a 3 year relationship about 8 months ago and am tired of doing the single thing and want to ask this girl out.

Anyway, I find this girl to be unbelievably interesting. She is quite nerdy like myself (a nerd on reddit, who would have thought?), she likes playing video games with an impressive collection, is a huge joss whedon fan, likes same movies, comics, everything. 

I've known her for awhile now but we really only see each other at bigger social events with a lot of people. I have her phone number but I'm really horribly awkward talking to anybody on the phone no matter who it is and I start rushing to get off. Despite that, I am a social able person irl the phone just puts me in a rough spot for some reason I feel naked and not in the good way.

Like most people on here I'm afraid of outright rejection so the thought of doing it at one of our social gatherings doesn't seem very appealing as well. I also am afraid of making it awkward between us by crossing some boundary even though I feel like she is flirting with me from time to time. It also doesn't help she is incredibly attractive and I'm pretty sure she's out of my league. But that is just another excuse I suppose.

Anyway

Can you succinctly summarize the text in 1-3 sentences?
<bot>: need advice on good ways to ask someone out. Is text message or FB too casual/lame to be taken seriously?