This morning, as I woke up, I remembered that my sister was coming over today. I have free laundry at my place and an HDTV, so it's not exactly an uncommon occurrence. But there's a new wrinkle to her visits lately: the mass migration of my toys before she drops by.

As you most likely know, I've rediscovered my childhood now that I have enough disposable income to buy all of the toys. I have an old-school Jazz, back when Transformers toys didn't care whether or not babies would swallow metal pieces, and I have that super-deformed Ultra Magnus that was sold at San Diego Comic-Con last year. I have a bunch of limited edition figures sitting on my bookshelf. I have something on the order of a dozen Fate/Stay Night figures of various sizes, even though I'm not actually that big a Fate fan - I mostly like the culture around it, which just goes to show you how weird I am.

I also spend a bunch of time playing with my toys rather than just having them sit there. For example, much like Ian and Jes' SD Gundam vs. Animal Crossing war, I have several horrible yet fascinating pictures of Dante and a Raving Rabbid taken while bored on a Saturday morning.

My sister, however, is an avowed enemy of clutter. And to her, my figures aren't subconsciously overcompensating for an impoverished youth (not that there's anything wrong with that), they're just toys taking up space. So, whenever she comes over, I take some of the bigger space offenders (see pictures above) and stick them in my room for a while whenever she comes over. It's a feeble deception at best, and the gig's probably up since some of my family reads this space.

So why am I writing about this, since it blows my cover wide open? Simply put, I've come to think that this process represents my life, writ small. I mean, I'm a huge nerd. Not one of those quiet little nerds in the back who kind of wish they weren't nerds so they could hang with the cool kids. I'm the kind of nerd who keeps a blog with tens or hundreds of thousands of readers proclaiming how big a nerd he is about things as esoteric as obscure Japanese video games (Wrestle Angels Survivor for the confuse!) to the myriad statistical minutiae of baseball (my personal favorite is projecting "on pace" numbers based on the first and second games of the season).

I don't deny who I am, and if I ever do deny it, I'm being facetious 99.9% of the time. I'm comfortable with it. My family's pretty comfy with it, too - it means that they can play around with some toys they couldn't otherwise. My Wii spent two months at my sister's house before she got tennis elbow and gave it back. My family pulled me into World of Warcraft with only minor resistance. My cousins got to go see Jeopardy! being recorded (and if they want to talk to someone who won on Jeopardy!, they just talk to Cousin John, who was a five-timer). They get to make fun of me being a stick figure in a comic book and signing someone's chest six years ago. What more could you ask for in a Weird Cousin/Uncle?

But sometimes, the trappings of my nerdhood cause crippling moments of self-consciousness.

I ask myself questions like "Am I the only person in the world who both plays The Idolm@ster and knows every referee hand signal in football by heart?" The answer is usually yes. "Why am I sitting here playing Magic Online on one computer, a Japanese PC game on another, talking to Suberunker about comic books, and watching baseball on TV?" Because I'm a nerd for all seasons. "Why is it 5 AM on New Year's and I'm wearing ice skates?" Because I have no willpower.

It's odd to go outside myself and look in sometimes. And by sometimes, I mean often. Because damn, am I a strange guy.

I wouldn't have it any other way.