What is it about having relative strangers over to your house which makes you reevaluate everything you own, and your decoration -- how everything's put together... suddenly it's as if, you look around and nothing is good enough anymore. Day in, day out, it's all just sort of there. And it's part of your life and you don't notice it -- you're not cognizant in any special way, but once people come in, you're suddenly aware of every little detail, everything that could possibly say something about who you are. Now maybe this isn't a problem for other people, but for me, I'd really rather not divulge too much about who I am to strangers. They make judgments. Of course that's true of everyone, but we tend to forgive it from friends. I received a call tonight, around 12:30, from a friend who was looking for a video camera so that she could help out a friend who needed to put together an audition tape. Now I didn't mind helping her out, in fact I was happy to do so. But when I went to her house to do the taping, they didn't have a VCR to watch the playback. So we came over to my house because I live relatively close and then we could watch the playback of it on the VCR after we had finished taping. Now luckily my house is clean right now, or else I would have told them that we couldn't go over to my house. But since it was clean I didn't mind. However, once they were over here, I started noticing all of these things about my house that speak about me as person. Now of course these things should speak about me as a person. I own them. I purchased them. They are things I like. But all of the sudden, now this friend of mine as well as two people I don't know at all are here and I'm looking at everything I own with new eyes. Every picture I have on the wall, every book on the bookshelf, every videotape. I'm sure I'm not, but I have to ask anyway -- Am I the only person like this? I want to say other people do it too, but everyone else seems so at ease when they have guests over, when they have strangers over. I never feel at ease having people over. People I don't know that is. I don't have many friends over, but I do enjoy them coming over. Really, when it comes down to it, I felt like a great big nerd tonight. I have all of these computer parts setting all over my house. I have multiple TVs in various stages of disassembly. I've clothing all over my bedroom floor that I haven't hung up yet. My desk is covered with projects from school. I felt like a big sloppy nerd. And on top of this, I'm the camera technician -- I'm getting everything together, setting up the lighting, making sure the background looks good, getting the chair in place. I'm just a big techie nerd. How unfortunate. And yet, I can't seem to figure out why I'm unpopular.