You know, for all the fuss my sister puts up that I'm attracted to weird people, my boyfriends seem suspiciously normal.

My sister (older by four years) always comments on how the guys I like are weird. And she's got my taste pegged, like she can pick out a guy in a crowd and say, You're attracted to him, and she'll be right. Or she'll give a description of someone she met and say, 's/he strikes me as the type that you'd be friends with.' And after having heard her description, she's right, I want to know that person. And her general consensus of these people is that they're nice but weird.

Just after J said was talking about sports, he said something about how much he loved poker, and I said, "You're such a man's man." He is! And my last boyfriend was too (he was actually a frat boy, but THE most non-fratty of that type). You know, after a complete assessment, you know what I am? Quite, quite normal.

Normal but odd. I'm not weird, I'm not strange or totally out of this world, I'm just odd. But I have generally normal tendencies. Like for example, when I get older, I want to have pets. A dog, a couple cats, maybe some fish. And a pot-bellied pig and a snake, and maybe a turtle. Of those, I currently have a snake. See what I mean?

I have a garden, but it is full of odd-looking plants and pottery. I would live in the suburbs, but I would paint my house bright orange or purple, and I'd put LED's in my front garden and neon sculpture in the back.

At a certain point I decided that it was more powerful to be normal but different than it was to be completely out there. Baby steps. People are more likely to open their minds to what's different about you if they can relate to you on a fundamental level.

The I didn't feel like writing about the asterisk today. I'll pick it up later.

12:40 a.m. 2003-10-29�