I have to admit my last entry is a bit of a downer. Aside from a slightly renewed outlook on things, my situation hasn't really changed. It's amazing how situations life can really take you down emotionally though. I really don't like going around feeling sorry of myself, but lately it seems I've been doing that a lot and there comes a time when you just need to slap yourself in the face and scream "Enough with this bullshit!". I haven't actually done that to myself literally but I'm definitely reaching that point.�

I'll tell you though, the night I wrote that entry I was really feeling down. Even a friend's innocent teasing seem to be a confirmation of what was going wrong in my world. I usually could handle quite a bit, but at that moment I couldn't really handle anything. As a guy, having that kind of emotional vulnerability is very humbling. I think that's a fear every guy has, the minute we take off our bullet-proof vest, bullets start flying straight to our hearts and it only takes one hit to send us flying to the ground in a pool of our own blood. In a sense it's easier to act all tough and tell everyone to back the fuck off than to experience one more moment of that pain.

I think things started to turn around for me a little the next day. My wish to be dead the next day, never to wake up again was obviously denied. *grumble* When I got my ass out of bed, my apartment was still cold from the night before. I had to work on a speech that was due that evening for my Public Speaking class.

Honestly, I'm not the best of public speakers. I remember totally choking in a presentation I had to do for one class a few years back. Yet another one of those humbling life experiences. So I've basically been dodging that course until close to the end. Now that I'm at my last few classes, I'm basically stuck with taking the Public Speaking course this quarter and this is a class that I can't afford to drop if I want to finish my degree by next quarter.

Anyway, the first speech was ungraded, so we could all get our feet wet so to speak. We all had to get up in front of the class and basically introduce ourselves, picking one defining characteristic about ourselves and elaborating. I had a really tough time figuring out "who I was" and picking out a really good defining characteristic about myself, so my whole speech wound up being about me not knowing who I am. I started out with something like this:

"Hi, I'm Derrick, I'm 32 years old and I don't know who the fuck I am..."

But then I thought maybe that would be a little to negative and edgy for my first speech so I revised it slightly to something more like:

"Hi, I'm Derrick and I don't know who I am, but that's OK..."

I had a whole topic outline prepared about how through my whole life I didn't really quite know who I was. I mean when I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut and fly to the moon or something like that, but two space shuttle mishaps later and no solid plans for extraterrestrial missions has watered down any hopes of that possibility in my lifetime. Other than that it's been a confusing ride, from my varied choices in college majors to my lackluster love life I was never quite sure exactly of where I wanted my life to go so I made that part of what I was going to discuss.

So I went out the door on my way to school in my 3/4 length jacket thinking it was still cold outside. Hell, it was still cold in my fucking apartment. It actually turned out to be a beautiful day. I guess I should have went out to the balcony to do a weather check. So I wound up doing a 180 degree turn, went back up the elevator, took the big jacket off, took the sweater off and went in my light windbreaker jacket and T-shirt.

There's just something about nice weather it just seems to help remove some for life's gloom. Not to mention that warm weather makes me horny. *ahem* But anyway yeah, I made it to the lab to print my outline and later I made myself ready for the class. I have to say that I was totally fucking nervous at the prospect of having to stand up in class for that speech. I mean my palms were all sweaty and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. All I could do was focus on my breathing so I wouldn't hyperventilate. Taking those deep steady breaths helped me relax a little.

I tried to be courteous and listened carefully to the students who had speeches ahead of me but part of me was totally worried over my own speech that I had to deliver and my palms were as wet as ever. Finally my turn was up. Being up there in front of the class was like being on drugs. I could feel the adrenaline surging through my veins and my hands were like all over the place, I don't think I had any idea what I was doing up there. I also totally lost track of my time. I totally missed the one and two minute warnings. I think I put too many things on my outline, it was way too much to cover within the 3 minute time limit. The timekeeper was giving me the "STOP" sign, so I wrapped things up by saying that it's OK not to know exactly who you are or where you are going because life is much more about the journey, and the self discovery are just the perks you pick up along the way.

I guess I couldn't help but take some of that speech to heart, even though I was a bit of a mess up there. Oh, I almost forgot to mention there's this girl in my class. She's blonde and petite and I don't know but for some reason I just started thinking about her a lot. Most of the seats were filled up in class but there was an empty seat right next to me so she sat right there and like in my mind I was like "YES!". It wasn't so much the fact that she was a cutie (though that did help a lot) as much as how polite she seemed to be. She didn't have a pen so I loaned her one of mine and she seemed really thankful. We had to pass out a bunch of handouts in class, as I casually handed the sheets to her hand seemed to always "inadvertently" touch mine, and she always said "thank you" even though we were just kind of passing it to everybody.

I don't know, for some reason she made me feel like I'm in fucking junior high again. I think part of the reason is because she looks so young. If I had to place her age I'd guess she's maybe 19 or 20. Part of me doesn't want to lose my cool over yet another female but man, what a distraction. I guess it takes my mind over some of the more heavier things I've been feeling. I'm not sure if I should make a move or not. I suppose I may should the opportunity present itself, but I still have this whole self-esteem issue to work through. It's like if I'm walking around feeling like I have nothing to offer a girl then what business do I have asking anybody out? Then again, I'm probably making too much out of nothing as usual. I'll just play that one by ear I guess.

As for my other classes, my last day to drop with a full refund is this Monday. That's my point of no return. My mom is prodding me to at least ask my dad about co-signing for my loan. I know Sallie Mae totally wants to give me the fucking loan too because they keep fucking calling me. I suppose they just need a creditworthy co-signer. I'll probably pop the question to him this weekend.

Meanwhile, without the loan, the possibility of me getting a new PC is less than zero, which worries me because one of my courses, the Advanced Server-Side Programming course is heavy on the programming. I basically need a whole bunch of programs loaded, and the notebook I have now and it's miniscule 6GB hard drive is already packed to the gills. Since my hope for a new PC is shot until the whole loan thing is worked through, I've been looking into possibilities on getting a new hard drive for my existing laptop. I checked Best Buy and CompUSA. Christ they really gouged the prices for Notebook Drives in these places. Around $199 for a 40GB and $149 for a 20GB drive, so I though I'd look on the net a bit to compare prices. It turns out I can get a 80.0 GB ATA/100 4200 RPM notebook hard drive for $210.00 at http://www.drivesolutions.com. I've looked at a few other places but these seem to be the lowest prices I've found thus far. I'll probably wind up placing an order this weekend.

Since I'm stuck with the old craptop, I thought I'd "tattoo" it like those new Voodoo Envy laptops. Consequently it's a design I made of a scorpion that I will someday, hopefully tattoo on my actual skin:

Shot of the back panel...

Close up shot...

I basically just drew it on my laptop with a black sharpie maker. Yup, Derrick has plenty o' time on his hands, yes he does. But anyway, yeah I guess this is my own weird way of accepting the fact that I'm going to be stuck with this underpowered monstrosity for a while. If I can't get a Voodoo or an Alienware, I might as well make the best of what I have.

In other news, I think I'm totally gaining weight. My face is getting rounder than it was a few months ago and all this sitting around feeling sorry for myself is not helping at all. Anyway, just to show that I'm not exaggerating, here's a very recent pic:

Ugh, I can't believe how round my face is getting. I have to start dragging my ass to the gym now. Anyway it's like almost 3 am. I shouldn't throw off my body clock like this, so I think I'll put this entry to rest...