Well, it looks like I survived the big three-five. I guess thinking and worrying about it is a lot worse than actually going though it. Essentially it�s a day just like any other day. I mean yeah, I miss Ray and I miss all the good times that used to be associated with our b-day. Although I will always look to those days fondly, I know it�s the past and eventually I�m going to have to let go of that idea and hopefully be able to invent some new idea regarding my day of birth.

I�m working on it slowly but surely. I know it can never be quite the same again but somehow in the back of my head I know the chance exists for my b-day to be good, just in a different way. Still, today on this very day is Ray's b-day. I don�t know what or how to feel anything else about this day except to feel sad, so I guess I�ll allow myself to feel sad that for now and try my best from there.

So anyway, I celebrated my b-day at Salud Tequila Lounge last Saturday. There were a few people who I was expecting to attend that didn�t show and a few others who I wasn�t really expecting but came anyway so I guess it sort of all balances out. Patron Tequila rocks my planet by the way, but it is expensive as hell for a double-shot. All in all, it was a pretty cool evening altogether.

The actual day of b-day was much less eventful. I spent all Monday night after work loading Visual Studio 2005 and then actually using it to develop a mobile application for an assignment due that midnight. I was at the Computer lab until closing, around 11 pm. I didn�t get home until midnight and by the next day, my birthday, I was the waking dead. I spent Tuesday evening after work in my mobile application development class. Even with 2 cans of Red Bull in my system I could barely stay up follow with the lecture.

My mom arranged for my sister to pick me up. They picked up a couple of pies from Baker�s Square and put a large �3� candle on one pie and a large �5� candle on the other pie. It was lovely actually. After a nice sugar high from the pies, I crashed for the evening. Since I was off to school the night of my b-day, we went out to dinner Wednesday night to Ron of Japan. I got the �Shogun�, which was a steak and lobster meal. The lobster tail was ginormous and served with their trademark egg-yolk sauce. There�s nothing like steak and seafood cooked Japanese teppan style to make dinner a happy occasion. The total stuffing of my face ensued.

I don�t think there�s too much else to say except this. I�m still the same guy that I was when I first started this blog, in terms of being single at least. I�m coming to the deepening realization that my current state of bachelorhood is a lot less about how physically attractive I am and a lot more about how I carry myself as a person especially in terms of confidence.

Somehow, not too long ago at all, I wasn�t quite so sure of how attractive I was to females. This is mostly because I�m not really good at picking up girls to begin with and on top of all that I�m just that unconfident about myself. As a result, in my mind at least, I felt that I simply wasn�t attractive to the opposite sex, physically or otherwise. Basically if females weren�t paying any attention to me it was because I simply wasn�t attractive to the opposite sex, period.

Then I just stopped trying altogether, like maybe I needed to be alone at this time of my life and the time I spent worrying about whether I could �score� a female or not could be spent on something more productive. So thus the era Derrick �the sex fiend� ended and Derrick�s �I don�t give a fuck� era began.

It�s not so much that I didn�t want love or companionship or even sex anymore, I mean I still remember how good it was when I was having it. I guess I was just tired walking around being so frustrated all the time when I couldn�t make things happen for me in terms the opposite sex. So in a way I evolved from my need for companionship. Don�t get me wrong, the want for companionship still existed, but no matter how much I felt like I wanted to die from all the loneliness, somehow I kept waking up every morning still alive, thus my realization that companionship, sexual or otherwise was not vital to my staying alive.

So now I�m walking around, more or less free of this sexual need that I�ve been lugging around since puberty. There are some times when I just pretend that I don�t care, like when a drop-dead gorgeous chick walks in the room and I just �conveniently� look the other way, as if I didn�t see her walk in the room in the first place, that way I don't have to suffer the indignity of involuntarily drooling over her. There is other times however when I truly don�t care and for that moment or two, I actually feel free and I start to see the world in a different light. �It�s the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.� (The Narrator � Fight Club)

The strange thing is, by just not trying anymore, I seem to be picking up a bit more female attention. It�s not so much that I�m being overrun by women or anything close to that. It�s just that instead of trying to get a girl�s attention like I normally do, I�m off staring into space and suddenly they are trying to get my attention. I don�t know, I guess it�s just kind of weird the way things work out.

Although my behavior has changed and females around me seem to be changing their behavior towards me, on the inside I think I�m more or less the same guy. Actually I think I�m worse off now, because before I was at least making an effort. Now it�s like I�m so jaded that I don�t really care one way or another. It�s like whatever man, who cares?

Well, I guess if there�s any consolation, at the very least I know with confidence that now I�m superficially attractive to women. I can walk around with my hand on my ego-inflated balls and act like one of those jerkwads that are so into themselves that the air headed women take on that belief like they have been hit the Jedi mind trick, so much so that they surround him as if he was feeding bread crumbs to a flock of hungry seagulls. Or, I just could be my normal self and continue to brush female companionship away from me if not physically them through my less than scintillating personality. Yeah the latter sounds more like it.

Speaking of looks chicks are starting to refer to me as �metro� more often. Please stop doing that. Just because a guy has a sense of style, it doesn�t mean he�s metro. Metro guys are the ones that go to spas and get manicures/pedicures, facials, have body parts waxed and get their eyebrows plucked. Basically it�s a guy with the maintenance level of some over the top diva. Personally, I think that�s all prissy bullshit. Females can get away with it, maybe but with guys who are straight, it's just all kinda iffy to me. As for me, I roll out of bed looking this good. It�s a gift, what can I say? So yeah, enough with all that metrosexual talk because that�s not me, it�s somebody else.

But anyway, that�s it for now. There�s some Halloween stuff this weekend, but that�s for later on. For now I�m out of here. Oh and happy b-day Ray, wherever you are�