It's been a while since my last update. I guess there's nothing terribly new or exciting going on with my life. To be honest things have been rather boring. I can definitely recall spending better summers. I remember nights when aside from work and school responsibilities, you couldn't keep me at home, but now practically every weekend since the layoff I've been stuck at home. It's like having this huge itch that can't be scratched.

The fact that this particular week I got stuck house-sitting while my mom is off vacationing in South America doesn't make me feel all that better either. Supposedly I was to keep my sister company as well, but she arranged to stay the weekend with her friend. Even my step-dad had taken a job in Vegas so it's just me and the family dog Elmo.

I was actually thinking of attending my uncle's wedding in Toronto this weekend, but it looks like that's a bust. So much for being able to fly off at a moment's notice. I guess I shouldn't bitch about it though, my dad was a little hesitant about attending himself since there was some possible weekend work for him and since I was planning to bum a ride off of him when he drove down there anyway, I just told him that I got stuck and couldn't go. It's interesting though how my social life is crap compared to the rest of my family. Ah yes, the patheticism is strong in me...

As for school and work, they have been rather easy going. A welcome reprieve of sorts from the hectic past 5 years of holding down a full-time job plus working on my degree and especially with some of the more challenging courses I had to work through. I'll have to consider taking a few of these abbreviated summer courses when I'm working on my graduate degree when available of course. For some reason I feel the need to make up for so much lost time especially in terms of academics.

At the risk of making me sound really fucking old, I've been working on a college degree for a hell of a long time. I graduated high school in the class of 1989, that was 15 fucking years ago which means I've been in college on and off for that long. You should see all the fucking F's and W's and FX's and D's and IN's on my transcript. Even with all the A's of my most recent courses my GPA is still an unremarkable 2.531 on a 4.0 scale. A testament of sorts to all the years I wasted away in limbo. If only I can erase the stupidity of my past but I can't. It guess doesn't matter anyway, a degree is a degree even if I will happen to graduate summa cum lousy. I'll still get my celebratory tattoo and I'll hopefully join the ranks of the gainfully employed along with my salary enhancing degree.

I guess I shouldn't say my weekend was a total bust though. I did have a chance to visit one of my high-school friends along with my ex to see her and her newborn baby, barely a week old. She was actually one of Ray's best friends. Yes, Ray had a few people that regarded him as a best friend, so naturally I became her friend by osmosis. I think it was Ray's death however that seems to have brought our particular friendship closer together. It's almost like we are all that is left over of Ray. I hardly keep in contact with any of his other friends since his death, but when I do it's always nice.

My ex and her are also close friends, so in a way it was through Ray's friendship with her that I met my ex. Interesting how that all worked out. Anyway, while the ex and her were chatting away about recent events, I had a chance to hold the newborn baby in my arms and I couldn't help but marvel at the delicate beauty of this tiny life that I could practically lay on one arm almost effortlessly. She was so peaceful in her slumber too it was like you could look at her face and just feel washed over with a sense of peace.

Looking at this little baby and holding her, it's difficult to not become almost overwhelmed by my paternal instincts. It's ironic how much stronger those instincts are now more then they ever were before. I remember the very idea of having a baby scaring me half to death. I guess in a way the idea of fatherhood still scares me with all the responsibility and time and love that goes into raising a child, I know that even now I'm still not ready for all that.

Still, on many levels, I look at my peers and even people younger than me and they are done with school, are well into their careers, have their lives together and out getting married buying the single-family houses with the white picket fences and having children left and right while I'm here jobless, still trying to finish my degree, still wondering if that hot chick sitting across from me in class has a boyfriend. I mean that doesn't scream my stunted development, I don't know what does. Looking at all that shit, I can't help but feel like such a fuck-up sometimes. I'm doing the shit I should have been doing 10 years ago and I'm telling ya it's not the coolest feeling.

I suppose with the kind of person I know myself to be, I can just as easily envision spending the rest of my life as the lonely but confirmed bachelor. Part of me takes comfort in being alone and taking no responsibility in anyone else's happiness or lack thereof. I don't know, somehow even as lonely as I am I'm even more afraid of getting tied down by some woman. I especially don't want to break anyone's heart, I mean I've been there, it's not a pretty place but I don't know. I guess that sometimes things happen even if you don't mean for them to.

Another one of my tragic flaws I guess, the tendency to jump way ahead of myself. I'm still the doomed lonely bachelor whose prospects are so distant that there is little if anything I can do about it and even if I could do something there's the distinct chance that the woman will either scare me off or vice-versa based on my relationship history. Perhaps someday that will none of the above will be the case, but until then the life of lonely bachelorhood must be lived by me that much longer.

Anyway it's getting kind of heavy, so I'll leave that sticky subject alone for now and switch to a lighter note. My diary is sort of lulling into stagnation. I know that the lack of frequent and interesting entries is a huge contributing factor to that. I can't help it, life sucks like that for me. If you haven't already noticed I've been making minor changes to my diary. My email address is now [email protected] which ironically is far from the truth since I'm more of a sexrepellant.com but they didn't have that domain available so I had to make some compromises. I also added the buddy list and I put in that indigo-ish colored matrix code in the navigation bar. So anyway the master plan is to whore my diary through the use of d-land banner ads. I'm working on a couple more banners, so that when my classes are over I can unleash them on the unsuspecting diaryland public.

I guess it can't hurt to suck in a few more readers, kind of like one of those black holes out in space, it is a lot like me in that black holes just suck at everything much like I do. They should make a me sticker that says: "Hi, I'm Derrick, I suck at everything..." and I should wear it everywhere. Hell, I might even be able to leverage some of that patheticism into some hot oral sex, because when I say I suck at everything I do mean EVERYTHING. *RAWR*

*ahem* Apparently I also suck at keeping certain entries non-sexual as well. *blush*� So anyhow the fucking clock is telling me that it's like past 3:00am so are the birds chirping out my damn window. Damn, where does all the fucking time go? I guess I should like sleep or something. Yeah good idea, I think I'll do that.