mental1718

Hello World...

been a while since I posted anything here so I will try to cover as much of that lost time as I can. Finally finished my AA after 7 years of sporadically taking classes. Starting UCF in a few weeks; majoring in Digital Media.

Been working little contract jobs over the summer for cash but will most likely be working at the Orlando Science Center through the Coop program at UCF as a computer geek. Decent pay, prolly decent hours. I should find out more about that in the next week or two.

"Discovered" a kick ass band. Boysetsfire... I had grabbed their newest CD off the newsgroups ages ago but never got around to listening to it. Once I finally did I've been having trouble not listening to it... seriously kick ass, especially tracks 2 (Requiem, my myspace song), 9 (With Cold Eyes), and 13 (A Far Cry - fucking amazing song, very powerful). Unfortunately I also found out tonight that the band is "retiring" after 12 years of making kick ass music. That's just my luck.

Watched Stir of Echoes tonight with who else but Kevin Bacon. Pretty good movie... It came out around the same time as the Sixth Sense and got pushed by the wayside because they are kind of similar, but I think I actually like Stir of Echoes better.

So I just got finished with this bag of skittles with an advertised new limited edition flavor in them. My bag said it would be strawberry ice cream. First off, what the hell kind of flavor is that? Second, it must be really limited edition as there were only 2 of them in my ENTIRE bag of candy. Third, they really didn't taste all that great.

So I am in the middle of an online application and the company uses Unicru to process their online applications. Using Unicru also means that their is one of the stupidly useless personality tests part way through the application. Anyone who relies on these to hire employees is missing out on a large employee base who cannot pass these stupid things but would make great employees. I have never passed one of these in the 6 years since I have been given them for job purposes. I was, um, coached through the one for Books-a-Million so I managed to pass and get hired.

The real kicker about this most recent one is who the company is and what position it is I am applying for. I am filling out this application to be a server or busser at what used to be called Pizzaria Uno, but is now called Uno Chicago Grill.

le sigh

Some would say I took a step backwards with some of my decisions recently, but I think I am getting some other things under control now. I have sorted out school and decided that I was just stressing way too much over things that are not worth stressing over because they are ridiculously easy. Take my astronomy class for example: This week we have been going over the chapter that I have lovingly dubbed "Physics for Dummies" where we are "learning" all about the physics of motion minus the fun math. So instead of paying attention to the lecture I relearned some trig and helped the girl who sits next to me get ready for her trig test. That was a lot of fun.

I will also be less stressed about my night school in a couple weeks when spring break rolls around I have free time to study and take several of the certification tests that I need to get out of the way.

Aside from all of that I do believe I have a job lined up for when classes end in May. I have been in touch with a guy at a staffing agency who wanted to put me into a 3-month contract to permanent position doing tech support. The pay would obviously be better than the cruddy minimum wage I am making now ($7 an hour better to be exact). Due to the short term of the contract they are always placing new people into the position and I will be able to get into at least that contract in May. Though with the addition of a few more certifications and my AA I should be able to get into something paying a bit better than that as well.

Now that I have those aspects of my life all but wrapped up I need to concentrate on a few other things that have been kicking my ass lately. Namely what I really need/want out of my marriage. I may have told you all by now that I have moved back into the apartment from my dad's house because I felt like an asshole for the way I was handling things even though they felt right to me. I owe it to myself to not end this relationship on a note that will leave me feeling like crap because that would just not be fun for me in the long run. It looks like time is what I will need to sort this last part out, but if things turn out as bright as everything else is looking then life will be just peachy in the not too distant future, and that is something that I look forward to experiencing.

So I weighed myself tonight... 131 pounds... which means I have lost roughly 20 pounds since x-mas, and almost 30 since my wedding last March. The scarier thing is that I am told that Sunday night I weighed less (Patty said she could count all of my ribs by sight).

Too many stupid people on the road today. I had to stop short about half way to school because someone decided to turn left out of the left lane because he wasn't able to get into the left turn lane. That caused my backpack (with my laptop in it) to tumble off my front seat onto the floor. Thankfully it still works. Not long after that I had a guy tailgate me almost 3/4 of a mile up 17-92. Repeated brake checks did not get him off of me, so when he decided to go around me I did something that I haven't done in about 3 years, I got over behind him, almost clipping him in the process and proceeded to tailgate him for a short while. I think that made him nervous because he got back into the right lane and turned right at the next light.

I had this totally awesome post prepared on my laptop but I wasn't able to finish it up before I had to come here for night class. I finished typing it up on my laptop at school but no wi-fi here for me to post it. So after I discuss a bit of the content with some people off-line I will post that up... probably by the weekend.

It is chock full of soul searching and hardcore philosophy so be prepared (not really).

I've been curious about some things lately... anyone know anything about interpreting body language? websites or anything would be helpful...

Today is the day... I have put this off for too long and the stress has finally caught up with me... almost left work early last night because of it, and I did leave early today... so tonight I will sit down with Patty and talk all this out... wish me luck and all that jazz...

Last night after my night class Lori and I headed downtown to finally retrieve her card and to chill out with the Goth people that gather at I-Bar on Wednesday night. This was my first exposure to the Goth scene in this capacity and I have to say that it was a lot of fun. The dancing was far more animated than anything I have seen in a club (though I haven't been to many clubs so that view is rather biased). It only took me two drinks (and a shove from Lori) to get out on the floor and attempt to dance. At the end of the night I was told that I did very well ^_^

All in all it was a fun night. I only missed one class this morning due to being out so late, but I was able to scribble out the homework assignment due in my astronomy class before it was collected (I had totally forgotten about the assignment until this morning ).

The first thing that they did was decide to kick my store out of the plaza they owned rather than fix the problems with the roof. Now they go and post this on monster after I applied for it almost 3 weeks ago:

http://jobsearch.monster.com/getjob.asp?JobID=30826833&AVSDM=2006%2D02%2D07+17%3A36%3A03&Logo=1&lid=385&sort=rv&vw=b&cy=US&brd=1,128,1862,1863

All this stuff I have been dealing with has caused me to do some serious questioning of life in general and what is important, and to do some introspection to figure out what it is that *I* need out of life. This is what I have come up with so far (it even prompted me to change my headling on myspace ^_^).

Happiness is what makes the world go 'round. How you pursue or acvhieve happiness is almost irrelevant, the end result of being happy is what counts. There are some who would say that love (specifically, true love) is the most important thing in life. To those people I would say, "is true love not being in a state of blissful happiness with your life partner?"

In my case I need to be free to pursue my happiness. In my present state I am a spirit trapped; a wild horse with a saddle, yearning to be free again. That is no way to live as it directly interferes with my pursuit of happiness, and my spirit is breaking. It is breaking in such a way the is not safe for my emotional and mental health.

I feel safe saying that last night was hands down the most fun I have had in my entire life. The time I spend with Lori is always an adventure and this time was no exception. We headed downtown for some drinking and dancing last night hoping to meet up with some friends from work and stuff but, as per usual, everyone boned out on us. So we moseyed into Bar-B-Q bar at around 10pm and got our first drinks and snagged a booth to sit and chill while we waited for the friends who never showed up. We talked a bit and learned some interesting things about each other. After a while we made our way next door to I-Bar and it was totally dead when we got to the main dance floor... a whole 2 people dancing and only a couple at the bar. Which was OK for a short while because we had to run back to Bar-B-Q bar when Lori realized that she had forgotten to pay off her tab so her card was still there. When we got back into I-Bar it wasn't much more lively... a few more people at the bar and a couple more on the floor. So we grabbed a drink and snagged the empty booth thingy in the corner to wait for the place to fill out a little.

By the time we finished the drinks we were working on the place was starting to pick up, so we grabbed a spot along the wall to enjoy the music and get our dance on. We did the dancing thing for a little bit then we got snagged by someone who recognized Lori and she pulled us over into the corner where her and all of her friends were dancing. Fun times proceeded from there; more dancing, more alcohol. Before long the place was slamming. People enjoying themselves everywhere, lots of smiles and drunk people trying to sing along with all the spiff music they were playing (Franz Ferdinand, Morningwood, Bloc Party, The Bravery, etc). When the lights finally came back on I was fairly smashed but I had enjoyed myself immensely.

We then made our way to the pizza joint around the corner from I-Bar where Lori realized that she had *again* forgotten to pay off her tab, so her card spent the night at I-Bar. The drive home was fun too. I probably should not have been driving, but I did my best to get us both home in one piece. Only panicked once... when I went to pull down her street to drop her off there were two cop cars chilling at the end of the street all but walling it off. I was able to squeeze in there without clipping either car or the cops standing outside of them both times, so that was all good. I chilled at home for a while before finally crashing out at 5:30am only to get up at 11 to go back to work... I was still a little buzzed when I got there ^_^

Finding the way to end this relationship is a lot harder than I thought, and all the problems I am having are shitty reasons that I have written about in the past... along with one huge one that I haven't talked about before.

First, the shitty reasons... I am comfortable at the apartment with Patty, and the apartment is convenient to everything I have going on in life at the moment work and school wise. The other, more plausible, reason is that it is just so much harder to just walk away from what I have than I thought. Because we have been through so much a small part of me (the more masochistic part) wants to try and work things out, but only for Patty's sake. I have been back and forth between my dad's and the apartment this week, tonight is the second night this week I will have slept here at the apartment. Even the separation that I feel I need is ridiculously hard for me.

Once I get further along and figure out what I need hopefully I will be able to make a more concrete decision (and, ffs, stick with it). From what I have experienced so far there is too much to work through, but like I said that masochistic side of me (the part that likes to suffer so other's don't have to) wants to try and work things out. We'll see how this all ends up.

Man I love this stuff... http://www.msnbc.com/comics/nw.asp

The one about Denmark got a chuckle at the end of the blurb.

For the first time in a long time tonight I was exposed to pot. Moved back into my dad's place and it seems that each night after work my brother and his friends smoke out in his bedroom. Of course all of that drifts out to the rest of the house so I was breathing in their fumes for a few hours tonight. When I ran out to get some chinese (very disappointing pork fried rice, uber dry) I was feeling somewhere between buzzed and loopy. It did feel rather relaxing though.

Getting grilled by people about things that make you uncomfortable is a thoroughly horrible feeling. I'm mostly over it all now, but it definitely sucked at the time



((thanks for saying something afterwards, that meant a lot ^_^)).

I finally broke down and tried to figure out how to change my page colors and what not on myspace today. I had fiddled with it the other day to frustration and decided to go back today for revenge. Today's efforts I would consider a draw... I accomplished some things, but there are a few things I need to go back and polish. I will probably do that for a short time tonight when I get home, but the gauntlet has been thrown, and *I* will win.

I am thinking that maybe I have too much on my plate this semester. Five classes at SCC during the day, my night training class 3 nights a week, and a full-time job when I'm not at one of my schools. Leaves me little time to do homework/study or sleep. It will be a small miracle if I manage to swing good grades and keep a good pace on my certification test passing. At least if I do manage to survive after this semester I will have one aspect of my life under control. It stands to reason that with an MCSE and an AA I can land a decent job for the time I am working on my Bachelor's at UCF.

I should also have my other issues worked out in the not too distant future (next week or two I hope) then life will be just peachy, relatively anyway.

Short-short-term goal is to stay awake during my classes though.. :p

To elaborate on my last entry... the progression of human errors:

oops -> mistake -> screw up -> fuck up


Everyone makes mistakes and has the occasional screw up. It seems though, that when I do something stupid I go for broke and fuck everything up. I got myself into this situation with the marriage I am unhappy in, and I was so in need of a way out that when I saw a light I rushed to it. In the process of rushing to find a way out, similar to trying to swim to the surface when you have no oxygen left, I drowned under it all. I fucked up my marriage, and from the way things went down tonight I think I fucked up what could have been a great friendship. Go me!!

Hopefully I will find a less than depressing ending to one of the two parts to this catastrophe.


((I don't even know if you'll still read this after tonight, but I am deeply sorry for all of this.))