Today went much better than yesterday.

Kristina and I went out to Dick Blick to buy her a nice portfolio for her work, followed up by an impulse buy of a nice JVC MP3 CD player for Kristina's car, which I have now installed. It's a very nice player, and she'll be surprised when I pick her up in an hour or so. We could have had Best Buy install it for free, but they charge for parts and somehow it was going to need $50 in parts. Peculiar that, because I installed it with $12.70 worth of parts, out of which $4.23 was used to buy a tool to remove the old stereo. I'm sure Best Buy had those tools already. Anyway, no problems during the install, no hacking up the console, just a smooth as butter installation.

Saw the movie Big Fish today. It was excellent, and even though it could be considered a Father/Son type of movie, I think the appeal was broader than that. It made me cry, which I think was desperately needed.

My brother and his girlfriend came over tonight. I was really occupied with the car stereo, so we didn't get to spend as much time as I would have liked playing Neverwinter Nights. There's always next time, though.

Somebody do me a favor... call me up and talk to me sometime. I'm gonna try my best to be more active in other people's lives. Existing just isn't enough for me anymore. I'll try not to meddle, but if I do, this is my apology in advance; you'll have to forgive me because I'm just trying to be an important part of your life. (:p)

I should have stayed home today. It's been one of those days where I'm super sensitive to everything. You might call it whining. Anyone who reads this blog knows that my posts typically aren't angst ridden, but if that sort of thing turns you off, please visit another page now. I can't explain it very well, which to me is sort of the definition of angst. Pent up frustration that is hard to express.

At school, I received my first major writing assignment back. I really thought I was writing exactly the way she wanted. By the book and perfectly in tune with the assignment. There were lots of comments on the paper, none of which had anything to do with grammar, word choice, or spelling. This is college level, and I'm aware that we're expected to do well in those areas. I guess I felt my grade was lower than expected because of her opinion and not necessarily based on the merit of the work. I really like the professor, and maybe I just felt too comfortable in the class. Now I feel alienated from the class, like I don't belong. Perhaps I'm holding myself to unrealistic standards again.

My brother came over today, and not necessarily to visit. It was more like he had no place else to go, and this bothered Kristina greatly. My mom called and asked if he could come over for an hour or so while she finished up at work. Why did she call? He is an adult now, but when mom asks me to do something I will. Never in her life has she made unreasonable requests, yet here I was annoyed with the idea that my brother would be coming over. I love him to death, but I can't figure him out. I just want to be alone.

It may sound girlie, but dammit I just wanted to crawl into a dark tight space and cry. I hope I feel better after writing this, because I feel horrible.

I need some more work, my esteem is scraping bottom, and I've been unhappy for a while. I hope things turn around soon.

Don't think I mentioned this before. One of Microsoft's most recent updates to Windows XP involves editing a font. The font is called Bookshelf Symbol 7. In Microsoft's own words, "The font has been found to contain unacceptable symbols." I thought to myself... "Self, what could these offensive symbols be?" I'm a great guesser, because after opening my current copy of Bookshelf Symbol 7 with Character Map, it turns out that there are a couple of swastikas in the font. Now I'm certainly no supporter of the Nazis, but I have this weird obsession with not buying censored goods. This obsession extends into the world of fonts as well. I still wonder what was done with the swastikas, were they removed leaving only blank spots or did somebody replace them with another presumably "unoffensive" symbol. I know this is a long shot, but what about people who write papers about the Nazis? Would it not be better to have a typeable symbol than to have young students googling the term "nazi"? Now, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I can honestly see universities monitoring students' Internet searches and website visits. Don't you think hate groups such as the Nazis and all terms associated with them would miraculously be found on the list of suspicious or dangerous material? But, I must digress, how far should we really go to prevent offending people? I have over 200 fonts installed, and I'd never even noticed those symbols before. That's because Bookshelf Symbol 7 isn't a very attractive font. Who worries about this stuff?

Back from Atlanta. Had a good time, especially the part where every toilet we used was broken. At least for me it was. We ate breakfast at a Waffle House in Georgia. The food was great, but the toilet was nasty and broken. Ryan and I both had to reach into the back of the tank and manually flush the toilet. The rubber stopper in the bottom of the tank, upon touching it, seemed to magically turn your entire hand black with the corroded rubber residue. Then I used the toilet at Copart Auto Auctions (our final and intended destination). It had the tank cover removed, exposing what can best be described as an overtly engineered hunk of a futuristic human waste accepting machine. Class is starting, must leave now.

Today, my friend Ryan stopped by the house and invited me to go on a road trip to Atlanta. We're leaving at midnight tonight. It will be fun, I love going on road trips with that guy. We have all kinds of talks. Some serious, some ridiculous, some insightful. It just so happened to be a day that I could actually go. Well, I guess I have a little bit of preparing to do, so I'll be on my way now.

Kristina and I exchanged Valentine's Day gifts on Friday. This year was kind of weird because I normally go all out on Valentine's Day and this time I didn't. Anyway, in the past, I've ranted and raved about how gift-giving gets really irritating. I bought Kristina a purse that she wanted (Black, with a black & white photo of a white cat reaching down off of a brick wall) and this Norah Jones CD. I received a 32MB USB drive and an adventure game for the PC. Both were excellent gifts. Many thanks go out to Kate, who helped me realize that a USB drive was the solution to a problem I was having. Even though we didn't go all out, I really enjoyed our time together. Anybody have cool stories to share about Valentine's Day?