i l o v e y o u...

This blog entry is dedicated to the person I love most.

Angela.

She is such an amazing wonderful person that no words could ever do her justice. There are also no words in any language that can fully express how much I truely love her.

The two years that I have known her have seemed like a lifetime. In that time she has been such an inspiration to me. Never have I ever felt so secure and safe as when I'm with her. My life is complete with her in it. I hope and pray that she will forever be a big part of my life.

Angela, I LOVE YOU VBM+A&F!

No more turning away...

Sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in. Things in life aren't always going to go your way but that doesn't mean you have to turn away from the things that are important without a fight. I'm learning that if you really want something and if it is really important to you, then you can't turn away and just let things happen; you have to take a stand and fight for it. Even the most important things in life sometime require sacrifices. Nothing worth while is going to be easy. You really have to think about how important your priorities are and decide what is special and what is ordinary.

Fight for what makes you happy, hold it close to your heart and never let it go.

The king of pain...

I wonder if I will ever have a normal life? One free of worry, sadness and pain? It is no wonder I turned to drugs like I did. Drugs kill all worry. Drugs kill all pain. Drugs kill all sadness. To be numb. Not to feel anything...

A crushing weight...

I just had a very weird dream...

"I was was walking in a train yard when I walked next to a train car that was stacked high with steel beams. As I was standing next to this car looking up at the steel they began to roll off toward me one by one and I couldn't run or do anything except watch. It was all in slow motion. Once they hit me there was a crushing sound and then I heard a ding (which was my computer. Angela had buzzed me in Yahoo!)."

I awoke with a start and kicked all my covers off wildly and sat there for a second. I'm thinking, "That was a messed up dream." I wonder what it means? If anything...

It's 5AM and cold.

Statistic on a government chart...

Heroin addiction...
Cocaine addiction...
Crimes commited...
Recovering addict...

I'm just another statistic.

A statistic on some chart in some government office somewhere in the country. One of hundreds of thousands of people. What about the relapse statistic? 9 out of 10 heroin addicts relapse. That's %90! It's been almost two years since being admitted into rehab. Two long years; seems like a lifetime ago. I try not to think about things like that but sometimes when I'm alone thoughts like those nag at me. Why am I different from all the people who are dead, in jail or still on the hunt? Because I'm stronger than them? Hardly. A good support group? Maybe. Because I make good choices in my life? Possibly, but what happens if I make a wrong one? Can I go my entire life and leave what I was behind me?

NA, AA, CA all preach that relapse is part of the recovery process; a cycle. A circle of a recovering addict. The problem I see with that theroy is a circle is never ending. It just keeps going and going. Once you begin the cycle it never ends. It makes me wonder. Am I destined to be just another statistic yet again?

I don't have to be if I don't want to be.

Life & everything that comes with it...

The month is half over. I guess. If it isn't one thing, it is ALWAYS another. Judas priest I can't catch a break this year. I get to the bad stuff in a minute. I'll start off with all the good things (albeit few). Where the hell did I leave off on this thing anyways. I'm going to have to go back and read my last blog. Be right back...

I was able to spend my long weekend in Vegas with my beautiful girlfriend which was a nice change from spending my long weekends at work. Before I left for Vegas I did notice that my car was having a hard time accelarating but it wasn't like my car wasn't driveable. So I left for Vegas and when I got there it was awesome to spend some time with Angela. On Saturday we slept in, went to the Cracked Egg for breakfast (Cracked Croissant yum!) but then Angela had to go to work so I sat around playing Resident Evil 4. After a while I left and went to visit Angela at Red Robin but she was so busy that she didn't have time to really hang out with me so I went back to her place. After she got off work she picked up a pizza from Mark Rich's (ooooooh yum) and we hung out playing Nintendo and watching Lord of War which was nice to relax and spend time with her. The next morning we went and saw Fun With Dick & Jane which was alright. I'm not that huge of fan of Jim Carrey pretty much since Pet Detective 1. The next day we slept in again, Angela had to work again but this time we ate at Red Robin before she had to work so I got to spend more time with her. I had to leave the next day which always is hard to do because the moment I leave I miss her.

People always ask me what we do when I go to Las Vegas to see Angela and they are always surprised when I tell them the things we do. They think or expect that since I'm going to Vegas that we should be doing some really fun stuff down on the strip. I beg to differ. To me spending quality time with Angela is just having her be near me. It doesn't matter what we do as long as she is there and I can reach out and grab her and give her a hug or a kiss.

Well when I got back from Vegas my car was running like crap. In all gears I could barely accelarate and the RPM's would redline before my car started rolling. Finally yesterday I couldn't take it anymore and I knew my car was going to completely die on me so I started calling around to all the car repair shops and every single one of them said it was my clutch that had gone out. I called six different places and they all quoted me about the same prices (except AutoBahn who is a damn ripoff). It was going to cost me around $1000 to get the part and get it put in my car. A grand! Of course I do not have a grand so I had to borrow the money from my parents which sucks. At least the place I went with was able to fix my car this morning and get me back on the road this afternoon. But to add insult to the freaking injury which is my car the a/c compressor is also going out in my car (stupid squeeking noise too!) which is also going to cosy me $1000 to replace! Of course I don't have an extra $1000 laying around so I told them not to fix it and I'll deal with it when it really officially dies on me (which will be the first day it hits 100 degrees and I'm on my way to Vegas). At least my car is driving a little better now. Well a lot better. I don't hate my car but I really hate car problems because they are so damn expensive and you have no choice but to fix them.

Oh and at work! I almost forgot. We had some changes on my team that I didn't completely (or at all) agree with. I have been "promoted" to product manager of one of our tools and I am no longer managing the testing team. I wanted to manage the team but I'm starting to see that it would be better off for the company if I were to manage the product. It has the opportunity to be very successful but I still didn't agree with some of the other changes. I don't think putting a non-technical person in charge of a technical team is a wise move. Especially when the team needs to be managed so closely. But I'm sucking it up and doing my job.

This year has really gotten off on the wrong foot. I hate it when that happens. Work, my car, everything it seems, except Angela. She is my silver lining on the cloud. I love her so much.

Well, back to life and everything that comes with it...

Holy fricken new year...

The new year is rollin' along and I'd have to say it's started out not as great as I was hoping. I spent my New Years break at work trying to recover data from a crashed hard drive that had all of our critical system data on which was a stressful task in itself. So 3 out of my 4 days off were wasted. Well, not so much wasted as much as spent not doing what I was planning on doing; sitting around in my underwear playing Resident Evil 4, sleeping and chatting/talking with Angela. But NOOOOOOO000oooo... Somebody didn't do a system backup so I couldn't just restore the drive. So I had to image the drive and use forensic tools to pull the data off almost a file at a time. Drag and dropping over 300,000 files manually would ruin anyones weekend not to mention the fact that these were extremely important files that needed to be recovered, so that added stress. Since then I haven't been able to get much work done that I originally had to do and I haven't had much help from anyone else at the office.

Then I started having car problems. Damn my Piece of Jetta. It feels like the turbo is going out or something like that. Plus the other day I couldn't start my car cause it was flooded with gas or something. I had to sit around for an hour before I could start my car again. Plus the cruise-control isn't working now. Which sucks bad when driving to Las Vegas and having to keep your foot on the pedal the whole time. But that won't stop me from going to Vegas this weekend.

All those things combined have gotten my year off to a shitey start. However, last night I got to vent my frustrations out to Angela and she promised me that I would have a good day today and what do you know? I had a great day today. I got a ton of work done (I'm still a month behind though) and it was a great day. Oh and I also found out that I have Monday off for African-American Human Being Citizens of the World and White American People Libiterian Rights Jr. Day or whatever the hell they call it now. It doesn't matter to me as long as I get the day off. That means I get to spend a full extra day with my girlfriend. Sawheat.

Oh, for those of you who enjoy playing a videogame now and then I highly recommend picking up a copy of Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube or PS2). That game is awesome! I love it (Thanks for the present Angela!). It's one of the best games I've played in a long time and a breath of fresh air in the RE series. I've been a big fan of the Resident Evil series since the first time I was sitting in Cody's parents basement watching him play the original RE on his Playstation back in '97. Simply put, the game is sweet. Speaking of videogames I scored on eBay this last week on two other Gamecube games. I got Metroid Prime for $8.50 (after shipping) which most of the time that game costs about $15 but here's the real killer: I got Zelda: The Wind Waker with the limted edition Ocarina of Time and Ocarina of Time Master Quest bonus disc for $22 shipped! Nintendo ran a promotion years ago and that damn bonus disc has become rare and expensive. Those games combine on eBay usually go for about $40 - $60. I lucked out by messaging the seller right after he started the auction and asked him how much he would end the auction for. Days later he responded with $18 + $4 shipping. SCORE! The sad thing is I had all these games at one time but pawned them :( Good thing is all that shit I pawned can be replaced. My life can't be.

Anyways, I'm starting to go on and on, it's getting late, I'm getting tired and I want to talk to Angela before I go to sleep so... I'm out.