Written September 25th, but I didn't have the internet yet, so I just wrote it on notepad and copied/pasted it here.

Today is the first day in my apartment and already I've got a lot of feelings about it. I've been meaning to write, however, with moving and all and not having internet, I haven't had time to write about what I've been thinking.

Most people don't know but my parents went on vacation to China for three weeks leaving me alone to tend to the house. I know, it would seem obvious that a party should've been called for, but knowing me, I'm just not that kind of guy. And I guess that is good because it means that my parents trust me and that I'm somewhat mature, at least mature enough to be left alone for three weeks and move into a new apartment on my own. However, this living apart from my parents with a "place of my own" thing hasn't quite set in I don't think. I know that I miss my parents, even if I pretend that I don't or maybe forget.

And this having a place of my own and moving there on my own disturbs me in the sense that I am grown up, no more inmature stuff, not that I really did anything that bad in the first place. It means that I've grown more apart from my parents and family and must venture out. I guess its just another step. And though it would seem natural to be eager to be free of parental constraints, I know that I'm reluctant to take another step away from what I know into uncharted waters because during this three week trip, my mother said she would call me every day and I, at the airport, said "No no, thats not necessary." I was only half joking, with a very serious other half. And in fact, she has only called every 2-3 days for about 10 minutes per call. But how I know I'm not prepared to go forth is because I actually anticipate these calls and wished that she did call every day even though the 10 minute conversations consist of talking about how the watering of the household plants goes and what I ate for dinner, I still wish she would call more...

Things I Like #??: Clicking my Dr. Grip pen, the clicking mechanism on it is very clickable, I don't know how to explain it, I guess I just like to fidget a lot.

Kelly Clarkson - A Moment Like This

If I may, I'm going to quote from someone's website speaking about friends.

"I don't understand how some people have "friends" that they aren't interested in getting to know further. If you don't think he/she is someone who could be worth trying to become good friends with, why are you even "friends" with them? I call people like that acquaintances."

That comes from a rather lengthy discussion about how that person sees friendship. I must say that I know what they mean. The rest of their writings discuss how they see their friends and how they define it and stuff like that and while I'm not exactly all that big on defining friendships, I see where what they say applies to how I think about things. For amost of my life, I've watched some people get tons of "partners" and they would just hook up and break up and hook up and break up and so on, females and males alike, while I got, well... none. And I wouldn't think too hard about it because the worse I'd feel. Not to the point where it affected me, but it would just be like "oh, hey, they're cooler than me" or whatever. But now that I'm older and I can say things like "If I only knew what I know now, then." And other nostalgic things I realize more and more about myself. I used to think how the person I quoted thinks. I would think to myself, "Hey, whats the point of hooking up with someone if you're not going to get married? Isn't the point of getting into a relationship to find a 'life partner' and have children and yada yada?" Or whatever. But then I realized my mistake. They were just concerned with that last part of my thought, the baby-making part.

Of course that is a rather simplistic way of thinking of things. There are tons of other variables to consider, especially with people who don't fulfill their hormonal desires and instead have a non-sexual "partnership" which are the ones I find the weirdest. Why bother getting into a relationship? How many percentage of people are going to be like Cory and Topanga on Boy Meets World? Hook up in high school, freshman year (or earlier) and then get married? How many couples? Sure, there are a few, with the whole "high school sweethart" thing, but most people find life partners elsewhere.

Anyways, now that I'm older I can just say, people who got into relationships in high school (and earlier, I suppose) and didn't get any are people who are starved for affection and need people to tell them that they're pretty and can't have normal friends to do that for them, they have to have someone who is all theirs.. If you didn't get to hit it or didn't get married in the near future, then you wasted your time. Thats how I see it. But at this point, I don't really know what I was talking about before.

Things I Like #26: Being alone in the bathroom before taking a shower. And no, no for that. I get to listen to the radio, or sing, or pose in the mirror or take a dump and a lot of other fun things. And no, not that.

Dj Sammy & Yanou - Heaven (Piano Acoustic)

With today being September 11th I was wondering what I have to say or what there is that I can say. I was looking over my past posts from around the same time a year ago and I realized I didn't say much about September 11th and I now regret doing so because although it was only a year ago, I can't remember half of the things that I was thinking and I'm quite sad about that. But here's a short account of what I'll be telling my kids and grandkids (hopefully) when I'm old, married and happier.

I'm sleeping and my mom wakes me up. Its a Tuesday, like 7:00 AM. She says, "The World Trade Centers are gone!" I'm in a somewhat disorientated state because of the grogginess of being plucked out of my dreams as well as the awkwardness of that statement. My original thought was something along the lines of my mom trying to wake me up and telling me something odd like that because she was threatening me. Y'see, I had just gotten back from a New York City trip no more than 2 weeks ago and I had been talking about how much I'd enjoyed going there and I was wanting to go back so I assumed she was trying to tell me that if I didn't wake up that I wouldn't be allowed to goto New York City again. And of course, I can only hope against what has already passed that my mom's words were merely a small jest to get me out of bed.

Most of my morning and part of the afternoon were spent glued at the television. I constantly changed channels searching for the channel that had the most up to date information about the victims, the hijackers, word that the people in the two buildings and Pentagon had escaped unscathed and unharmed.

Recently, with 9-11 approaching and news programs doing features on "How America has Changed" and things of that nature, I've been wondering about how my life has changed. I can't say it has directly affected me but I think that I've at the least discovered a new feeling of patriotism that everyone else has too. It more or less no longer has a direct affect on my emotions as it did for the first month or so during which I was seriously reconsidering how life will change for me and how I should approach my own from then on. I'd like to think that it isn't that 9-11 doesn't have an affect on me any more, its that I've adopted it into all of my other experiences and it has been filed away, on an emotional level anyways, for future reference and is now a part of me. This is what I hope because that is the most positive that I can think of, for myself at least. For others? Well, I can only wish the best for all affected by the tragedy and that the year that has passed has meant better times for all involved.

Things I Like #26: America and what it stands for.

Corey Glover - Imagine