figured i'd at least take a second to post amidst everything lately.

it never fails, all 4 years of college the week before spring break is always one of the worst weeks of the entire schoolyear. profs always wanna get something or other done before we all go off and forget everything for a week, so you're almost always sure to have a busy week before. it's been busy this week, gave a speech today and i've got a big 30% midterm in networks on thursday, as well as an automata homework that i know i'll hafta turn in after the break.

prolly kinda redundant to say i know i haven't gotten proper sleep at all lately. in fact i'm starting to think that lately even on the weekends i don't seem to sleep properly anymore. it used to be i'd sleep 4-5 hours a night during the week and then a good 10 hours each night of the weekend, but i haven't even been doing that. lately it feels like i'm averaging more like 3-4 hours each weeknight, and it tends to be either from like 9pm-1am or something like 6-10am. then on the weekends a lot of times i'll miss my window to go to sleep (either cuz we're drinkin or i just don't feel like sleeping) so i'll end up going to sleep at 8 or 9am and blow the whole day.

that's kinda what we did this weekend, and we prolly shouldn't have in hindsight. i can only speak for myself, but i think i've had more to do than i thought i did this week and any errands we needed to get done prolly should have been done over the weekend. stuff that i should do before spring break, like a haircut or buying shit, i'm not even sure if i'll be able to cuz i'm pretty swamped this week.

can't remember how much i've mentioned this, but next week i'm going with alayna and her family/their friends on a cruise to playa del carmen and cozumel from galveston from saturday to thursday morning. never been on a cruise or to mexico (other than tijuana) so it'll all be a new experience to me. so alayna and i gotta get to san antonio to join up with the rest of the group and then leave for galveston sometime saturday for our 4pm departure. our plan is to leave sometime after lunch on friday, so i don't know yet if maybe i'll try to go run some errands early friday or maybe try to work on the automata homework, i dunno. we definitely don't wanna leave again so that we might get stuck in a 2-hr traffic jam once we hit san antonio, but we'll hafta see i guess.

it hasn't been really the toughest of semesters, but it's pretty much standard for me. i wish now that i had gotten into a maymester speech class back in dallas at collin county, cuz that class fuckin blows here and it would prolly save me a lot of trouble not to have that. sure would have been nice to have 13 instead of 16 hours, but i guess there's not much i coulda done, since that maymester class filled up before i was eligible for registration. i'm sure most people think public speaking in general blows, i mostly just don't like it here for how specific it is, not really so much how awful it is to speak in front of people, cuz you can tell they're barely really paying attention anyway. i'm sure i do it all wrong, but i usually hafta pull a massive all-nighter the day before my speech to practice and get things right, and by the time my speech time comes i'm so ready to get it over with and so tired that i'm sure it affects my performance. i'll prolly get a C in there, but i mean i guess that's alright. i kinda would have liked to be able to say "yeah i only got a C in calculus my freshmen year, i was just a baby" but what does it really matter? 3 years from now i'm not even gonna remember my fuckin GPA. my guess is i'll prolly end up with a flat 3.0 this semester, which is more than enough. i don't really need any certain GPA this semester, but it's a good feeling knowing i can get away with even like a 2.0 or something, just in case things turned really bad in some classes somehow.

surprisingly so far this semester i've done fine. i semi-bombed my first speech, but like i said i'll still pass the class. i got an 88 on the ethics midterm, a good 11 points higher than the average, so i could have a shot at an A in there given the tests are the hardest part of the course usually. i got a C that will be curved to a B on an automata midterm, which i was pretty thrilled about really. i've been going back and forth on the 2nd and 3rd best courts in racquetball lately, so that's working out well too. it's no big secret tho that when i've gotta come into class on either no or very little sleep that i'm not gonna play all that well. today was one of those... when in with basically no sleep and got skunked 11-0 my first round, looked like i was swatting flies out there. i just laughed it off tho and told myself i knew that'd happen. ya can't really get that frustrated when you realize you're dizzy just walking around campus, let alone playing a competitive racquetball match. and yes, i do have one class where i have yet to do anything in there yet i'm still relatively sure i'll wind up with an A, which rocks. we kinda all deserve a class like that tho in our last semesters, as sort of a thank you from the universities, if ya ask me.

it's been tough getting to the rec lately, even tho we wanted to hit it up plenty before spring break. we've done great about getting there when we can, just that it's the "when we can" part that hurts us, cuz we're usually pretty busy. but like last week for example, i played at least an hour of racquetball for 3 days of the week, then lifted weights on 2 other days, so that seems pretty damn active if you ask me. i'm looking forward to coming back from spring break with a good tan, which will ALWAYS help your self-esteem when it comes to weight lifting, heheh.

hoang had recommended chapelle's show a while back, and he's right, it's good. watched a couple tivo'd episodes yesterday and laughed my ass off. i'm trying to get some of the first season dvd-rips through bittorrent now. lauren and laura (along with an ever-reluctant alayna) had a good time watching the first 5 episodes of arrested development, i think i've sorta gotten them to like it, given that they watch it live now. somehow i gotta find time too to watch all 14 episodes of dead like me. alayna and i have stuck with airline on a&e so far, but it's starting to get pretty piss poor. like tonight they had a bunch of wannabe kids trying to find eminem in a chicago airport and the show made a huge deal about how disappointed they were and shit. it's mostly just running out of compelling stories and starting to look pretty lame, not sure if we'll stick with it or not.

my SD wi-fi card for the PDA came in today, so i'm looking forward to trying that out on campus. just a little tip, if you're in like the eastern half of texas, use buy.com. they seem to frequently have pretty solid deals on the shit i buy and i have yet to pay any tax with them, yet they've been shipping me crap from dallas, coming here hella fast. i got a shipment notice today at 4:20pm and i had already gotten it from FedEx at 1:30pm. my TDK HO minidiscs came in too, sexy as hell boy. i also ordered a couple gamecube strategy guides from amazon (shockingly, the first time i've ordered from them) to help motivate me to finish some games. i know i could just look at faq's online, but having a printed shiny color copy will help me play the games a bit more and finish them.

haven't decided yet if i'm gonna go back to dallas in april or not. could look at more apartments then but i dunno how much of a priority it is quite yet. i'll prolly end up going back just cuz this semester i've only been back for my birthday in february and if i don't go that will have been only going back once in about 4 months, which is kinda sad, even for a senior.

i've started trying to post some of my digital pics here but it's a big work-in-progress. basically i wanna be able to upload all the pics i take into each event so that they can be referenced quickly.

i guess that's about all i can think of for now, just wanted to update before spring break really. ya won't hear from me for prolly a good 10 days from now, heh.

rgds,
justin