So Eric, this guy that graduated with my older cousin (I graduated with his younger brother Chris - they're only like 11 months apart, I believe), was in an awful motorcycle accident yesterday. He was poppin' wheelies out on one of the backroads around here (not wearing a helmet) and fell back, head first, onto the pavement and the motorcycle fell on top of him. He's in one of the hospitals down in Birmingham, with absolutely no brainwave activity at all, and they're probably going to take him off life support either later tonight or tomorrow. He's only 20 years old and he's dying. He just got married recently (like a year or so ago) and had adopted his wife's little 3-year-old boy and his wife is now pregnant with another child. This makes me very sad, even though I was never particularly close to Eric. I just don't understand why shit like this happens.

So assuming he doesn't pull through and they pull the plug on him, I'm going to go to the funeral - for Chris's (the younger brother) sake. They were very close to each other and I know he's going to be really torn up about it all. Lauren (another fellow graduate) told me today in Pre-Calc that Chris was screaming when he found out about it and everything.

Uhm.. Anyway.. Happy things now, yes?

I did that little presentation thing today in Public Speaking. My favorite quote was "In dreams and in love, there are no impossibilities" by Janos Arvay. Yumminess, no? And I brought a cd (Shadows Fall's 'The Art of Balance') as my object - and talked about how I absolutely love music and how I met the band when I went to Ozzfest '03 and got their autographs, etc etc. And well, we all know who I talked about as my most influential person.

I mentioned how I had never really had someone to look up to while I was growing up, because none of my school teachers or family were people that I particularly admired, and how I'm so completely different from almost everyone I've ever been around. Oh, and how all these people who are supposed to be influential to me over the years were really just my motivation and inspiration to not be [insert random non-Jess-like quality here]. Then I was like 'So the person that is really most influential to me is someone I've only known for like 7 months - my boyfriend, Jim. He's not afraid to be himself and he challenges me and makes me question myself as to why I react to things the way I do. He's the most important person in my life, by a landslide. I'm a very stubborn and critical person and usually when someone gives me advice, I'll just ignore it and do whatever I want to anyway but with Jim, it's different because I really, really value his opinion and I know he'll always be honest with me about everything.'

Then I stopped with the rambling and proceeded to state my favorite quote and then run back to my desk. Well, not run exactly, but I almost did. Stupid public speaking. Damn it to hell!

past - future