…pictures from the past

i have been trying over the course of the last six months or so to arrange a time and place for me and an old friend/roommate of mine to meet up. we were friends during my “heyday” if you will, and i lived with him for probably two-four years. my memory is a little hazy, because time really wasn’t that big of a deal back then. i had no plan, no future to really consider… life really was just a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of existence.

anyway, i wanted to meet up with him, not only because it’s been over a year since we’ve seen each other, but also because he was the keeper of “the server.” see, i was even a computer geek back then (albeit, on the PC side). the house we lived in was completely wired, which was a big deal back in those days, and we had a server in the basement we kept all of our pictures, mp3’s (all legally downloaded… of course) of which numbered in the tens of thousands, games (all legally purchased, of course), movies (all legally purchased, of course)… so on and so forth.

i figured if anyone would have some old pictures of me, it’d be him.

so i finally hooked up with him through myspace, gave him my ftp information, and as of today i have six hundred pictures for my perusal. it’s a really interesting thing, looking through all these old pictures that represent a different time in my life. don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of things about that time in my life i’m not proud of, that being said… all those things formed me into who i am today. therefore, i regret none of it. i cannot be sure i would be where i am today if i went back and changed a darn thing. so, these pictures, while not all of them are warm and fuzzy, most of them are things i look at and chuckle, smile, and remember some really good times with some good friends that i have unfortunately grown apart from.

i wanted to share one picture in particular today. not because of any sentimental value it holds with me and my friends of those days, rather… because it shows a very very different me. it’s pertinent, because of the amount of weight i am trying to lose. this picture was taken of me eight years ago, in 2000. my best guess is i weighed somewhere between 250-300 pounds at the time. at this stage of my life, i could still fit into xxl shirts, and oddly enough people still made fun of me for being fat. this humors me, because i would KILL to get back down to that weight (the low end, 250) right now!

anyway, here’s the picture. it’s good for me to see something like this and know where i came from, and now i’m sharing it with you all…