MacBook Pro :: Running Particularly Hotter Than Normal - Freezes Itself - Force Quitting Photobooth In The Process

The problems:
Yesterday and the day before were particularly warm. I didn't really notice until yesterday that my computer was running particularly hotter than normal, even while sitting on my desk for long periods of time. Later in the day yesterday, it was pretty warm and my MBP was running hotter than normal for just sitting on my desk. Noticeably hotter too. At the time, I was running quite a few programs: Safari, Firefox, Msn, Text Edit, and possibly Photoshop as well.

All of a sudden, when I try to open Photobooth, the computer freezes itself for the first time since I can remember... it takes nearly 5 minutes to unfreeze itself, force quitting Photobooth in the process. I wasn't sure what was going on, so I tried opening Photobooth again after everything was back to normal. Same thing, but this time it was taking even longer to try to unfreeze itself. I got kind of impatient and pissed, so I closed a bunch of programs. Tried to log into msn to tell my friends why I left randomly... and yeah, the computer freezes up again. I tried to click into the Finder to force quit the program, but the Finder freezes up and won't even open the "force quit" panel. At that point, I waited a few minutes and then forced a shut down via holding the power button.

I waited a few minutes again, and tried to turn on my MBP. I log into my account like normal... my desktop image comes up, but it just sat there. No files, no HD, not even the Finder toolbar at the top showed. I let it sit like that for about 15 minutes. Nothing. Fed up, I forced a shut down again. Closed the lid, and went to sleep. The next morning, it was cooled down considerably, so I started up the computer again. Same deal, except after about 15-20 minutes the HD image loads. And then a minute or so later, my files load, along with the Finder toolbar at the top. Hooray! ...not really.

I open up Safari. Things seem alright. I get to my email, then try to open Firefox. Firefox immediately gives me the "Well, this is embarrassing..." message upon loading the window, and about 20 seconds later quits itself without warning. I tried opening it a couple of times, nada. Same thing happens over and over. Same with Photoshop. I haven't really tried any other programs... because eventually my problems got worse.

I went through the day taking notes for my classes on Text Edit, because apparently Text Edit and Safari are okay with my computer at the moment (using this right now, actually). When I get back, I try to restart my computer to hopefully give it a chance to shut off and start up again to fix the application force-quitting problem. Worse. It goes to restart, and then gets itself stuck on the load image of the purple aurora/galaxy default desktop background. Considering the issue that I had that morning, I let it sit for a considerable time. Nothing happened. So I had to force a shut down again. The ONLY way it seems to be able to start up is to force the shut down and then start it up again. The desktop takes several minutes, if not 5 or more, to load my desktop files. If I try to do anything upon it immediately loading my files, icons, etc., it will freeze up for several minutes trying to execute the command. Ex: clicking on my HD to get to the Disk Utilities application. Eventually, I got the Disk Utilities to open and run a disk repair. The repair was quick and suggested only a few issues with things like Quicktime.

^ it was a bit too late at this point to call a mac place about my issue, so I called my parents. I tried to print something out for my mom via Text Edit and the computer froze up again. Couldn't even get the Finder to unfreeze itself. Forced a shut down, and now I'm here. Safari's up. Just about the only thing that is actually still working. And so is the Disk Utility.

I'm unsure of what to do next... I have two external HD's. One is brand new, nothing on it. I'd love to attempt backing up all of my files before taking my computer in to get it checked out. Not really 100% sure how I might attempt that, considering the way my computer has been handling doing much of anything at all lately. Any advice on what to do next before I take this sucker into a mac shop would be really great.

~Admittedly, I don't treat my computer the best that I could... once I left it on my bed for a while and it had to shut itself off because it overheated. It was fine afterward, but a few times I've fallen asleep after leaving my computer on my bed. When I would wake up, I would immediately check it. Sometimes it would wake up from being asleep (checked the temperature; usually not that warm thankfully), other times it seemed to have turned itself off. I attributed this to the battery running low... but I'm actually not sure. Maybe I let it overheat itself again? I'm not entirely sure, sadly. This is my first laptop though, so I'm kind of slowly learning the "no-no's" of how to treat my computer. Thankfully, I read enough around here to invest in the extended warranty.