All of the projects are done with, which means I now have lots of time to sit around feeling stressed about nothing in particular, and feeling sorry for myself. I've been feeling really cut off from a lot of my friends from first-year, because I've been pretty busy, and they all live on campus so nobody wants to come hang out with me, and because I just learned they're all moving out together, and I still don't have a roommate. I'm going to have to work basically full time next summer to just barely afford to live where I do now, and I'm on a lease, so even if I could find somewhere cheaper (in this city, not likely), I can't move.

The clubroom has also felt a lot less welcoming lately. I'm not sure what it is - the make up of the new crowd, the fact that I'm not there quite so often - but I feel like because I play neither Magic nor WoW (and have about zero interest in either - I don't like MMOs or CCGs, and if I did, couldn't afford them anyway), I'm basically cut out of 90% of discussion that goes on. It wasn't like this last year. Jon is right, though - I'm far too young to be reminiscing about the 'good old days'.

In less whiney news, have been watching the live action Sailor Moon series. It's totally cheesy, but also really addictive sparkley shoujo feel-good crack. So that's been cheering me up.

Two of the Group Projects from Hell are finished and over with. I basically had to do the poster and presentation for one of them myself, but it went over well in the end. This just leaves one more presentation on Tuesday, which unfortunately is also accompanied by a long-ass paper. The presentation is group, but the paper is individual, which is both good and bad - bad because I'm on my own, but good because I can do it on my own pace. I will prevail!

Also, Jon is the most wonderful man ever, and Umbrella Chronicles is pretty sweet. That is all.

Reading RPG books before going to bed gives me the weirdest dreams. I had a strange but entertaining one last night that we were playing Shadowrun, but with a bunch of extra people on top of our normal Tuesday group. For some reason our team had been hired to investigate a supposedly haunted hotel - it wasn't at all scary, and instead very Scooby-Do like, or something out of a summer adventure outtake episode for an anime series. I'm not sure if this is more or less awesome than the dream I had that the Scourge had come again, and I was holed up in the back of my grocery store with a pump-action shotgun.

We managed to miraculously not die last night in SR, and instead just got brain-wiped by scary corp goons. Which is going to be interesting, because we can't remember any of the last week, or that our previous two team members are dead. They kinked us with broadcast tags, cortex bombs, probably for a very very unpleasant purpose, but I think they didn't anticipate we were going to go to the police, being criminals and all. Having a team member with lots of contacts = win. It's also helping out our demolitions expert, who has 17 kilos of forbidden foam explosives in his van - the mafia has supplied a lawyer, and paid bail for him.

I know, all I post about is gaming and school, but honestly, that's all I've been doing lately. Week and a half left....

So I've spent too much time today sitting around trying to come up with a name for my Nethermancer. The Second Step's random Earthdawn name generator seems to be really convinced I want to name him Ari, as it came up a bunch of times - I don't, for more or less the same reason I don't have any Maras or Jonathans - characters with names of friends just seems awkward.

So! I've come up with Isak and Miska - leaning towards the first, but I'm terrible at picking names (Asher got named by Clare and Jesse. After Jesse's _dog_) - opinions? Surname to be picked once I have a first name decided on.

(Yes, I am totally avoiding schoolwork with this pointless exercise)

You know you're a gamer when:
-you get excited about new dice
-you care more about what your dice look like than you do your clothes
-you have wacky dice superstitions
-you consider doing stats analysis to validate said superstitions

So yes, I have shiny new dice for myself, and shiny new dice for other people, and I'm seriously considering doing all the rolls necessary to do a frequency distribution, so I can see if my d6s really do hate Shadowrun >.>

Also, leaning towards the Nethermancer - as much as the Taildancer would be hella fun to play, I'm really not sure the party is right. And I kinda want to play a guy, as my other three current characters are girls

So, after metaphorically slapping myself around for being a bit of an asswipe for the last week and a half, things are looking up. I cleaned out my fridge last night, and have been doing laundry today - I should probably do dishes as well, but eh >.> The massive group dice order I organized came in yesterday, so I'm going to go pick it up and pay duty on it today. Project Runway 4 also started airing last night - first episode shows a lot of promise for this season, although I am too lazy to provide further commentary.

After Tuesday night, I've also sat down and done some thinking about Earthdawn stuff. I'm definately going to keep Jorim around in my binder, ready to restat in the future when I've got a good fit for him - the current party was, honestly, not it, which is why I didn't get to do most of the stuff I wanted to with him. I've come up with two different concepts for a new character - I need to do some research on one of them before I make up my mind. They are as follows:

Male human Nethermancer: Original idea was to do something rather TB!Sei-esque - kinda gay, somewhat sociopathic, tendency to give silly cute names to terrifying undead monsters. That idea + this party = NO, though, so I've toned it down to a personality a little closer to how I play Tseng - mostly calm, with just a touch of sarcasm and dry wit. Probably a little less scary than my Tseng, as, well, Tseng is an assassin, essentially, and this guy is not.

Female T'skrang Taildancer: This I need to look up more on, as Taildancers are only in the newest edition, which I don't have PDFs for. But personality-wise - young and energetic, hasn't quite grasped that she isn't invincible yet. Not really violent like Igthakon was, but probably at least a bit physical - not afraid to smack someone she thinks is dumb (although, Aaron, Igthakon fangirl Y/N XD;?). I don't know how well another hyperactive T'skrang would fit with this party, though XD;

So after two stupidity-induced PC deaths in Shadowrun last week, we had another three tonight in Earthdawn, this time including me, mostly because I kind of got strong-armed into a suicidally stupid plan, and wiped with no dice rolls on my part. I'm honestly really upset by this, because there was a ton I wanted to do with Jorim that I never got done. I hope I can reuse him in the future, but it's kind of unlikely. I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do, because the rest of the party is really combat-oriented, which I'm not as interested in playing.

School stuff has also been crazy this week, which is not helping my mood. Why can't it be winter break yet?

Is it true that D20 gives you cancer?

Leading healthy game researchers seem to think so. Luckily, all Catalyst Game Labs products are cancer-free!

I lol'd.

I should be working on my Linguistics paper, but listening to techno and writing character backstory up is way more fun.

I really want to like my Linguistics course - the material is interesting, and the prof is actually pretty good. Unfortunately, my TA for the tutorial section is terrible. She's spends the entire period going over needlessly long answers to simple questions, I think in part to cover the fact that she doesn't know what she's talking about. And she does this instead of giving us important information about assignments. I'm starting to dread Fridays, and it's too late in term for me to switch to a different tutorial section.

And entirely unrelated, but can anyone point me in the direction of some good happy-techno? Something along the lines of DDR stuff like Candy Star (DDR recs are actually okay, too, as I haven't heard all of it, it's just that the tracks are short)

So, I should really be asleep, as I need to be up again in another six and a half hours, but I've got too much on my brain. I've been reading old SR campaigns, mostly about the sequence of events leading up to Crash 2.0, as I'd like to write out some backstory for Ally, and I think that's what sparked off this late-night ramble. I was lying in bed, a particular line of synth running through my head (Coburn - We Interrupt This Program (Interrupted Vocal Mix) - I may upload this and some of the rest of the SR playlist later), when I was suddenly struck by an overwhelming wave of longing for a place I've never been, and which may not even exist, save possibly Tokyo in the quiet hours of the early morning. It's neon lights at night, clusters of skyscrapers looming over the water, concrete and steel girders, empty subway stations, the feeling of being alone in the midst of civilization. It makes me miss Boston a little, in part because New England has a way of getting in your blood, and also because Vancouver, while I love it, has a little less of that neon-grit edge that Boston and NYC have. Some of you may remember a bit of an essay I wrote back in '05 (god, was it really that long ago now?) about cities, and a lot of what I said then holds true now. This, plus my rampant techno-fetishism, probably explains the deep draw cyberpunk has on me.

In conclusion, have a cool Tokyo nightscape pic while I decide what my chances of actually falling asleep are.

EDIT: Also, I know I have expressed my desire for mirrorshades in the past - these are pretty much exactly what I'm looking for (cap from Hackers). Leads would be awesome.

Okay, so my mp3 player didn't come to me today, because nobody was home at Jon's house to sign for it. Fine, whatever, I had it mailed there because I'm home even less. But I discovered on the notice that they want me to pay a $20 'brokerage fee' - on top of the $30 I already paid for a less-than-two-pound box. And they don't deliver on Saturdays, so I have to wait until Monday. Seriously, I've never, ever had this kind of bullshit with the USPS, and even after they jacked International Priority rates, it's still more affordable.

Got my Bio 200 midterm back today - 90 = A+ = very happy me. This almost makes up for all the Cs in everything else. My new mp3 player is somewhere between Seattle and Richmond, which also makes me happy - I hope it doesn't get held at Customs, and thus arrives tomorrow, but who knows.

We had a little Halloween party last night - low-key, but fun. Sat around and had chips and canday, and played DDR and Gloom and Rayman, and got a bit tipsy. Good times.

And last but not least, best of luck to all my friends doing NaNo this year. I, as usual, am not, but am going to instead try to motivate myself to write _something_ this month.