Game and memory card have been located, which is a relief. On the other hand, Air Canada can't even tell me if they've found my bags, which officially gives them the status of worst customer service I've had from an airline, ever. This is probably the fifth or sixth time I've lost luggage, and the first time I haven't had it back in under ten hours. There were also about thirty or forty other people on my flight from Toronto with lost luggage - I don't even know how the hell this happens.

I'm so angry, and seriously worried I'm not going to see any of it again.

Flights were fine, but apparently Air Canada hires incompetent fuckwads, so both my bags got lost, each on a separate section of the journey, and nobody can tell me where exactly they are or when they're getting to me.

And apparently my copy of DDS2 and my PS2 memory card have either been lost to the piles of Canada Post, or stolen by the guys that broke in before, which is rather depressing.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

So, in between working on a Mage character (got an idea and I've been running with it) and looking up info on the White Wolf website for ordering purposes, I have spent a lot of time lately looking through WW products.

I feel like I should say, first and foremost, that I want to hug whoever they hired to do graphic design for the new World of Darkness line. RPG books really only need to be readable and relatively easy to find necessary info in - most present a certain aesthetic appropriate to the game, but in most cases it's pretty basic - Earthdawn has some great art, and a nice header font, but that's about it. White Wolf went all-out with the new series, though - they are absolutely gorgeous, and I love how they styled each of the lines within nWoD to match the feel of that particular setting - the Mage books, for instance, have a faux ribbon-binding printed on the spine side of pages, lovely gold script headers, and little gold flecks on the pages, which really conveys to me the sense of elegant, ancient power that Mage is supposed to be about.

And all of these has led me to discover that there is a White Wolf development LJ, which is very cool - I've been getting a bit of an insight into the background work of game development via Dumpshock, as most of the main SR team are members (or in some cases, admins), but this has a lot more detail, and some really interesting discussions. Chief among this is the handling of metaplot in nWoD, compared to oWoD (for non-WoD players - a few years back, they basically totally rebooted the entire World of Darkness setting, giving the old one - oWoD - and new - nWoD). I didn't have much experience with oWoD - Vampire, pretty much exclusively, and I never got around to actually playing it, but the general sense I get is that oWoD had a massive, looming metaplot that people either loved, because they thought it was really cool, or hated, because they didn't want to have to buy tons of books to use on aspect of the metaplot. nWoD, on the other hand, seems to largely have no metplot, just history. As much as I do like metaplot (I love the Shadowrun metaplot, for instance), I realized, thinking about it, that I don't mind the nWoD lack of metaplot - it's got serious atmosphere, irrelavent of any metaplot.

...And I just got seriously derailed by the internet there, so I don't know where I was going with that. Possibly into a deep examination of WoD versus DnD, or why I don't like d20, but that'll have to wait for another day, I think.

We have had a low-key Christmas here this year, which is fine by me. I mostly got lots of kitchenware, which makes me happy, although my mom is also paying for my new laptop battery as a present. Hugs to all my friends, particularly the ones having a less than stellar time so far.

(Quick side note, I haven't forgotten about cards, just haven't had time - they'll be out by the end of January, for sure - I'm just sloooooow)

Just renewed T-T.org for another year - this year makes five years I've had it registered - I can't believe it's been that long. I really haven't been doing much with it lately - just my blog and photos, mostly. I've come to the realization that none of my fansite projects are ever going to be done, although I still would like to put together a cosplay website. I've become a bit disillusioned of fandom as of late, but I'm still interested in costuming (although I've had no time to actually work on it). I'm thinking of doing some sci-fi/fantasy stuff for NorWesCon in the spring - either something Earthdawn (because I really like the art style and clothing designs used in a lot of the books), or a set of Vulcan robes, after the discovery that Enterprise actually has lots of Vulcan bits in it, as opposed to the five minutes of those two guys in First Contact.

Also, I am going to kill the roofers next door, who started pounding (and I mean pounding; it sounded like someone was hammering on _our_ wall) at 9:30 this morning. I'm on vacation damnit, I want to sleep.

Went and spent a bunch of Christmas money on video games - I picked up God of War, the first Prince of Persia game, and the first Phoenix Wright game used for $50 or so at GameStop. Also went and saw Across the Universe, which I highly recommend for people who like the Beatles - I enjoyed it immensely.

I've been trying to brainstorm for stuff now that I have time, but I've been hitting a major block, on everything. Which is bad, because I really wanted to get a Mage character totally done before I got home, and I could really use new layouts around here. I dunno, I may look through some of the WoD books again and see if anything jumps out at me - I know what Path I want, and probably what arcana, but I just can't come up with a concept I really like.

I also forgot how totally boring it is here. Everyone on my family just kind of goes off and does their own little thing, and I can't go anywhere without a car - not that there's many places to go. Ugh.

Back in MA for the next week and a half. My car hasn't been re-registered, so I've only got the minivan in the afternoon, which is kind of a damper on plans. House is largely same old, although my bedroom is half-entertainment center now, which is somewhat awkward. Makes me feel better about my place in Van, though, because man, I forgot how messy and cluttered this house is.

Flights yesterday were okay - somehow my bag ended up getting routed through LA, so after forty-five minutes waiting at the baggage claim for it, I went to the desk and got told it would be showing up in about six hours. They delivered it to the house this morning, but it seems like it got left in a puddle somewhere - a bunch of the clothes at the bottom were all wet.

I feel like I should be doing something productive or creative, but I'm just not in the right mindset right now...

Jon bought me a DS for Christmas, because he enjoys spoiling me (it's a Zelda DS, too). So. I've got Phantom Hourglass, and am planning on going on another epic Phoenix Wright quest when I get back to the States, as well as possibly picking up Puzzle Quest - what other awesome DS/GBA games should I pick up? We went out and bought a screen protector today - I'm made of fail and dropped it and got the back kinda linty before managing to put it on, but it works fine.

Also, in the process of packing, I managed to drop my 5 mL bottle of Wolf Moon all over the floor of the bathroom - I've got about a third of it left (and am not sure how to save it -wrapped broken bottle up in plastic wrap for now), but my bathroom is full of Wolf Moon. It's kind of nice, actually, but I'm really annoyed with myself for dropping it.

Whiny shallow post time! Because this is my blog, and I can do it if I want. I noticed last week that some of my jeans were feeling uncomfortably tight. So today I dragged out the tape measure to see if I was growing, or my pants were shrinking. The verdict? It is most definitely me. My hips are almost four inches bigger than the last time I measured them, in early June. I know I'm not fat, and I feel shallow for saying this, but damnit, I want my favorite pants to fit again. I can't even get the zipper on my suit pants up anymore. I don't have money to buy more pants D:

I know what it is, too, honestly. I stopped working out over the summer because I was busy and never around, and didn't pick it up again in the fall. And I've finally really hit the end of puberty, which means my metabolism has started to slow down.

I need to start working out again in January - my course-load is a lot lighter, so I actually have time. And I also need to remember that while I can prove that I can eat that whole pot of pasta by myself, I really shouldn't.

Three finals down, one more to go. The worst is behind me - gone pretty well so far, although I don't think I did as 'OMGawesome' in some of my classes as I had hoped. I'm starting to hit that point where, having had so much to do lately, I feel like there still should be tons of things I need to work on, and there isn't. It's always a little off-putting.

I'm also trying to come up with a good Christmas present for my mom - I was going to get her a nice local wine, but the US Border Agency documents seem to say that if I'm under 21, I can't actually bring alcohol into the US. Never mind that it's perfectly legal for me to buy it here.

(PS, Audrey, got your card - thank you ♥!)

I've totally messed up my sleep cycle, and I'm kind of tweaking about my exams, so here I am, blogging at five 'til four in the morning. Just finished Gibson's new novel, Spook Country which was...alright, I guess. I enjoyed it, but I was introduced to him via his Sprawl stuff, and it is the Sprawl stuff that I continue to be most awed by. I'm not sure what it is that attracts me to the cyberpunk/industrial/synthpop vision, although I know some of it is my rampant techno-fetishism.

This train of thought led me in turn to consider dying my hair again. It's been almost two years since the last dye job, which means that most of my friends here have only seen my dyed hair in photos. It might be cool to try for silver again - some part of me resists the idea, though, even though I know it's just temporary.

Time is a strange thing - it seems like forever since that last dye job, almost two years ago, and yet it seems like my high school graduation, around the same time, was just yesterday. Time elongates, and then compresses, doing strange things to your perspective. I know this does particularly weird things to me, as I have a tendency to live by reminiscing about past, or worrying about the future - never in the moment. That's slowly starting to change, though, as I become happier with who I am and how my life is (and in the course of writing this paragraph, I was suddenly struck by a memory of a hike I took on the Bluff Mountain - not so much the walk itself as the scenery).

...Part of me wants to segue into why I'm one of the few people who seems to really like both Earthdawn and Shadowrun (and a few other equally different pairs - alt folk and industrial, anyone?), but I think I may stop here before this post gets a little too Delirium-like.

2007 really is a bad year for me and technology, it seems. My camera LCD has cracked, badly, and the zoom-in doesn't work (it feels like the button spring has popped loose). I think the insides are still functional, but it may be time to start shopping around. And I just managed to crash my scanner, although I think I've got it working again.

Anyway. The reason I crashed my scanner is because I'm sitting around scanning cool Delirium panels out of Sandman, and the reason I'm doing that is that Delirium is awesome, and would make a pretty decent PB for Ally, if I ever play her online again. I finished reading the last book last night, and I wish I had something deep and intelligent to say about it, but I don't, really, other than it's awesome. The art's so-so in places (CLAMP and Kaori Yuki have spoiled me, okay?), but the writing is absolutely brilliant. I think my favorite volume was Brief Lives, but like I said, I like Delirium a lot.

I'm already panicking about my Vertebrate Anatomy final on Thursday. Argh.

Because it is December, as my great big Lindt chocolate advent calendar tells me. I will probably make a wishlist and/or card post at some point in the future, but not right now. However - I'm going to flying home very late on December 18th, and flying out again on the 29th, and would very much like to hang with people while I am home. Who's going to be be around?

Worrying about finals, wondering how things will turn out in SR (I don't get to find out until January!), can't sleep, same old, same old. Nice little post on why we blog here - I'm not sure I've ever touched on the subject here, but I agree with what he says (for people unfamiliar with copperbadge/Sam Vimes, he's a brillant writer - both fic and original stuff).

I worry too much.

I would much rather sit inside my house and clean and read Mage books by myself than go out to UBC to play Fireborn. This is in part because while it has stopped snowing, it is still cold and wet and windy outside, and in part because I haven't been having that much fun in the game lately. I know it's basically self-fulfilling: I'm not that interested, so I involve myself less, and then have less fun, and become even less interested. This is in part because we've spent the last two months or so of sessions chasing after one goal, and because I've managed to get myself into a corner as far as characterization goes. It's fantasy in the modern world, so I decided it would be fun to play the skeptical cynic who doesn't believe in any of this stuff (counter to the rest of the party, who question nothing). Things have been getting increasingly weird, but she's largely written this all off as either a dream, hallucination, or psychotic break. The problem with this is that now that particular personality point has been made, I can't turn around and suddenly be 'Okay, all of this weird shit is real!' without it being horribly out of character, and I can't think of a suitable catalyst for the change. I dunno, if someone else smacks her and points out the 'look, you were just talking to a _whale_. Underwater.' bit, that might do it.

I did get most of my dishes washed today, though, so my kitchen looks like normal people live here now XD; Next up, living room.