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Some discussion this evening on gender/sexual identity and fandom has given me a terribly wonderful idea for my elf Illusionist - he's a cross-dresser. It fit incredibly well with both his (ocassionally very flamboyant) personality, and the fact that he's an Illusionist - they live to seek truth, and to play with people's perceptions of it. Perceptions of gender identity would be a particularly fun place to do that. GM will probably look at me like I'm crazy when I start asking him about gender politics in Barsaive at game tomorrow night.

I do still have to figure out the best way to work him into the party that's already running, though - it's 'if brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it' at it's best: a troll weaponsmith, an a t'skrang (lizardman) sky-raider (like a pirate, but with flying ships). I think I can gear him towards being a little more useful in combat-situations, but I still need a reason for him to join up with the party - there's some truth he's seeking, and I really don't know what. May have to quiz other players on what the party's goals have been so far.

(And now I've got Blur's 'Girls and Boys' stuck in my head)

On and off okay day - mostly I'm just tired. Five days of school and two of work, plus extra shifts on top of the school is hard, particularly as produce is fairly physically demanding - moving around all the time, hauling heavy boxes and bags. Thankfully we have no classes next Monday, care of the Victoria Day long weekend, which means I finally get a day to my self. On the upside, one week down, only five more to go, and I knew it was going to be harsh when I opted to go for classes and work at the same time. The dodgy wireless upstairs of course was out all weekend when I didn't have a chance to get on-campus, and came back up today - I'm getting a cellphone with my first paycheck next month, I think.

Other than that, not much to report. Meant to study for my chem midterm today, but this has turned into doing lab prep work for tomorrow, reading up on hacking in the Shadowrun player's guide, and goofing around on the internet a lot. I'm going to try and take off a weekend in early June, because I am missing people lots, and am going to wind up making myself really depressed if I don't get out some. Also, I've started having dreams about restacking the strawberry display and rotating apple bins - it's a bit like playing too much DDR and seeing the arrows scroll in your vision when you close your eyes.

I totally work in the best department in the store. Why? We had a mini-BBQ randomly, so I got a free dinner of two hamburgers and some grilled onions and squash. This job is definately better than my last one.

I think I'm finally starting to settle in again, which is good - being depressed just makes me miserable, and makes nobody else want to be around me. The roommate wasn't kidding when she said she's not around much - I haven't seen her for the past two or three days. I like having the place to myself, though.

Oh, and a link to share, because I know there's a few other Divine Comedy fans who'll enjoy this - Homer/Virgil/Dante pr0n, which makes me ridiculously happy XD; Someone is selling a copy of the DMC doujin 'Bless' on ebay, which I totally want, because it's super-cute (and has Eva!), but at the same time, extra money should really be put towards seeing friends/concerts/a cellphone rather than a doujinshi which will mostly just sit on my shelf a lot.

I really enjoy doing lab work. Even when things are not going quite as planned, and I'm dripping the diethyl ether with the solute I'm trying to recover in it all over my bench, it's still relaxing. I lucked out and have a bench all to myself for the organic chem lab, which means no more idiots who can't undrestand how the vaccum filtration system works. Also, organic chem labs are very...aromatic (in more ways than one, although only the chem/life science geeks reading will get that terrible pun). Ether in particular has a strange sticky-sweet smell to it. Acetone...well, acetone smells like acetone. It's nail polish remover, basically, although I think usually it's diluted there. Smells bad, but not as bad as ammonia.

I really, really need to find a lab to volunteer in in the fall. I've been trying really hard not to get too down about finding something for the summer, although it's difficult when every third sentence out of Yana's mouth starts with 'In my lab...' (another third is complaining about how badly she did this year, and the last third is everything else. Great person, but sometimes I want to tell her to either shut up, or get some hobbies or something). I'll probably start compiling a list now, although I don't have time to actually write up a ton of e-mails at the moment.

Another item from yesterday's list that I forgot, and must post just for Julie:

6) Rotating and rebinning the apples is an epic task. The Spartan apples, doubly so. (They're on special, so we have five bins of them. And some idiot stashed three crates underneath the bins I had to sort and rotate)

And I got the awesome prof instead of the shitty prof, which is excellent. Said prof is apparently also obsessed with 24 which makes me laugh so much inside.

I really need food, though. I'm getting a bit panicky, and I know a good point of it is the lack of food.

I have a hard time really, truly hating people, and a hard time holding grudges. I think this is because of a number of things - first, I can never really work up the emotion to actually hate anyone not close to me. Dislike, yes, but for the most part, there can't be any real deep personal-level dislike because, well, they're not close enough to be able to hurt me or my relationships with others, and there's no real point in caring. Which means all the people I want to really, truly hate are former friends. Only my friends have the power to get me that worked up and angry, at least for more than five minutes (short-tempered, me? Yes). The problem there then because they were friends, I can still remember all those good moments back when I still liked and cared about the person, and part of me wants to forgive and be forgiven, because when it comes down to it, I want to like people, and I really, really want to be liked. And this leaves me feeling conflicted - how do you forgive someone who has done the unforgiveable, and reconcile what they did with who they used to be? Which is all topped off by my own stubborness - I want to be right, and for them to be wrong. I want to be able to just hate them. My dad would probably have some deep, sagely advice on the answer to this problem, but I don't.

(I know there've been lots of posts and a fair amount of navel-gazing lately - it's what happens when I have no work or school for a week, and half my friends have gone home and most of the rest are getting various summer thing set in action. I sit around and think waaaay too much. This will probably end next week when the insanity begins. Though I will inform you all if we have any geriatric tuna thieves.)

Much as I am a packrat in real life (I have BC Ferry reciepts from 2003, and the last five years of movie ticket stubs, I kid you not), I'm also a total packrat with computer files. Earlier, when the internet was being extra dodgy, instead of doing useful things like sleeping or finishing unpacking, I was sifting through said old files for the sheer hilarity of some of the stuff I've got saved. My old AIM download folder in particular is full of hilarious, because it accidently became a dumping ground for saved files that didn't go anywhere else for a while, plus all the random stuff people sent me - it's got good photoshop, bad photoshop, evil small children, photos certain highly narcissistic friends sent me of themselves, CLAMPesque AIM chat logs, and a diagram showing how Claudia is not like Riff.

My untagged music folder is also full of lots of strange random stuff - VNV Nation parodies, the entire audio track to the Buffy musical episode, and a coffee jingle. Some of this stuff I may upload when I'm on non-shitty internet, because it's the sort of stuff people other than me find funny, and it's way less incriminating. Although most ironic thing I found? A warning that I think we had up on the first version of Yuuzai with the generic 'blah blah blah, some of this fiction is pornographic, don't look at if you're not legal, blah blah blah', and I, the webmisstress, was underaged at the time.

And to keep the topic random by switching to something completely non-related - I was sifting through some stuff I had saved in one of my Google Notebooks, and came across this entry from last fall, and realized I've actually accomplished two of the things on the list - clubbing, and tabletop RP. Eventually, I think I may make a gigantic list of all the things I'd like to do, from big to small, and keep a record of what I actually do.

(Also, advice on getting into likely-full Japanese classes this fall? Second-years register last for classes, and first-years register first, so I am effectively fucked for getting into Japanese 100 and 101. There's always the 'throwing myself on the department head's desk and crying' tactic, a similar application of which apparently once got the Wargamers their own office, but I think that may be a bit much)

I meant to post this last week, but never got around to it - someone on the internet hates me! I'm actually strangely touched - this is the closest to an actual flame I've ever recieved. I'm somewhat tempted to try and shatter this girl's world view that 1) bisexual = gay (and that one same-sex crush makes you so, which I think is all I mentioned in the story - although my Leon is actually a really repressed straight-leaning bisexual) and 2) bisexual and gay men obviously cannot be jocks/boy scouts/nightclub bouncers/quintissential Nice Guys, but it's not really worth the effort.

I've also finally had time this week to pick up DDS1 again - currently doing the good old 'string of sidequests and power-leveling before the end of the game' deal, although it's actually rather enjoyable - for some reason I tend to have a lot of fun dungeon crawling in these games. The really interesting thing I've been noticing is the difference between my battle strategy here and in Nocturne. In Nocturne, I tended towards mostly physical attacks and healing magic, with just a touch of support stuff thrown in here and there - my end-game party was the demifiend with mostly physical skills and some healing magic, and fairly balanced stats, along with Red Rider, Black Rider, and Dante.

In DDS, I've been going a lot more magically offensive - Serph has had his magic stats upped, and is usually running high level fire spells with some ice spells as back-up, Argilla is my support, with healing magic and a ton of stats-boosting skills (although I'm going to get her some high-level offensive spells, I think, her magic stat is really high), and Heat, who has mostly physical-boost skills and does the brute-force thing. This seems to be working out pretty well for me, as far as party balance goes. Not really any plot bits to comment on, as it's all sidequests at the moment - that stuff'll probably come later.

Ended up going with place 2 - moving all my stuff tomorrow morning. Not sure what the initial internet situation is going to be like, although I'll still be checking e-mail, LJ, all that, via on-campus wireless if nothing else - I may not be around much on AIM/MSN in the next week or so, though.

Job still hasn't told me when I'm working, which is leaving me annoyed and panicky, and classes start next Monday - I'm taking organic chem for May and the first half of June, to somewhat increase my chances of actually passing it.

Transportation for my tons of stuff was apparently arranged via WoW, proving that my friends are incredibly nerdy, but also very cool for coming out in the morning to help me move said tons of stuff. Seriously, this has to be three times as much stuff as I left MA with last year. Although at least some of it is my massive bag of food for the next two weeks until I actually get paid again.

Will post new address when I've got it (damnit have to remember a new postal code) - goodbye, residence, I will not miss you!

Packing everything now is a lot easier than it was in August. Probably in part because there's no questions of 'Okay, so what exactly am I bringing?' It all has to go, it's just a question of where - I've aquired a lot more stuff since packing last August, and not a whole lot of extra bags to put it all in. I figure if worse comes to worst, I'll stuff things in some big plastic shopping bags and toss them in my laundry basket. I've got two options for places starting Tuesday, care of Craigslist and some friends willing to lend me some money until I can get all my financial stuff properly sorted.

I keep vaguely considering making some deep introspective end-of-the-year post, but every time I have free time I end up either reading Naruto scanlations or watching Project Runway. Which I suppose says something, although I'm not sure quite what. Anyway, something to keep you all entertained while I do something about the fact that my room looks like a tornado ran through it - this is hilarious.