Responsibilities

Yay for 2009! Oh wait, this is the year I turn 30... *weeps quietly in a corner*

Anyway, sis should be back home by now (I'll have to check on her one more time, but she had a meeting to go to almost as soon as she got off the plane.) So I have the apartment to myself. I need days just to recover from how exhausting it was to have a guest for 10 days. It's not that I don't love my sis, we're just very different people.

The more I am away from the Bay Area, the more I realize how much leaving has changed my lifestyle. I just don't think living there will ever be 'home' again. Part of me is sad because I feel that my choices in life will ultimately distance me from my blood-related family entirely.

Came back with some video games. :O I decided I'd put most of my Christmas money into a game shopping spree. Among other things I have Luminous Arc 2 and Rhapsody for DS, and also Baroque for the PS2. I got the only copy I have EVER seen of Nobunaga's Ambition for PS2, also. :D

I was really indecisive ;.; there are SO many games I want. I think I will go grab Persona 4 too (which Aurora on LJ very kindly reminded me about) and a PS3 game. That's *plenty* of games for the next few months. I tend to actually stockpile them... I'm a bit of a game packrat, but sooner or later I DO play them. ^^:

I keep wondering if I should've just grabbed Persona 4 instead. I was just less inclined to get it right away because it's newer and more likely to still be in stock. (The video game chain around here, Game Buzz, really favors Atlus games for some reason.)

Hrm. I had originally planned to write some sort of introspective post, but have no idea how to word it. So let's just go for a straight summary.

In the past few days I bought the new Ben Folds album Way to Normal (mini-review at the end of this post), ventured out in the winter cold only twice (for the album and to get groceries) and otherwise mostly sat around a lot. :P I guess winter is just the season for that. I mean, since right now I still don't have school or work.

Oh, and since I didn't write about it before: my bad day a little while back mostly stemmed from me freaking out because I got an email from Concordia saying they required my permanent residency proof before considering my application. As I have a very low trust of the Canadian government in following through with my documentation, I'm now afraid I will get barred from college (along with not being able to get a bank account, or get my passport back.)

So, you can probably see how that could be upsetting for me.

Wardragon today!!! Yayayayayayay. :D

And Saturday was really a relaxing day. I didn't really do much of anything... except finally set up my netname on the Concordia site. Man, I can't believe I still have something like 5 months till I'll get a response... I suppose those months will go fast, but still, it seems like forever, still.

I messed with RPoL, as usual... Got to chat with Selina and Grey (he and I don't talk quite enough! and we should :o) and my sis (on Skype, anyway) and I played a bit more PSU (we got Phantom Fissure again, mmmm good drops).

I admit I kinda would like to RP more with Selina and/or Grey again :o I've been telling them about my RPoL games, though I also wouldn't be adverse to some OpenRPG stuff. I wonder if they'd play with Jon and we could have a small fun game. Something that ISN'T all bogged down 'cause of timezone issues, argh. Or they could get into my forum stuff, either way!

Here is another fun diversion Clark showed me: Alteil!

'nother Abyssal char. She's actually based on a NPC I made for Wardragon 40k. (Advocate is one of the Abyssals after Archana, potentially.) This Advocate is different, though, since she was born in the Second Age, not the First. I was just lazy with names, I always liked "Advocate of the Damned" as a title. So I used it.

Wardragon Advocate is a Moonshadow, but this character is a Midnight. So she's more of a force of personality type than a socializing type. Her highest skills are Presence (went into the whole "hurt if you try to attack her" Charm branch) and Thrown (Crypt Bolt and Eyes Like Daggers Glance, mmm). Working on Performance (for orations, she's something of a preacher of the end of days) and Resistance (eventually want the Adamant Skin mirror, yay soak!)

I also gave her Martial Arts as favored, though she doesn't know a MA yet. And Linguistics, too, there's some fun charms in that Ability I hope to use.

Here's the kinda crappy background I wrote for her during an insomnic bout :P

I went out again today, to make a phone call about my check card. The bank told me I have to wait until a month before the expiration 'cause that's when they send the new one out. I tried to get them to send it sooner but they wouldn't. :( So I have to wait and get my parents to forward it next July.

I'm liking that I've been out every day the past three days. Just doing little things at a time, but I'm doing things and I'm getting less anxious. Definitely need more time and exposure to being outside to build my confidence, though.

Next Jan. I hope to finally get started on some French classes, since I won't be in university till the fall. (Again, assuming I get accepted, though I heard from my therapist not long ago that she already sent off the letters on my behalf. That's very encouraging.)

So we went out for Jon's 28th birthday. Just me and him, of course. We don't really have any friends here and I'm not very social any more. But I don't mind it just being the two of us.

We went out walking around in downtown Montreal. We didn't actually get out the door till almost 6 pm (laziness, mostly, slept in a lot 'cause Jon is ill), but still had fun. I got to buy Jon a new outfit and he looks good in it! And I bought him a necklace he thought was cool, too.

Then we had dinner at Reuben's, it's a steakhouse close to the mall we went to. Great food and service. I had a ribeye steak and Jon ordered a steak and cheese sandwich. We shared a 'chop-chop' poutine which was whoa! awesomely good! ('chop-chop' is apparently chopped smoked meat, I've never heard it called that before though.) Had to bring most back home 'cause we got so full from the poutine and salad.

I did all my errands on Wednesday. It was hard. I had a lot of anxiety issues. My anxiety gets so terrible nowadays... if I'm doing something that I find stressful, and something unexpected goes wrong, I start to totally freak out. Or I'll focus on too many problems at once (even ones unrelated to what I'm doing immediately).

If I get bad enough I start to panic. I have trouble breathing and I get really irrationally scared of loud noises, which makes it hard to walk around in a big city. I don't regret moving to Montreal for that, I've always really *liked* the city! But my anxiety makes it harder to enjoy what I normally like... :/

Anyway, since then I've just been sitting at home unwinding. Pretty much just poking at RPoL games as usual, though I feel like I spent too much time on them the past couple days.

Well, he won. I'm happy about it. (Apologies to McCain supporters.)

It amazes me seeing the largely jubilant reaction all around the world. Here in Canada, too.

Of course I've got some of the cynic in me. Obama has a huge reputation to live up to and everyone, both Americans and non-Americans are going to be scrutinizing him to see if he can live up to his own standards. I don't expect that it will be easy for him, or that people will be patient enough to wait out the results.

I can say though that seeing him win actually inspired ME, though. I've applied for Canadian colleges now and I'm going today to send for my official transcripts and give my letter of intent and other documents to the campuses.

Maybe I won't have to give up on my future, either.

Sent college apps. :O paid $90 and $85 to send them too, ew. :( But they are sent now. I applied to Concordia and McGill, but I think I have a better chance with Concordia (also, I prefer it... see, this could be my new uni. :O)

I found that permanent residency is not needed to *start* the process. Only that I need to have the Permanent Residency ID before the semester actually starts. And I'm applying for Fall 2009 so I have a lot of time for documents to get where they need to be. I'm feeling a little bit of hope here!

That's what happens when you sit up all night watching Obama speeches. Even if they're just words, they're inspiring. People say he's just saying what people want to hear, preying on Americans' insecurities... but damn, he is a good speaker. I envy him that talent! So since I can't go to the U.S. polls on Nov 4 I'm just going to try and do something to help my life for once.