Whoa birthdays. Eni's was yesterday but I was out all day. And today's is Selina's and Lumi's. I'm sending birthday wishes all over the place.

Still feel rather sad I'm not sending gifts because I like being generous, but right now being generous may not be a good idea. Still no financial aid yet and Jon is just starting a new job at the end of this month.

On the other hand I DID spend *some* money as I had some left over... namely, to get Dark Spire. FINALLY. XD And Jon bought some music CDs which I will talk about later.

Dark Spire is just... totally awesome so far. Mmmmm challenging dungeon crawlers. The premise is very simple (go to the top of the tower, kill the bad sorcerer, get back the treasure--it's very Nethack-ish actually), and the gameplay seems deceptively simple as well. But this game totally does NOT handhold you through much at all. Even the tutorial had this attitude of "just DO IT already, stop asking questions!" which amused me to no end.

Something I said to a friend just now: "I've accepted that I'll be dealing with my issues for the rest of my life. Just that I will eventually learn to get more control over them. I think I'm much too old to completely unlearn the stuff I've grown up with. I see it akin to learning a new language late in life. Being depressed/insecure/paranoid/etc. is like my native psyche, and I have to learn how to NOT be that way and practice it daily. But there's not going to be a point where I stop ever having to be aware of my issues because they're completely gone."

I gotta get to bed soon, so I can wake up for my birthday stuff... I'm getting my hair cut (finally argh) and going to relax at a hotel with Jon for the night as mentioned earlier.

There's a new PJ Harvey and John Parish collaboration coming out this year!! WOO! I loved Dance Hall at Louse Point. This ought to be awesome. :)

I found out quite belatedly about the new Dir en grey album, Uroboros, that came out late last year. It's been released over in North America too by now, I think, so I totally need to find a copy!

I also finished Natural Ordermage (the last Recluce book I bought) and found out that the direct sequel, Mage-Guard of Hamor, is already in paperback! Yay! So I bought it. I am turning into a fan of Taryl, the ordermage that takes Rahl under his wing. (Jon teases me about it. Probably because when I talked about him I said "He's so a Sidereal".)

In a couple weeks I get to buy The Dark Spire (yay!) and also spend some money on spring clothes. Now if only Sims 3 were coming out sooner.

Now to continue my tradition of "lets follow up depressing posts with something totally fun and unrelated!"

Tiny Cartridge! I like this site. It has an interesting and appealing design, too.I think the only thing that boggles me about the site is that I can't figure for the life of me how to move from older to newer posts.

Anyway, I was looking around for The Dark Spire music and came across that site because the webmaster posted a TOTALLY AWESOME TRACK on it. People were all "Ewwww" because it has a tenor singing on the track though. BOO on them. Vocalists always get flak from people who like game music, I find.

Tiny Cartridge also brought me to this: Cho Aniki for PSP. (Wat? :D) And also footage from an all-female Gyakuten Saiban musical, which I think is awesome because it's just the opposite of males crossdressing in visual kei (and I actually really like the blurring of gender lines, for some reason.)

Edit, again - Original Sound Version. Another awesome site but focused on game music! (This guy actually has pretty good taste, IMO.)

Time for one of my 'what I've been up to lately' posts. Since I'm not really posting very often lately. (Mostly, as one would suspect, due to RPoL distraction.)

Though before I go to the previous days I'll mention that I went out yesterday, probably for the first time in a couple weeks. :P It wasn't for long but it's something. Jon and I mostly ended up stopping by the bookstore... I got to snag the third Wicked Years book (A Lion Among Men) and the latest Recluce paperback (Natural Ordermage).

I also got another DS dungeon crawly game, Dungeon Explorers. It was only like $20 so why not? It's not the most spectacular of its genre (rather Gauntlet-like actually) but I am happy nonetheless. Dark Spire is the next dungeon crawler I'm *really* looking forward to for my handheld. :3

Anyway, on to summary part 1: