Yesterday was one of the worst days I’ve had in awhile. The immaturity, childishness, and well…bitchiness of it all reminded me of my days in high school, which I recall less-than-fondly. Basically, the situation was that someone said something inflammatory about me in an open channel that had no basis in fact. It was a cheap shot and completely uncalled for, but worse than that, it was unprovoked. Through great effort on my part I managed to keep (mostly) calm and try to deal with it as maturely as possible but I was really upset. Not so much about what was said (because I know it isn’t true), but the circumstances surrounding it. She openly admitted she had no real basis for making such a claim, but still she felt the need to say it openly. There are just certain things one should keep to oneself, especially if it’s completely unfounded. Unfortunately for me there were only a few people around at the time; some of them defended me but most stayed out of it completely or watched and did nothing. Needless to say, it disrupted my concentration for the rest of the day so I was less than productive, not to mention fending off tears of frustration.

I’m grateful to have a friend like Rosey. After the incident, she showed up and we chatted most of the afternoon away. The silly girl didn’t even go to bed that night but instead sat there and told me about this weird animal outside her room that seemed to be telling her to sleep. Rose is the perfect example of a female friend who I know is genuine through and through and I can trust her implicitly without fear of random backstabbing. She is fun, kind, sympathetic, and best of all, quirky and cute. We laugh at the same sort of things (though admittedly she nears the gibbing point faster and more often than I) and share a lot of things in common (ie, unusual taste in men) but still have enough differences that we can learn a lot from each other. My point here is that although I mostly have male friends, she is a female that I get on with just as well, proving that not all women are evil, backstabbing bitches. :-)

Okay, rant over. I needed to get that out of my system.

I haven’t updated in awhile because I’ve been attempting to convert my journal from Movable Type to WordPress (mainly because I’m being spammed beyond belief in the comments section…30-50 messages a day sometimes) but have been running into trouble getting the importer to work correctly (ie, at all.) Chris suggested making the old blahg into an archive so I think I will do that for the time being. I am currently working on a cleaner, much simpler design for the site as a whole so perhaps a completely clean start is the best way to go. If I get ambitious later I might continue my attempt to import the old entries, but I’m going to move that to the bottom of my priorities list.

One major comfort I’ve experienced this week is that Will and I have officially decided to live together when I get to Seattle. So my mind is made up now over which city to choose…Seattle now wins by default due to presence of friend willing and eager to have me as a roommate. I had planned on visiting Seattle first and spending some time with Will before choosing where to live, but it is a huge relief to my mind to know that I’ll have a place waiting for me when I get there. I do feel a bit angsty over the fact that as of now he won’t have a roommate until June, and will thus have to pay rent on his own until then, but hopefully something will work out so that this doesn’t happen (or at least for that entire time.) Will has said that the idea of knowing he’ll be living with someone he trusts and cares about (and also, quite importantly, someone that Hiroko approves of) is worth the frustration in the meantime. I know it’ll work out in the end. Unfortunately because of financial issues involved in moving, I don’t think I’ll be able to afford another trip to Australia at that time so I might have to hold off on that for awhile. :-( I’ll have to see how things go though.

I’ve been feeling pretty bored and uninspired at home, which isn’t surprising. I’ve felt a bit better now that I have this to look forward to, but I feel it’s really time for me to get out of there. I hate winter, I hate being cooped up inside like this with no fresh air, I hate being cold, and I hate being that isolated from everything. I’ve mostly been playing WoW (no shocker there) but I’ve also begun to read House of Leaves which is unlike any book I’ve ever read. I found out about it after reading Silent Hill 4 forums that suggested books and movies with a similar feel or theme. I love the multi-layered storytelling it uses through use of footnotes. It’s a bit difficult to explain properly, but basically an old blind man wrote all of these notes and conclusions about a film he saw (ironic, yeah?) and after he died, his neighbor found the notes and began adding in his own story into the mix by explaining his reactions to what he’s reading. I’m not very far into it yet but it’s pretty captivating.

Over the weekend we went up to Green Bay to have a “Congratulations for Escaping ShopKo Headquarters, Ben!” party. We had dinner at a steakhouse which featured numerous stuffed animals on the walls including Effeminate Bear. The other Jon downed half a pitcher of water in (nearly) one gulp, then beat me in air hockey without claiming he sucks once. (gasp!) We introduced him and Ben to Katamari Damacy and a round of “WTF?!” sounded. Jon played it for a bit but Ben refused to touch it.

Because this was to be the last time we were all together before Peter goes to Portland, we decided to finish playing Silent Hill 4 even though we still had about half the game to go. Jon and I took turns playing and we finished it off sometime after 4:30. Sooooo tired. They were a bit disappointed in the lame ending, but at least the boss fight was cool.

Oh yeah, Jon and I went to see White Noise. It wasn’t bad necessarily, but it was pretty meh. It started as a cool idea but ended up being a generic-hollywood-type ghost story. (ie, special fx, not scary) sigh Oh well. Not too surprised really.

Ross sent me a new copy of Black Books last week, and although all the discs work this time (phew) the first two discs seem to be region 0 (as expected) but the third is region 4 (wtf?!). Oh well. I’m only planning on playing them on my computer anyhow seeing as they’re PAL format and won’t play on our standalone players. There’s a lot of good extra content on the discs, including an audio commentary for all the episodes of season 1 and 2.

There seem to be some wildfires burning around Perth which has left the city under a haze of smoke. :-( It seems they’ve got it under control but hopefully it gets put out soon. Suck. :(