Birthday

I decided to drop by on a whim today and it looks like it's been over two years since my last post. And boy, has a lot changed for me in those two years. Firstly I've been two Russia twice as part of my studies, once for a week and once for a summer. My week long trip was totally awesome. I went to Vladimir, one of Russia's medieval capitals, and met tons of great people and became enamored with the culture and country. My summer studies were in St. Petersburg, which is a gorgeous city. The trip was less excellent than the Vladimir trip though. I did a solo study program which meant I never really met anyone outside of a few roommates. I had 30 hours of one on one lessons each week which was way too much. I was also struggling with some personal issues at the time, so being in a foreign country where you don't know the language too well, don't really know anyone, and are having an identity crisis doesn't make for the greatest trip. But more on that later. Last school year I had to take care of a house of five people almost entirely on my own. It was incredibly grating, especially since one person was a complete idiot who always made things worse when trying to "fix" things (often on his own without informing others). I chewed him out for it once and he basically became a sulking mess and turned everyone in our mutual friend group against me. There was a lot of stupid drama that went on, but the details aren't important. After taking care of a house of five by myself I never got so much as a thank you and I was the bad guy of the situation. One other person in the house (who wasn't an idiot) did all of the dealings with the landlord, so that at least saved me a fair bit of trouble. Our landlord was a serious piece of work so I'm thankful for that. I've also transferred universities. After last year's house debacle and for academic reasons, I really didn't want to be around anymore. I transferred to a new school in order to major in Russian studies, which was only a minor at my old school. I'm very, very glad I did. For a number of reasons Case Western wasn't for me (Sorry Adam?). I'm now at a large state school which is a much better environment and atmosphere for me. I've met a lot of great people and am enjoying things a lot more than at Case Western. Although I seriously hate being a student. I enjoy what I'm studying, but I hate all of the bs that goes with it. I want to learn about Russia and the Russian language, not write papers about an esoteric topic brought up in a medieval Russian book, or read 150 pages of scholarly verbal diarrhea a night. Once I finish undergrad I honestly never want to be a student ever again. I'm not really sure why I'm even sticking it out now. The education system as a whole just really kills my motivation to learn. :/ Anyway, back to that identity crisis from earlier. As I started to figure out just before leaving for St. Petersburg and really came to accept while there, I'm a transgender woman. It turns out all guys don't secretly wish they were girls, or spend birthday candle wishes on becoming a girl, or wish aliens would abduct them and run experiments on them to turn them into a girl, or have any of the other signs from my youth that now blare like a foghorn. I started my medical transition in September and I haven't felt this good since before puberty. I've gone from an angry, depressed sack of shizzle with no real goals for the future to a girl who is ready to start living. It's really hard to capture the night and day difference in how I feel with just words on a screen. I actually look forward to the future instead of being apathetic. I've also been incredibly lucky with my transition. The only people with a negative reaction were my parents, but for a number of reasons I don't really talk to them anyway, so whatever. Everyone else has been great about it. I also pass (Look like my target gender) really well, which is pretty unusual for only six months of transitioning. Maybe I'm finally catching a lucky break after a pretty hellish past. Apart from a few bumps my past two years have been really great, how have you all been? ^_^

Err, I'm not sure how seriously this article is meant to be taken. I don't know The Observer or if it's a satire and/or bs news source, so maybe I'm way off in thinking that. The first paragraph in your quotes made me skeptical, since Russian plurals don't use an -es or -s suffix (when transliterated). They use -(i/y) or -(i/y) depending on the preceding letter. Pindo () also isn't in my Russian-English dictionary, nor does it sound like a Russian word. I realise the political situation with Russia is tense, but I'm not too sure about this article's accuracy.

No one is being forced to by bonds, and the anti-bot system isn't really being put into play with this at all Freeplayers might be restricted from cutting yews but thats the only anti-bot measure really. They said somewhere free players would be able to cut yews (and maybe fish lobsters? I wasn't aware that was restricted) with a certain QP requirement. I'm not sure how I feel about this proposal. I wouldn't mind having free access to the game, since I don't play nearly enough to warrant membership, but I also don't like the idea of microtransactions making their way into OSRS. I don't really care about the concept of MTX as I play a number of games that are loaded with them, it's more not within the bounds of what I think Old School should be. Although the GE falls within that zone as well, but that's already coming...Maybe it's time for my RS adventures to come to a permanent close.

I've played Old School fairly casually in the past, but if the GE comes out I don't think I'd bother ever coming back. It just doesn't feel right or like the game I'd want to play.

I don't know her irl, but it was a really tight group that we had. I knew most peoples' first names.

A while back I joined a guild in a game I play. It was a relatively small and tight-nit guild, so we all became good friends. Eventually a most people quit or became inactive, so I decided to leave in order to find a more active setting. Unfortunately, this made one guild member lose her mind. She disappeared from the game for over a year, deleted everyone from her friends lists, and left the old guild. I know she has been back recently, and I talked to her briefly this summer. From what I gathered, my leaving sent her spiraling into depression (Which was pre-existing, but this sent her over the edge), made her reclusive for the time she was gone, among other things that aren't relevant here. I also said some things this summer that I meant as sincere and true, but may (and probably did) have come off as rude, snide or condescending. So my question for you guys is should I try to make amends or just let bygones be bygones and avoid her? It may not sound like it from the rest of the post, but I miss having her around as a friend. It's like losing a really good friend you had for a number of years who disappeared out of the blue.

Self-portrait I made for an art class. The photo doesn't do it justice, I think it looked a lot better in person. I guess it doesn't help that I took it with my crappy cell phone camera. :\

I was playing Old School RS today and killing unicorns in the wilderness in order to collect horns for Herblore. I only had a d scim, rune kite and rune RFD gloves equipped and those were the only items on my person apart from any horns and bones I was picking up. Along come Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb who proceed to kill me. As they slaughtered my defenseless character, I asked them, "Why?" to which one of the Tweedles responded, "Burn happy face" while casting Flames of Zamorak and one of the ice spells on me. So my questions for the PKers of Sal's are, firstly, why? Did they honestly expect my mostly naked character to have massive treasure troves of cash or other valuables hidden in my inventory? Is it really that "fun" to decimate someone when they clearly aren't interested in fighting and don't have any rewards to offer? Or were the ~12 unicorn horns and bones in my inventory really worth the runes they used to kill me? I'm a little peeved at the moment for them wasting my time, and frankly their own, as well as baffled as to what could possibly be gained by killing me. P.S. If you play Old School, feel free to say hi. I only know of Warrior Zynk from Sal's who plays.

Yeah, he goes around like that all the time. I don't understand it either.

After a crummy orientation week, college has been fantastic. I've been having a really great time. But as my blog title proclaimed, man, is my roommate a weirdo. When I met Adam? in late August, he asked if I had a roommate or not. I do, and he said that sucks. At the time I didn't think much of it, my roommate seemed ok, albeit a little dorky. I don't have a problem with being dorky. The first thing he did that was a little off putting happened in September after he had been sick. He asked me to do some food shopping for him, which I did. A few days later, I was sick with the same thing and he had gotten better. I asked if he could go to the store to get me some ginger ale. He said yes, but then he never went. He got someone else to do it. Maybe I'm being silly on this one, but I'm a little ticked he couldn't be bothered to get off his lazy ass and go down to the store for a bottle of ginger ale after I had shopped for him. In October, he one day asked me if I could leave the room so he could Skype his girlfriend. Uhh...Sure, why not? It's not really my business what they do in there on their own time. But it soon became a pattern. At least once a week he'd kick me out so he could flog his carrot with his girlfriend. We had a short break from classes in the middle of October, and he went home. The day after he got back, he kicks me out again. Seriously? You just had the past number of days to do things with your girlfriend, and now you're kicking me out the day after? It got me a bit peeved. Oh yeah, remember how I said it's not my business what they do in there together? He seems to think it is, cuz he shows people on the floor the kinds of things he and his girlfriend watch while his ham is being rammed. Without going into too many details, it's really weird stuff. Like, really weird stuff. Some of it isn't even human. Everyone seeing it has the same wtf? reaction, but he keeps showing it to us. Still not weird enough? There's more. I mentioned that my roommate is dorky, he's also incredibly white. Everything from the way he acts, to the way he dresses, to the way he talks screams nerdy white kid. Again, I don't have a problem with this. What bothers me about it is the fact the he seems convinced that he's a brotha from da hood. He always watches gang documentaries on his computer and drinks it all in with a goofy smirk on his face. He also bought some durags and a number of flat brimmed baseball caps. He absolutely cannot pull of the look and looks like a complete retard wearing them. Here's a photo of him wearing them. One of his hats is a Cleveland Indians cap which he said he bought because, "the ironic racism in the logo is funny." He also throws lots of "Yee," "Word," "Aight," "That be chill," and other "ghetto" phrases into his speech to sound cool...or something. The main thing that bugs me about him trying to act black is how fake it makes him seem. He's the biggest poindexter I've ever met, but he thinks he's black. His personality and actions are such a weird mixture of those two things that it turns into the worst of both worlds. It's almost like he's a terrible comic relief character from a movie that a director created by pulling ideas out of his ass but he falls flat on his face in terms of funniness. He's kinda like Jar Jar Binks in that regard. I'll cut the rant short here, because it seems like this is entering tl;dr territory. There's more stuff to tell, but maybe that will be in a different blog entry. Outside of my roommate, college is pretty darn cool. Not that I had a weight problem anyway, but my "Freshman 15" is more like a Freshman -5, and I've grown an inch or two. My classes are pretty enjoyable, although some of them are getting stale after a semester. P.S. My bad, Adam?, Clarke Tower is filled above the fifth floor. The sophomores hadn't moved in yet when I misinformed you.

Cynical, are we? Yeah, probably. I just really hate Apple.

Oh, excellent. I was waiting for their next release of mass produced junk so that I can show my support for modern day slavery.

Suicide doesn't end the pain. It just passes it on. People care about you more than you may realise. I hope you can make it through this rough patch ok.

I've never understood the appeal of super fancy computer mouses. What use is having all of those extra buttons and gadgets on your mouse? Isn't left and right click with a mouse wheel enough? That extra stuff seems like it would get in the way more than anything.