..or maybe that's just me. Past some weeks have been keeping very busy. I had one weekend of not doing too much, but other than that have kept myself pretty busy. Barely keeping up with LJ at all. Trying to work out a lot of the kinks in my brain and get myself to accomplish all the little things I need to take care of. I'm still a scatterbrained mess and I have a constant pile of things to do and be concerned about, but I'm trying to force myself to not be concerned about things that I don't need to be concerned about and force myself to do at least something important/useful each day.

Past couple of weeks I've made a point to have some fun in there too. Two weeks ago on Friday was Nick's going away party (briefly former roommate), a week and a half before moving out of state. Because of the way things worked out, I wasn't able to stay all night even though it was in the apartment where I'm staying currently. I was there for a good hour and a half and tried to say goodbye to people but kept getting shuffled amongst the amazing number of people that fit into the apartment somehow, so I eventually wondered off and figured, heck, I'll be back, and Nick would still be there and all.

Since the StarCraft LAN party at lyssabard and tlttlotd's was canceled, I left for New Jersey to get a quick refresher course in Magic: The Gathering from mmsword before the tournament on Saturday. I hadn't played the game since fifth edition back in 1999 or 2000 and the tournament was for the release of tenth edition. Was interesting. I like how the tournament was balanced out by everyone getting the same supply of cards. We all just had to work from scratch. I won two rounds, lost two, and two came to a draw. One of the draws was the game I played with mmsword, which made me happy.

Enjoyed some time with my family before heading straight to work from my parents' house on Monday morning, as I usually do when I go away for the weekend. Been running errands and doing chores for myself, calling people that need calling (like creditors and stuff). I took Thursday and Friday off work to get my car fixed, swap out with Nick (who was moving that weekend) and attend Otakon. Thursday I managed to get the wiring for my headlights fixed, my brakes checked and an oil change all for $60; not too bad. Oh, I also purchased a new stereo from Best Buy and got it installed that day, in order to have something usable that evening for meeting friends to go out and eat and pick up our Otakon badges and stuff. Thursday evening, I met with sixteenbynine, his friends Sarah and Matt, and their friend Allen to head out to the nearest Sakura Steak House for some sushi and hibachi. I had some trouble figuring out which roads I was allowed to use in Baltimore to get me to the hotel where they were staying, and a little more trouble getting to the restaurant, simply because it wasn't viewable from the road and there were no signs for it, but we all had a pretty good time.

I ended up crashing at the hotel with everyone instead of heading back like I was originally planning. That reminds me, I'll need to keep checking -- actually, the Otakon site is already updated with the dates for next year. August 8-10. Time to look into booking a hotel room early. It's just so much nicer to simply walk from sleep to Otakon and vice versa, instead of drive and park. In any case, it was an exhausting blast. Most of the panels I went to were disappointing, but they were showing some great anime, had a few nice discussion panels and some interesting previews at the industry panels. Keep an eye out for Darker Than Black, Claymore and Seirei no Moribito (Guardian of the Sacred Spirit). I'll prolly talk about those more later. Also, got to see the classic Hidden Fortress (on which Star Wars was loosely based) and Five Centimeters Per Second, which was beautifully animated and had a lot of heart.

Sunday, picked up a few cheap manga (6 for $20) at a place in the dealer's room that was shoveling stuff out like crazy. Did the goodbye thing and went to get my car from the parking garage, which was closed. Thankfully, the same people (UMD) run another garage less than a block away from there which was open and I was able to get someone to unlock the gate so I could get my car out. The other hitch was that I lost my ticket -- this turned out to be a bonus. I was perfectly honest about when I'd gotten there and the attendant was going to let me have a lower rate simply because the garage isn't properly marked with prices and hours. Well, it turns out the system wouldn't let him charge me for more than one day or something to that effect, and I ended up paying $6 for almost three full days' parking.

Later that evening I went out for some Indian food at Akbar's Palace, a place I really like even though it's further than another Indian restaurant in the area. The waiter remembered me from the one time I'd been there before, and that I have some food allergies. I was ordering a platter dish sans nan and he pointed out the same platter already existed on another portion of the menu without nan and for a lower price. I ordered that and, I think, some mulligatawny soup. He gave me the soup for free, since I couldn't have rice with my meal (sugar/starch problem). I later asked for a glass of cold milk, since the meal was very hot and quite spicy, and he didn't charge me for that either. I feel that maybe I should have given him a better tip than I did, but I'll certainly be going back there.  (^*^)

Unfortunately, there have been other things that happened during all this and since that haven't been so nice, but I think I've done enough rambling now.. I'm trying to get my life together where I can, and I'm trying to dump a lot of excess anxiety and whatnot that I have no use for, and much of which isn't very rational. I plan to start posting in here more regularly, although many of my posts may be in the "boring daily life" line of things, simply because I've become so scatterbrained and I'm hoping that maybe that will help. In the meantime, I need to pick up a pocket-sized notepad to jot things down in and maybe get one of those little washable boards you hang from the wall to make notes on. Hope everyone is doing well and hope I can start seeing people more as I get my dren together.