Packing

As strange as it seems, I love packing. I've moved house enough times in my life that I don't feel terribly sad about changing home. Instead, I love the opportunity to find stuff I didn't remember having. In the process of packing up my room, I've come across and had the opportunity to look back over the following:

- a load of leaflets I collected at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, and the Burke and Hare cast photo
- my art drawer under my bed, which contains most of the artwork I have ever done, from jotter doodlings in high school to ancient watercolour paintings, to the enormous pile of manuscripts and rejection letters (some terribly friendly and encouraging, but all negative) back when I tried to get Charra published
- the Ghibli museum bag where I keep random bits and bobs from Japan, such as shopping bags (Wonder Rocket!!), brochures, leaflets and tickets to things like Tokyo Tower, Namjatown, and the framed cells from Spirited Away (I think) that was my Ghilbi Museum ticket
- lots of characters from a couple of webcomics I never got around to starting (and a couple of novels that I did but never finished)
- my camcorder, which I should probably get back into using...
- all the old Neo and Wired magazines I have in my bedside cabinet
- a couple of ancient mobile phones
- piano and clarinet music I haven't played in ages

Also continuing the nostalgia trip theme, I recently re-visited a small forum I practically grew up on in my teen years. Going back through some of the posts, I can see just how I have (and haven't) changed, my celebrity crushes from way back (I still love Richard Hammond :3) and all the really good friends I made but never met up with (yet). Except for Nick - we both went to the Highland Schools music groups! :D

And in non-nostalgia news, I recently finished watching two things. The first is FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, an anime in the franchise I've been a fan of for at least five years now, sadly come to a close. It's an amazing military/dieselpunk/conspiracy story, with a great cast of characters and some pretty chilling concepts revolving around alchemy, artificial humans, the Philosopher's Stone and human souls. The second is Stargate: Universe, the latest branch in the Stargate franchise - I haven't seen any of the others, but this has been easy to pick up for a Stargate newbie, and really engaging. It does have vibes of Battlestar Galactica all over again, but that's not really such a terrible thing, and a really solid background and cast makes it rather good in its own right. Damn cliffhangers. I can't wait for the second season now...