As much as I loved the ol' Boston Legal design, the beige-on-brown text and background color scheme has always been rough on my eyes for some reason and routinely gave me headaches if I was reading for any extent of time.  :P  So what better excuse to spruce up the site and usher in a new pretty blog theme?  And what better theme to center this one around than my obsession of reading!  \o/

(Excuse me while I go all web developer geek on you all now.)

This layout was an interesting lesson in incorporating all sorts of fun new behind-the-scenes tricks that made it a bit of a horror to code.  For example, it was my first time dabbling in both CSS rounded corners and drop shadows!  How could I have never used these two things before?!  Very cool.  No transparent PNG's to mess with for layout this time around, folks.  What made it a small nightmare at times during the build though was all of the layering and positioning of everything that I overlooked during the designing process.  What looked so straightforward in Photoshop made for lots of frustrated flailing and teeth gnashing when it came to putting it all together.  Usually my templates are very block-centric and this layout broke all of my usual rules with content and sidebars and headers and footers all running into each other and mashing together.  :x

Yes, I'm aware that I've utilized some CSS3 and HTML5 elements that aren't fully supported on all browsers yet -- and who knows to God what this poor blog looks like in Internet Explorer -- but one of the neat perks about working on web design for yourself is that HEY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO CARE.  Yes, there are a few padding issues in various browsers that I'll try to eventually look at, but as far as IE goes I actually hope the entire blog is a hideous, unreadable mess of toxic proportions -- because maybe if everyone actually stopped bothering to coddle that horrible browser and its shit web standard practices, maybe it would finally WITHER and DIE and NEVER BE USED AGAIN!  :)

No, seriously.  If you're using Internet Explorer right now as you're reading this, please go download a new and better browser.  Like Google Chrome.  Everything looks good on Chrome.

(End geek-out.)

So anyway, always a yay for new layouts~  This makes six now, so I've almost managed to have a new for one each year.  Sometimes I don't really realize that I've been writing in this blog for over seven years -- jeeze, since high school.  That's a lot of years worth of memories and thoughts and events and emotions all preserved in one little online journal.  Every now and then I go and re-read entries from the very beginning; it's kind of like flipping through a photo album (only with many more lame internet memes and obnoxious teenage ramblings) and I realize how important this blog actually is to me.  It's like a constantly ongoing and ever expanding time capsual keepsake~  :3  Some people scrapbook their lives.  I blog.

Mood: Pleased

It's about damn time. Don't get me wrong, I adore both chocolate and Buddha in all of their respective splendors, but the design was getting a little old.

I decided to go with a Boston Legal theme for version 5.0, more specifically Alan Shore because he's wonderful in that sort of arrogant prick sort of way that always seduces me terribly on television. The colors and layout was originally inspired by a BL avatar I found *points below*. Like all design projects I set out on it didn't turn out anything like I originally planned it to, but overall I'm rather pleased with it. It was fun to get back into a web project of my own for a change~ :B I haven't had one of those staying-up-until-3am creative nights in a really long time. I know offhand of a couple tiny layout bugs that I have yet to work out, ignore them for the time being and they'll go away eventually.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I can't promise the new layout will look mostly good, a little good, or even half decent in Internet Explorer 6. Because I DON'T CARE. The only way to purge the web of the EPIC FAIL that is IE6 is to stop designing for it. If you have IE6, for the love of everything holy, if you won't change web browsers completely then at least update to IE7. *Waves a little Firefox flag*

Mood: Killing time on the computron

I technically just did a meme like this, so I tried to do 25 new things that weren't included in the last one. :P

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged.

1. I routinely look like I just crawled out of a barn. Between the bits and pieces of hay from sitting in my pet rabbit's playpen and the tufts of white feathers that escape from my down-filled winter jacket and get caught on my clothes, it raises the theory that I live in a chicken coup.
2. I used to be a tomboy. It's only in the last three or four-ish years that I've ditched the ugly over-sized man shirts to openly embrace my feminine side. Floral! Color! Dresses! Fitted clothes! OMG look I'm actually a girl and I LOVE IT~! :3 I would never ever go back to the way I was, because being girly is too much fun.
3. I really like my job, and that's something that I never would have believed I'd ever say. But I do, I like the job, I adore the people I work with, I get excited over new projects we're working on and where we're going. It's not very often many people are able to wake up everyday and not hate the idea of going to their job, and it concerns and makes me a little sad to not know whether I'll still be able to be there a year from now.
4. I would love to travel more. I especially dream one day of going back to Europe... England, Paris! *hearts* I wouldn't mind visiting Africa and maybe Japan too~
5. My biggest goal in the next five years (and that's a maximum ETA, preference would be one to two years) to own my own bloody house. I hate renting, I hate it! Look at all my beautiful money being sucked away that I'll never see again! D: I want more space, I want a garage, and I want a yard so we can finally get a puppy~
6. I'm probably one of the few people who was born in St. Albert, Alberta, and never ever wants to leave. It is one of the many aspects that is part of what makes up what has been affectionately coined the "Brenna Bubble". I love my little slice of suburbia and if I get my way I will live here forever. By an uncommon contrast, I despise Edmonton. It's too big, it's dirty, it's stressful, and it's scary, as opposed to my comfortably small city that is by comparison clean, easy, and safe, and most importantly, is close to my friends and family. If I ever make a move out of St. Albert, it will be to another suburb in the nearby area, but if it's left up to me, I will die here in one of the very many local retirement homes.
7. My dialogue is littered with what we in the family refer to as "Saunders Words", and sometimes I forget that the rest of the world has never heard of them. Terms like "gweeblies", "tuffettops", and "goobersmooch" have a habit of sneaking into my dictionary while out in public and end up earning me lots of funny looks and ridicule.
8. I speak to my bunny as if he were a tiny three-year-old. I never thought I'd be one of those people who engages in in depth conversations with my pet and treats them like their own child, but I can't help it! *Hugs Toby* He's so freaking adorable! X3
9. I wish I had more money to buy ridiculous amounts of clothes and shoes! I can't walk into a mall without seeing a dozen things I want to have, and if I didn't have the reserves of will power as I do, I would be very very poor.
10. I am probably the pickiest eater I have ever and will ever know of. (And I can't even blame mine on allergies or anything.)
11. I'm cold all the time. I hate being freaking cold! *Hugs her portable work heater*
12. I'd really like to get more in shape since my current shape is more like a squiggly no-muscly void of nothing, but I am admittedly notoriously lazy when it comes to physical activity. Gyms are an absolute no-go for me. Selected sports I can sometimes pull off, but it really has to be a very Brenna-friendly sport, and that usually means that it doesn't involve a lot of running or painful physical contact. I keep saying I want to get into a habit of playing DDR again every day, but that probably won't actually happen until we have a house and more space to keep the dancing mat out and available to remind me to use it.
13. On the note of Brenna-friendly sports, I'm extremely glad that Mason introduced me to golf. Yes, it's as boring as dirt to watch on television, but I really do enjoy playing it. It gives me some exercise, I get to go for a nice leisurely walk, and it's very relaxing.
14. I started taking piano lessons this year, something I've always wanted to do and finally did~
15. I don't like small talk. I'm much more of a comfortable silence kind of girl. Please don't talk to me about the weather or other things we know that neither of us are really interested in talking about just to fill an awkward void. Either have an actual conversation with me, or keep to the rule silence is golden.
16. When it comes to television and movies and books, my favorite characters always end up being either:
    
    1. villains (ex. Spike from Buffy, Grievous from Star Wars),
    2. arrogant assholes (ex. Alan Shore from Boston Legal, Severus Snape from HP), or
    3. a little bit crazy (ex. Dilandau from Escaflowne, The Joker from Batman).

    Or in some cases, all of the above mixed into some crazy Molotov cocktail of creepy. It's especially strange since all these characteristics when displayed in real life piss me off and make me want to punch the owner in the face. Yet in books and shows, I can't get enough of them. They draw me in -- they're just always so much more interesting than the heroes or other protagonists! :B

17. Denny Crane.
18. I'm so happy to be getting back into reading again. I was an obsessive book worm when I was younger, and then for whatever reason I stopped buying books and going to the library for a while when I discovered things like anime and manga and pink Nintendo DS's. Something clicked last year though and I've compiled a giant list of must-read material that I'm working though.
19. I am an Anal Annie when it comes to filling the dishwasher. Everything has a designated place, dishes must be sorted, everything has to fit in order to maximize dishwasher capacity and efficiency! Mason very often simply doesn't load the dishwasher at home because he knows that I'll just walk by, get frustrated, and proceed to take everything out and re-load it my own way. I go over to my parent's house for dinner some times and blanch at the horror that is their dishwasher now that I don't live at home with them. It's a disgrace, and I think they do it purely because they know it annoys me.
20. I like playing board games. One night a week I get together with a bunch of friends and we play a board game or card game of some sort, it's a lot of fun, and I like that I get to see the group of people at least once each week because of it.
21. I am an enormous fangirly geek, and I love it. Being a fangirl is my favorite hobby ever, whether it's watching episodes of a series over and over again, or finding a new piece of amazing fanart, or staying up until the wee hours of the morning researching information and details on specific parts of a story or character that I never knew before.
22. Directly related to / caused by / is the causing factor of #21, I'm a pretty big daydreamer. Not in the teenage girly sense of "and then Johnny Depp comes sweeping in with rippling muscles and carries me off for some full-frontal shagging", but more along the lines of where I write little scenes and bits in my head of various fandoms I'm currently indulging in. It's more or less fanfiction writing, only without the actual typing because that's far too much effort. I like to think up those scenes you'd love to see, or bits of a story and character experiences that were never included but should have been. They play like my own little directed movies in my head, and they can range from little two-minute concoctions to full blown half hour episodes where I end up getting really annoyed if someone interrupts me in the middle of it.
23. I both miss and do not miss my old spiky hair. I miss it because it was very unique, and not a style you saw on every female who walked by; though on the same note, I very much do not miss it because of the same reason. My hair may be more boring now, but it feels more mature and I'm finally no longer recognized every where I go as "That spiky haired girl who worked at Sobeys". =_=; There's a point when creepy old ladies try to run their hands over your hair gushing that you say enough is enough.
24. I live my life by my Google Calendar. *Hearts* I'm not sure I could get along in the world on a day-to-day basis without my online schedule and daytimer.
25. I can't stand rudeness. It is by far my biggest pet peeve and turn off. Egotistical people come in as a close second -- modesty is a virtue, learn to use it, you arrogant asswipes.