I could do with another good week of relaxing. Seeing as that is not possible, however, I shall instead try as hard as I can to stretch out the rest of this Sunday evening. *Cling* Quick and dirty recap of my splendid -- but still much too short -- time off:

• Christmas was good. Got chocolate, a new digital camera, kitty fountains, big comfy blankets and *drumroll* a SHINEH NEW IPHONE! XD Love love loooove my new phone. I'm not sure how I ever managed to last this long without a smartphone.


• Went for a double feature movie day with Sister and friends. Movie one of two: Avatar in 3D. Loved it~ It was one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a while. It was a gorgeous visual feast for the eyes, and I really really enjoyed the whole Na'vi race and tribal culture and Pandora world. You can bet your bottom that I cried big sappy girl tears when they destroyed the Hometree. ;_;


• Movie two of two: Sherlock Holmes. Also very delightful -- and soooo slashy, lololol. Seriously, it was the most slasherific WatsonxHolmes crackfest ever. They bickered and nagged one another like an adorable old married couple. I mean, seriously: "My tongue is going numb. I'm not going to be of any use to you." SERIOUSLY? *BAM! Falls out of chair at BUBBLING HOT SUBTEXT PUNCH IN THE FACE* I kept squirming and imagining at any moment Robert Downey Jr. was going to shove Jude Law down on the cobblestones and have his sexy, snotty British way with him.
  
  EDIT: for Mike and Greg -- WE TOLD YOU!


• Watched the long awaited, two-part "End of Time" Doctor Who special and was left oddly disappointed. I think all of the over-hype killed it for me. It was cool to see The Master again and the -- extremely brief -- return of the Time Lords was kind of neat, but frankly I thought the whole story was pretty bland. Either way, however, Ten is now all gone and I shall miss him dearly while at the same time I try very hard to remain open-minded and give the new boy a chance. This courtesy does not extend to Eleven's new catchphrase though. ("Geronimo"? Really? *Makes a face*)


• Phoned Ben Moss regarding the status of my ring after already giving them over and beyond their original four week ETA, and they in turn told me that it wouldn't be ready until January 17th. *Deep breaths* If they hadn't sent me on my way with a temporary ring like they did, by now I would entering into that Royally Ticked phase.


• Royally Ticked phase was reached and surpassed after three different calls over the last week with Marks Work Wearhouse though -- when after waiting and waiting for them to order me in a size 9 pair of stylish winter boots, I was notified that no size 9's apparently exist ANYWHERE and I can expect them to be in about NEVER. D: Why did you waste all of that time ordering in the wrong boot style and not telling me certain stores had them in when they actually did, because now everyone else has bought my boots and they're all permanently sold out!!! ARRRRRAAAAAAHHHHH! Will never shop at Marks again. So angry. And now I have to find new winter boots that are not also piss ass ugly, which is no easy feat. The retail world was not kind to me this holiday season.


• Did not get H1N1 shot as planned. Did not play any Guild Wars. Did not draw anything. :x I did, however, do a lot of sleeping. So overall, my holidays were not very productive, but still enjoyable even if I was asleep for most of it. Upon reflection, it was probably a good thing I saved up so much energy sleeping, since I will now most likely need to conserve my strength for when I'm overtaken by a bout of deadly swine flu.

Very good House this week~ The whole Kutner suicide thing came out of nowhere. Turns out Penn is leaving the show for greener pastures, or in this case, white pastures. Team Obama/Penn FTW!

Huddy romping! I was promised House-Cuddy shagging before this season was out and I didn't even know about it? So where was it in Monday's final episode? Wheeeeeeere?! D:

EDIT: I was lied to by the interwebs! Monday wasn't the season finale! We still have four episodes to go, plenty of time for long-awaited Huddy sex! X3

SO excited for new Doctor Who this weekend~ *SPOILER* Wilf is going to be the new official companion? I guess we won't have to worry about any hanky pankery in the Tardis. */SPOILER*

Mason bought me the first two Avatar season boxsets for my birthday and the tracking information says they should arrive todaaaaay! YAY YAY YAY! *Love*

I'm a sucker for sappy fan-made shipper music videos (because, yes, I am that much of a nerd.) Sadly these are the only well done Ten/Rose ones I could find:



*Hearts*

And YAY for a new 2D animated movie from Disney~! :D A teaser is out for The Princess and the Frog and I'm very excited. Too much 3D has taken over the animated feature film and television industry, and the little hand-drawn loving part of my soul dies a bit each time. ;_; They just never seem to have the same impact on me as the old pencil and paper animation does. Back to basics, Disney! Make some magic again! Chop chop!

There's a nice old woman at Mason's work that constantly makes Mason lunches and goodies to bring home. Today I walked in to find she made us a giant tin of amazing sugar shortbread-ish type icing cookies~! They even have little cut up pieces of maraschino cherry on the top of them~ *OM NOM NOM NOM* I feel like I should bake her something tasty in return maybe or I'll throw off my tasty treat karma.

Ahoy, neat girly find of the day! Where have you been all this time? Have any of you other ladies heard of this? I saw the commercial on T.V. and was like "HEY. I have that problem!" What a simple, marvelous idea! I found a pretty much identical bra strappy hiding product called Embrace which is sold in one of the stores here in town for cheap. I'll have to pick one up.

We finished up the end of Doctor Who season 4 this evening and OMG FINALLY LONG AWAITED ROSExDOCTOR KISSAGE! *squee!* X3 *Rolls around on the couch in fangirlish glee while Mason looks at her strangely* I heart Ten x Rose, I really really do. Now they can go off and have lots of Rose Tyler / Half-Human Half-Time Lord babies~ And Doctor Donna! What happens to Doctor Donna? Isn't she supposed to be in next season? D:

I know they usually make a habit anyway of getting the Doctor to snog/be snogged by someone at least once each season (which is always awesome), but adorable Ten x Rose face-suckage deserves to be showcased:


Chelle, I don't remember whether or not you gave me the latest Christmas special. I have this vague memory of being given a CD with it on but for the life of me can't find physically find it. Yes? No? Am I crazy?

I really really did. And Ichiban. And beef noodle Hamburger Helper! Mmm... Don't get me wrong, the cruise ship had tons o' wonderful food (much more on that later) but at times I missed some of the do-it-yourself half-assed dinners we make at home. Call me a simple gal.

(I'm lazy and didn't want to re-write every bit of the cruise all over again, so for those who I emailed while away, you've already read most of what follows, except for the change of tense.)


Our cruise was awesome! The boat was FREAKING HUGE. D: Twelve or so decks, swimming pools, theaters, tons of restaurants and buffets, an arcade, shit loads of bars, a casino, shops, a mini basketball court, and... and... *sits there bewildered* It was a little jaw-dropping when you first walked on deck.

The only thing I would say I'd change for the next time if we ever go cruising would be to fork over the little extra money to get a room on the upper decks. Mason and I were on the very bottom left corner of the boat at the back, and while the room itself was pretty nice, you could hear all the ship engines and really feel the ship swaying at times that far down. Not too bad though.

My absolute favorite thing on the cruise was THE FOOD. OMG. *Drools* There was SO MUCH OF IT. And it was ALL FREE. X3 *Dies a little inside of happiness* Deck 9 of the ship was called the Lido Deck and it was pretty much just non-stop buffet -- every section you went to had a different sort of style or type of buffet (oriental, grille, grand buffet, deli, etc.) I spent a lot of time there. :B Chicken! Pizza! Ice cream! Chocolate cake! Pasta! They sort of changed the specifics of the buffets each day, but the basics were usually there all the time, and you could just go at pretty much any time of the day and grab whatever you wanted! *Happy flails!*

For dinner we usually went down for our nightly scheduled sitting at 8:15pm in the Platinum Dining Room restaurant which excitedly was ALSO FREE, only instead of buffet food it was like, amazing really expensive-like meals that I could never afford here at home. BUT IT WAS ALL FREEEEE! If I wanted three whole appetizers and two main courses, I just got them all! *Flails and sputters incoherently* It's a good thing I have a healthy metabolism or else I'd have come home a whale.

The day-by-day recap:

Friday was just a shit load of flying. Boooo. Though fortunately I took Gravol far enough in advance this time so I didn't feel sick at all for the flights. We got to Florida and got a hotel for the night. Very very tired.

Saturday we went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things, then went off to the port to get on the ship. We spent a good amount of time exploring the boat, it was all a little sit-there-with-your-mouth-gaping at first.

Sunday, our first full day on the ship, we stopped at port in Nassau, Bahamas. Unfortunately, with it being Sunday most of the city was completely shut down for the Sabbath or what not. We turned left when we should have turned right and everything was closed and empty and very depressing so I got a little sad as we just walked around doing nothing. Then we figured out that as long as we stuck to the couple roads that the cruise map had on it, all the touristy shops were still open so the day took a positive turn~ That evening was the first Elegant Night on the ship, so all the guests got all gussied up in their formal wear which was so much fun, and we went for fancy dinner~

Monday was our first full day at sea. It was also Mason's birthday *BIRTHDAY LOVE!* so we got him a fancy cake delivered to the restaurant when we went for dinner. It was soooo relaxing~ Our basic itinerary for the trip so far at this point had been 1) sleep late, 2) get up and wander up to the buffet for breakfast, 3) wander around, read, watch a movie in our room, 4) nap nap nap with some lunch in between, 5) lounge, 6) wander up for dinner and then either 7) see what shows or entertainment is going on, or 8) go back to the room for some Doctor Who and go to bed. It was wonderfully lazy~

Tuesday we arrived at port in St. Thomas. We went into town with Mason's parents and shopped for the morning. (I scored a beautiful knock off Coach bag that I luuurve.) X3 Getting from the dock down into the city, we took a boat/ferry thing with a piratey flair, and on the way back they went around some of the islands and gave us a bit of tour which was pretty cool. We went back around noon for lunch (buy food at port? You mean pay money? PFFT.) and then went back to our room to nap and steal a few minutes of free internet from Mr. Huffman's wireless card while we were still close enough to land to write a quick email home. After dinner we went down to the Amber Palace theater and watched a pretty cool magic show.

(My only real sour spot up to this point had been that this was the one day we let the steward in while we were out to the clean the room, and when I got back after shopping there was no towel animal waiting for me! ;_; I was so excited for my towel animal! Mason's parent's got one every day and Tuesday was the one day I was going to get one and I didn't! *Mope mope mope* In desperate towel-y hope, I let them clean the room again the next day though while we were at the next port. If they didn't leave me a towel animal again I thought I may do something rash. *Flails pathetically and cries*)

Wednesday was St. Maarten and as we got into port we started off the day with some bad news and some good news. The bad news -- the weather was stupidly windy so the water was super choppy and therefor cloudy and not fishy-viewing-friendly. Color me very sad. :c The good news turned out to be that they refunded our tickets and we proceeded to have probably the best day in port we had through the trip~ The weather, despite being windy, was gorgeous. The town was beautiful, the shopping was great~ (I bought myself a very pretty jewely/flowery necklace.) Then we literally came out of a dark alley between shops and suddenly OMG BEACH! White sand, turquoise water, splishy splishy splashy! XD Nothing completes a Caribbean cruise than a day of frolicking on a Caribbean beach~ When we got back we finished off the evening with a really good comedy and magic act on the ship.

(OOH OOH and I got not just one, but TWO towel animal menageries on Wednesday! One and two! *Glee glee glee* The towel animal gods decided to make up for their lack of love earlier.)

Thursday was the beginning of our final two days at sea before we get back into port. We lounged all day -- slept, ate, watched movies, read, and ventured into the casino. I brought ten dollars to gamble with, but I'm not sure how much I actually lost or gained as when I sat down at a slot machine there turned out to be $20 worth of credits which I wasted no time in cashing out and fleeing away with my (only somewhat stolen) bucket full of shiny jingly quarters~ ¬_¬ Muh ha. We also had another elegant dressy night for supper.

Friday was another day of lounging. I don't remember exactly what we did this day, but it was very similar to Thursday in the sense that it involved a copious amount of free food and lazing around. I got a giant piece of chocolate cake and watched the Sex and the City movie in the afternoon~ We also all went down to the casino again and I spent probably a full hour huddled around the quarter-tossing game with Mason's mom and went through about $80+ of her gambling money trying to help her get the wad of cash to fall off the little ledge. LOL so much fun, we drew quite a crowd with all of our shouting and hollering.

Saturday... we leave the boat. *Sad face* We had a full day just killing time in Florida since we were paranoid about the possibility of missing our flight home so we scheduled it for the next day, but it turned out we were off the boat and set to go by 10 a.m., so after a thwarted attempt at trying to change our tickets last minute to leave that afternoon, Mason's parents used some of their timeshare points and booked us into a fancy resort suite for the one night. I spent a good couple of hours catching up on my much-missed interwebs (the resort BLOCKED Facebook though. What? Seriously? WTF.) and watched the last half of Titanic on TV (probably a good thing I watched it after the cruise and not before.)

And finally Sunday freakishly-early-in-the-bloody-morning we finally flew home. It was a very tiring and somewhat cranky day, so I was pretty happy to walk into my apartment. Not so happy to be greeted by the cold and snow, however. It's a pretty raw deal to leave for the Caribbean only to find out that the weather back at home is a balmy +7, and then have it plunge back to freezing when you walk off the plane back in Edmonton. I didn't bring my coat either. It was miserable scamper back through the parking lot with all our heavy bags.

As fun and awesome as the trip was and as sad to not have free food (paying for food sucks!) and warm weather anymore, I'm still always glad to go back home. I huggled my bunny who I missed very much *HEARTS* (millions of love-filled thanks to Chelle, Nickie, and Brock who took care of Toby while I was gone!) and mooned over my lovely computer and fast non-crashy non-Facebook-blocking internet.

Pictures to be posted on Facebook hopefully soon!

*Munches on her beloved Save-on-Foods crinkle fries and Swiss Chalet sauce* *JOYGASM* X3

So Christmas was good, a little more relaxed this year for a change which was pleasant. I am happily overflowing with chocolate in my house now. X3 I also got four seasons of Doctor Who burned from my lovely sister, which I've started to dig into as well as the first seasons I've downloaded of both The Tudors (YAY! Henry is HOT!) and Dexter (very creepy... but good.) I have the first episode of True Blood ready to go too but it's taken a back seat for the time being since I have all these other splendid series' to watch.

I went out and immediately bought the Dark Knight on special edition DVD since I didn't get it for Christmas, and while the movie is still absolutely amazing, the so-called "special edition" features leave something to be desired which is extremely disappointing. Seriously, they're crap. You'd think with a blockbuster this big they'd pull some punches and do up a sweet set of extra features. :P Where are the interviews? The deleted scenes? The so-badly-craved featurettes on the making of the Joker and Two-Face? Where's the MEAT? ;_; Apparently there's a completely new documentary as well as extensions of the other features on the Blue-Ray, but not on the DVD? Christopher Nolan, you cheap bastard.

I've always enjoyed the Joker as a character, but the Dark Knight has put me in somewhat of a Joker craze. Ledger was piles of awesome in the film and I'm fairly confident he has a pretty good chance at the Oscar this year even despite his death, and I'm on the wagon that believes he deserves it; despite whether or not there were other actors who could have done just as amazing a job with the character.

With that said I have to admit though that I'm a little torn at certain aspects of Heath Ledger's Joker. Sure, they had the green hair and the trademark purple suit, and while I adore the downright creep factor he brings to the screen, I can't get away from the fact that the Joker in DK always looks like he just dragged himself out of a garbage bin. He's tussled and mangy and reminds me a little of a homeless drug-addict you'd see staggering around in the gutter. A familiar part of the Joker's character from the comics and television has always been that -- while yes, sure, definitely crazy -- you also rarely see him without his hair carefully slicked back and his clothes impeccably clean and pressed. The Joker is a clean-cut and usually charming narcissist in addition to being a stark raving psychopath, and it's always a little jarring watching DK and not seeing that familiar polish to the Clown Prince of Crime. It was a radically different approach to the character and I can't help but love them both but for different reasons.

While in my fangirly craze over the past week, I re-watched the Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker animated movie (uncut version) from 2000. I remember now why I loved both the original and BB cartoons, they're so great. *LOL* Kevin Conroy will always be the voice of Batman for me. The Joker in RotJ (now I feel like I'm talking about Star Wars) is the same as the one in the original series but a little darker and sleeker, it's great. (Hahaha and I love the movie commentary during when the Joker is literally killing hundreds of innocent citizens with his OMG GIANT SPACE LAZER D: and the producers and other commentators are like "Oh no no no, those cars you see being vaporized aren't being driven by people! Those entire city blocks of buildings? Oh they're in the abandoned part of town! Don't worry, those people by that blown up fountain were really quick to dodge! We swear!" Sure sure. Way to cover your ass, guys. *More LULz*)

EDIT: OMG I just noticed that the Joker doesn't have eyebrows in the animated series. WTF? o_O Where did his eyebrows go?!

On a final note, I'm a little in love with KidNotorious' Joker art~ *Hearts*