Haven't posted in a while.  July in a nutshell:

• We suffered a minor crisis as an indirect result of installing our new dishwasher, when we woke up the following morning to discover that we had sprung a rather frightening leak in our basement ceiling from a pipe under our kitchen floor.  Luckily Mason and his father Bob the Builder'ed it up and managed to patch up the pipe within the day, and we spent the next week with fans cranked up full force up in the roof and on the floor to avoid any possible mold or water damage.  Things are now more or less fixed and back to normal other than the giant three foot hole still in our ceiling.
• Last weekend we had an unexpected kitty-shaped visitor camp out with us for an evening.  We found the young cat out in our backyard, unneutured, with no collar or tattoos, so I set him up with some food and water, a bed, and litterbox in the garage over night until the Humane Society opened up the next day.  I figure he was a house escapee rather than a stray, considering how openly friendly and affectionate he was, but I went around ringing doorbells that morning and no one recognized his photo.  He was so sweet, he liked to headbutt and nuzzle you in the face, being all "LOOK AT HOW ADORABLE I AM! SUBMIT ALL YOUR LOVES TO ME, MUH HA HA!"  I hope he was claimed by his family, if he had one, or gets adopted by someone nice.  *Hugs him*
• Sister and I had a Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows 2 movie date!  Both halves of this last movie were surprisingly awesome for a change, a really nice wrap up to a sadly lackluster movie franchise (with the exception of the epilogue which, trust me, is just as awful in movie form as it was in the book, only now you actually get too see Ron's thirty-year-old beer gut and Malfoy's hilarious facial hair.)  I liked that they ramped up the castle battle to be a bit more epic, though I was pretty choked that they cut out Fred's death scene; also sad that they hardly touched at all on Dumbledore's backstory.  On the other hand, as much as I've been a long time hater of Alan Rickman's portrayal of Snape, he really redeemed himself a bit in this one.  He finally abandoned the whole campy Capt Kirk line delivery and the over-the-top billow genie moves for some actual acting in parts for a change.  I've never been a fan at all of the Snape/Lily ship, but I gotta say that I sobbed like a giant goober during the scene where he finds her dead in Godric's Hollow, and afterward when he's lamenting to Albus.  ;_;  Oh yeah, and btw, McGonagall?  She's hilarious.  Trust me.
• Only one month until I go back to school.  It's a little pathetic how even at the age I am now that one of the parts I get most excited for about returning to college university (MacEwan would insist on accuracy) is the prospect of new school supplies, especially when you consider that school supplies for my program pretty much consist of maybe a binder, paper, and a handful of pens.  Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the classes themselves, and the concept of graduating in two years and being able to secure a career I'm actually passionate about is obviously appealing, but some how that package of brand new blue Bic ballpoints makes me positively squirm with glee every time I walk by the office supply aisle at work.  Yes, it's absurd, I know.
• On the note of school and library careers, I applied for a (very) part-time page position at the St. Albert Public Library this week which I'm hoping my volunteer cred will score me first dibs at.  Even a few hours a week of legitimate library work would be great for my resume and maybe open up some opportunities for something full-time.  Please cross your fingers for me!  >_<

Mood: Excited for new house!!!

(This is very belated blog entry that I meant to post last week but instead just left it piling up sadly in my drafts folder. In any event, onward ho and all that jazz.) Against my better judgment I went and saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince with Chelle. While I adore the books to a squeeing fangirly extent, the movies leave a lot to be desired and usually only succeed in destroying another little part of my soul with each new book-butchering film that gets released to theatres. Considering that HBP is by far my favorite out of the seven, I was obviously extra concerned about how they were going to ruin this one. Surprisingly enough, while they did inevitably take HBP and viciously chop it into thousands of tiny pieces, it also ended up being the most entertaining one out of the series yet.

Let's start off with the good, then ease our way slowly into the horrible, agonizing bad that made me want to hit my head against the wall over and over. Warning: probably spoiler ridden.

THE GOOD

• Daniel Radcliff is the epitome of geeky cute in a bottle and his acting has improved leaps and bounds when compared to his cringe-worthy performance in Philosopher's Stone.
• Gambon's Albus was a finally a bit more Albusy. Overall, I've always very strongly disliked his version of Dumbledore -- he always plays him too rough and cranky sounding. However, there were scenes in HBP where he brings the overdue and much needed twinkle back to the roll. Plus the part where he fights off the Inferi in the cave was fucking rad.
• I really enjoyed the addition of the scene with Snape and Harry seeing each other under the stairs prior to the tower. The way Severus offers that (arguably false) gesture of reassurance is an aspect I wish had actually been in the book.
• I also really liked the way they replaced the funeral with the simultaneous wand salute to Albus. The movie scene didn't make me cry like I thought it would (though neither did his death in the book), but it was very touching.
• Molly's face as she stares up at the burning Burrow... gut wrenching. My heart broke.
• Tom Felton looks smarmy in a suit~

THE HORRIBLE, AGONIZING BAD

• They destroyed the Burrow? WTF? Where is the wedding in book seven going to happen? *So confused*
• Seeing as once again they were forced to take a 600+ page book and hack it down to fit in under 3 hours, it's still inevitably pretty choppy (though not as bad in the past movies at times.)
• Ginny and Harry don't seem to have much chemistry together. The actress playing Ginny at times was really good, and at other times just floundered awkwardly. MOST AWKWARD KISS SCENE EVER.
• I understand why it was cut, but I was still a little disappointed to see they didn't include the opening bit with Dumbledore paying a visit to Privet Drive. I would have loved to see the wine glasses flying around and clinking against the Dursley's heads. :B
• What was up with Narcissa's hair? The Malfoy family are supposed to all be platinum blonds, but they gave Cissa this horrible black stripe that made it look like a tacky teen dye job. Someone's version of symbolism foreshadowing her role in DH to come I guess? o_O She was also way, way too old.
• The didn't do the Unbreakable Vow scene justice! My favorite scene! D: *Angst* Neither Snape or Narcissa's roles in this scene had enough time to be flushed out given the right amount of depth that you feel from the characters in the book. It's the first time Narcissa is given any serious attention and it failed for me to nail down who she really is and what drives her -- that she's a mother first, and everything else second.

  And what about Snape? We weren't introduced to anything new about Snape! I remember finishing the "Spinners End" chapter in the book and going wow. The way he responded in just tiny, simple, but genuine ways to Narcissa's grief and desperation; that's a side of this character that we'd never seen before -- where the impression that perhaps this guy isn't just doing this simply under his master's direction. It added a new element to Snape. But in the HBP film, we don't get any of that. He's so flat and boring -- even up until the end when Harry is chasing after him and calling him a coward. Where is the Snape Flipout? When do we get to ever see this guy unhinge like he's supposed to? He looses his cool at three different important parts in the series and in the film's he has yet to have a strand of hair fall out of place. *Irked*

  Okay and while I'm getting completely off-topic, does anyone else notice that Alan Rickman talks like Captain Kirk? Very... drawn out... and sort of -- choppy. Like. This. Ugh. *Facepalm* RickmanSnape kills me.

• All right and obviously my biggest grievance with this movie was the blatant way they, for reasons I can't even fathom, completely replaced the two main plots of the original story with Teenage Love Woe Angst filler? Seriously, the two main plots in HBP are: 1) Harry journey with Dumbledore examining Voldemort's past and the memory traveling, and 2) the Half Blood Prince and potion text book bits; and instead they chopped both of those story lines into such itty bitty tiny side plots that you hardly remember that they're there, and instead focused entirely on PUBERTY AND TEENAGE LOVE AND WOW!GIRLS AND WOW!BOYS. *Hits head repeatedly against wall over and over and over again* How can you take all of the actual story and just shove it under the rug like that? They cut more than half of the memory traveling! They barely even touched actual Half Blood Prince aspects, which I find exceedingly stupid SINCE THE MOVIE IS CALLED "HALF BLOOD PRINCE". They didn't even bother explaining why Snape is the Half Blood Prince, so I really hope every one who sees the movie has read the book beforehand or else they're going to leave feeling VERY CONFUSED. *Pulls at hair*

THE HUH?

• Hahahaha, oh god the Snape/Draco shippers are going to have a field day. The smoldering stares... the dark corridor exchanges... The slashers must be going to town.
• Why did Draco have Snakey? Now that his father has been carted off to Askaban, does he carry Lucius' snake staff around with him everywhere he goes like a security blanket? Oh Draco, you're such a sap.

That is all. I still have like 9 hours that I have to struggle to get through today before the keys to our new house are placed in my hands. I don't think I'm going to make it! D: *Torture*

Countdown until shiny exciting house possession: OMG TODAY TODAY TODAY!

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.

Mood: Bitter

You said you were fast! You boasted of unmatchable high speed intrawebbing! Now on a Monday evening I'm sitting here waiting for blogger to load for five minutes. I can't even play Guild Wars it's lagging so much. A pox on your money grubbing lying corporation! *shakes fist*

We went to the Taboo Sex Show on Saturday at Northlands, a giant romp through one gigantanormous sex shop. Ashley and I watched the male strippers and I bought a chocolate penis and ate it while I mosied through the dildos and fuzzy handcuffs. It was rather tasty~ My only regret is that I bought tickets beforehand online -- we ended up entering in through the exit doors unknowingly so we bypassed the entire ticket process at the front gates thus negating my $20.00 worth of online transactions. *Feels ripped*

Yay, I finally got my necklace de-knot-afied~ Never again will I put you in my purse all tangled. *hearts* Thanks to the nice and only slightly patronizing woman at Peoples Jewelry who fixed it for me.

I lurk a bit around some of the Nexopia Harry Potter forums and like the big geek that I am I joined a thread where you answer a list of questions and the other forum members sort you into a Hogwarts House. They all put me into Hufflepuff! T-T People I don't even know are sorting me into Hufflepuff. And by unanimous decision! (Well...aside from the one vote to make me a squib and/or muggle...what a burn to me, lol.) *Sweatdrop*

OMG OMG OMG, Chelle found out that Greg Weisman is continuing season 3 of Gargoyles in comic form! XD They're already on Amazon! I want to leech them off you so bad, Chelle! *flails* SO EXCITED.

I'm reading Hush again, the sexy Batman comic with the equally sexy art simply because it's that gorgeous~ Jim Lee is my comic book artist hero. *Has his prettily-drawn comic babies*

We're seeing Beowulf on Saturday in IMAX 3D, and even if the movie itself sucks it's going to be awesome anyway! There's going to be dragons and crazy giant ass birds and other insanely sweet things jumping out from the screen at my face! It's going to rock!

I notice my blogs are less of entries about one subject or story, but more of a jumbled confusing mess of rambling thoughts. This is my mind, people. It's not so much linear as it is one of the crazy spirographs that you used to play with as a kid. :D

Mood: A bag of holding of mixed HP emotions.

Well that was slightly disappointing.

[ MINOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW ]

Despite my solid steel wall of denial, the leaked version of Deathly Hallows turned out to be the real deal. Color me sad with a twinge of bitter. All right, to be fair the book overall wasn't bad. It was entertaining and it definitely had lots of awesome moments. The sad part of the Harry Potter book seven cookie is all of the, what I consider to be, 1) unanswered questions and easy cop outs. You lied to us on some accounts, Mrs. Rowling. *Sad face* 2) Fangirlishness aside, the wrap up for Snape's story was just. . .lame. On so many levels. What a cliche, emo rip off for such an amazingly constructed and complex character. *Imagines Severus on hillside with Dumbledore, screaming "STEL-LAAAAAA!" to the skies* And he didn't even do anything in the final battle. What a waste. *Much more sadness* 3) The epilogue. Omg. There is not enough cheese in the world to compare to the cheese-ousnes of this epilogue. ALBUS SEVERUS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? *very slowly dies*

[ END MINOR SPOILERS ]

So it was an end, maybe not the end I was holding out for, but an end, nevertheless. It leaves me with depressingly little to look forward to from now on as far as books go. I'll have to start reading HP fanfiction again to keep myself entertained and fangirly.

(Awesome avatar totally made by Chelle and pilfered by myself.)

Mood: Going INSANE

Okay, let's just get all this other stuff out of the way because we all know what this blog post is really about.

My bus stopped for a line of baby ducks crossing by the road today! It was really cute! XD

I got some of the hair on my arm almost burned right off from Mason's BBQ. *sad that arm still smells burnt. . .* :P

Nexopia is going good so far! I like this job! Huzzuh!

Transformers movie! Awesome!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie! Not so good, mostly meh, but then again the HP movies always are. HOWEVER, OotP movie in 3D IMAX, AWESOME! XD

We had our first soccer match last Thursday and got ourselves royally ASS WIPED. It was sad. It was also very hot. We do have sexy team shirts though, which increases our awesomeness level by ten points!

Enough canon fodder, on to the real point of this post:

All right. I'm not sure whether you've been tuned into the world at large this past week, but the basic gist is that several copies of Deathly Hallows was leaked onto the vast interweb on Monday morning. Some of them are slightly different from each other, many of them look very real. Chelle read the biggest of them on Monday, told me all about it, and basically what she read sucked beyond all imagine. It can't be real. It's so off, it's so un-exciting, it's so cheesy, there's so many things that weren't addressed that JKR would promise would be, editing errors galore, the list goes on and on. Thus, it's an elaborate forgery.

And yet, reviewers of news publications and newspapers who have read book seven are giving hints that sound disturbingly like this infamous "CarpetBook", and much more disturbingly, giving it good reviews. It also has the real chapter illustrations that are always included.

WTF?

The HP fandom is in complete and utter pandemonium. You can't even understand. No one knows what the hell is going on and the publishers and JK herself refuse to say what's real and what's not. The only explanation we can come up with is that this is not a fan hoax. It is also not a leaked version of the real book. Popular opinion is starting to form that this is the most elaborate and brilliant marketing ploy a publishing company could ever come up with. Make a fake book, put it on the web. BAM. Unheard of advertising; as well as avoidance of actual book leaks because everyone thinks it's already online.

It has to be. This can't be the real book. I'll cry. People will flame. Chelle will owe $200.00.

If you're at all obsessive like either of us, follow the mob at: http://community.livejournal.com/its_a_fake/ for the most recent news. Two more days. GYAAAAAAAAAA!

Countdown until Harry Potter book seven: OMG OMG OMG, only 2 freaking days!