Christmas has come and gone, and remarkably, somehow our tree has remained in one piece this year.  I think my brilliant tactic of spritzing the tree down with smelly perfume each day helped convince Iroh that maybe he'd forgo climbing through the branches and breaking all of my pretty ornaments this holiday season.  *Gives kitty a warning look*

I hope Santa was good to everyone.  I, for one, must have made it somewhere on that nice list, as I received all sorts of shinies, such as a very badly desired clothes steamer (no more ironing, hurrah!); several awesome paintings commissioned by Sister, courtesy of her lovely friend, Jill; and a wonderfully obscene amount of chocolate.  Also, wonderful husband is wonderful -- he ordered me my perfectly perfect new Miche purse, as well as set me up with a year-long subscription to both Batman and Detective Comics~  X3  The timing couldn't be more perfect, what with the whole DC reboot, which I've been meaning to give a try; admittedly, I'm not thrilled from the snippits of Harley Quinn's head-to-toe revamp I've seen floating around online -- and when I say "not thrilled", I actually mean a little piece of my fangirly soul has been ripped out, gored to death, and left to shrivel up and be picked at by scavenging wild dogs *twitch twitch*  D:{ -- but aside from that, I've been told that it's still more-or-less the same Batman I've come to know and love.  I eagerly anticipate glossy pages chock full of caped crusaderdome to begin arriving monthly in my mailbox~  *Squee!*

Speaking of a certain Dark Knight, what's with DC's complete lack of officially licensed Batman art?  In an attempt to spruce up the walls of our depressingly bare basement, I geeked out and ordered a couple of great Doctor Who prints to hang up -- namely, this one and this one -- and have also been trying, without success, to find something awesome and Batman-themed to hang over our shuffleboard table.  Unfortunately, it seems that when you do a search for Batman wall art, all you get is the same dozen poster prints over and over again.  Don't get me wrong -- I schmooze over Jim Lee's sexy drawings as much as the next comic book fan, but is it too much to ask for a little variety?  You'd think with all of the different artists that DC enlists, they would release a steady stream of for-sale prints for fans to plaster their homes with, but there's really not much to speak of at all.  ;_;

Ideally, I would pee rainbows of joy to have a copy of this magnificent canvas print mounted on my wall:

Sadly, it is a tad more ridiculously expensive than I'm willing to pay, so unless an unlikely $20 clearlance copy pops up on eBay, I'm out of luck.  Like all *coughcough* highly illegal *coughcough* fan produced prints, they're hard to find copies of in the first place -- and when you do find a nice one, they're usually pricey.  It's so very unfair that finding pretty Batman art for sale should be harder than going out and purchasing a bag of crack cocaine (this is a guess, obviously, as I actually have no idea how hard it is or isn't to buy crack, or any type of drug, really -- however, I stand by my assumption, as evidenced by the fact that I have met a depressing amount of people who seem to walk around permanently stoned, yet I have met a total of zero people who sport any type of fashionable Batman artwork on their walls.)  Sigh.

Sad fangirl is sad.

Oh, my poor, poor neglected blog.  What has full-time schooling done to you?

No fear though, I have successfully survived my first semester!  Bring on the Christmas holidays, coo coo ca choo~  I'll try to give my blog a little more love during my two weeks off, maybe post some more book reviews -- but for now, here's the entirety of what little you've missed of my life for November and December:

• Exams are finished!  Grades are in!  I finished my classes with three A+'s and one A so far (though we haven't officially received our final grade for English, but based on my prior assignment marks and the final exam, I'm going to go ahead and assume I'll end up with an A for that class as well.)  I'm looking forward to the start of second semester with its early morning classes (leaving more time to spare in the afternoons and evenings) and having one less class in my course load; I opted to drop a class in both second and third semester, in favor of taking them during the summer and hopefully lessening my stress over the next two terms.  *Crosses fingers*
• I'm a mere hairs-breadth away from finishing my Christmas shopping!  This is an improvement over last year, considering I only began my shopping two days ago; however, once again my procrastination when it comes to ordering gifts online has left me fretting if any of them will even arrive before the 25th...  =_=;
• My temporary four month page position at SAPL has been extended to a permanent one!  Hallelujah!  It's still only one day a week, but it'll be on Thursdays instead of Saturdays which will free up my weekends nicely to breath a little and keep up with homework.  Besides, a tiny one-day-a-week library position looks better on a resume than no library position at all.
• After exercising a considerable amount of will power for the last two months, I've finally broken open my copy of Batman: Arkham City!  *Gibbers excitedly with fangirlish glee*  So far, the sequel is just as much fun as its predecessor -- though I hate the new take on Harley, and for whatever reason I'm feeling much more inept this time around when it comes to executing all of the different button combinations...  There has been a frustrating increase in accidentally falling off roofs when I'm trying to ground pound goons, and inadvertently exposing myself headlong into enemy fire when I'm trying to sneak around all ninja stealthy-like.  I'm a sorry excuse for a gamer, but it's Batman and so I shall persevere.  *DETERMINED FACE*

Oh yeah, and obviously I'm back from our cruise!  I kind of forgot to get around to writing up a whole vacation recap post in the midst of looming project deadlines and exam havoc.  Rest assured though that the vacation was very awesome, despite this Carnival ship being especially rocky for whatever reason -- we heard someone say that the Carnival Dream didn't have "stabilizers" or whatever the crazy boat magic is that's supposed to keep the ship from pitching back and forth wildly under your feet in crazy 16 foot swells.  So a slightly dizzying trip, yes, but still awesome.

Did I mention that we swam with sea turtles?   WILD SEA TURTLES.  They swam up for air right next to you!  If not for the strict rule we were given beforehand of "no touching, no hugging, no licking" (no lie)  of the wild life, I could have kissed those sea turtles right on the nose -- that's how close they came!  So amazing~

:3

Today we went out and spent a lot of money.  Thankfully, the money in question was almost entirely on a pile of handy dandy gift cards so that went a significant way in lessening the financial impact.  Shiny new purchases are always more shiny when they're free~

So yes, after a very long overdue wait, we are finally the owners of a new dishwasher (or will be once it arrives in Edmonton in the next four to seven days) and with it the tantilizing prospect of actually cleaning dishes.  What a concept.  Currently we're forced to painstakenly pre-scrub all of our dishes before loading them into the old machine in order for them to come out half decently clean, in which we then sort through and re-wash the ones that still aren't clean all over a second time, a routine that is agonizingly redundant three times over.

In addition, we also purchased a badly needed new barbecue, as the one we have right now has pretty much stopped cooking food entirely, so if you wanted a steak you better have liked it pretty rare.  This one's all shiny and steel and chrome and apparently firey-death free so I look forward to many summer evening suppers of delicious meaty goodness.

Last night we celebrated Canada Day at a Capitals baseball game at Telus Field.  This was my first ever baseball game, and if I'm being completely honest, watching baseball in person is almost as mind numbingly boring as watching it on television.  Please note that this is not to say that I didn't love hanging out with my friends yesterday, eating copious amounts of tasty stadium fries and ice cream and singing Journey songs at the top of our lungs -- that part was awesome and we really need to try and get us all together like that more often, I just wasn't crazy about the whole staring at a bunch of guys throwing and hitting a ball back and forth thing.  I'd rather we go to a field somewhere and actually play a fun game of baseball or soccer among ourselves, rather than be stuck in a plastic chair for three hours watching the game play out before me.  The fireworks afterwards, however, were fantastic!  You put on a good show last night, Edmonton.  :D  Happy day-after Canada Day, everyone!

Mood: Bouncing to Christmas music

I just couldn't leave poor December hanging there, gimped or not gimped.

So for anyone completely out of the loop, I broke my arm. Mason and I joined a beginners curling league back in the middle of November which I was pretty excited about, obviously not having any curling experience prior or even interest in the crazy sport whatsoever, but it seemed a fairly Brenna-friendly form of exercise. Or at least that's what I innocently thought. Leave it to any sport to be out for blood and make a liar out of me -- low and behold, half way through our first game I slipped on the ice and *SNAP!* there goes the right arm in a valiant effort to break my fall. =_=

Four weeks later, I'm now in my third cast (this one is purple) and have two more weeks to go until I can hopefully get this thing off. Needless to say, I have become pretty skilled in going about my day-to-day activities one-handed. Having to learn how to be a lefty has been awkward and downright annoying at times, and I've probably wasted way more time than is sanely needed to type this one single blog post.

In other news, I am thankfully 95% finished with my Christmas shopping with only a week to go. Yay me! I am, however, growing a little concerned that the 30% of my 95% worth of gifts that I bought online aren't going to arrive in time. :x I may have to end up stuffing printed out pictures of purchases into festive envelopes for family members to open up on Christmas morning in lieu of actual gifts.

All in all, not much else is new in my life, other than I finally received my DC Universe Online beta key. I was all excited and whipped up a pretty cool looking superhero of my very own, only to realize as I actually began playing the game itself that trying to play a two-handed computer game is exceedingly difficult with a gimpy arm. I managed to finally figure out a rather uncomfortable but do-able way of holding the mouse with my right hand and leaving my good left hand free to handle the multitude of buttons on the keyboard. It's not ideal, but it gets the job done. Now if only I could actually figure out all of the controls and stop running my character around uselessly in the same room.

This will probably be the only post I make until my cast is off, so a Merry Ho Ho to all next week, and here's hoping no one else gets their car stuck in the massive snow dunes accumulated at the end of their driveways like we did the other night.

Mood: Content

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. This is no doubt a result of a) realizing that despite how many of my projects and hobbies revolve around the internet and computer, I really do sort of hate modern technology most of the time; and b) nothing very interesting has been going on in my life lately to blog about.

On a some what hypocritical note of my opinion regarding computers above, I was very excited recently to receive a new (at least for me) gift in the form of my sister's old G4 iBook. The closest I've ever come to owning my own laptop has been when I "borrowed" my Dad's Macbook for an extended period of time and *cough* neglected *cough* to give it back until he came and tore it back from my fingers -- so actually having one (that I don't ever have to give back to anyone) is pretty exciting for me. Lookit me, world! I'm watching West Wing on my comfy couch while I blog! :D I even updated it from OS X Panther to the slightly less out-of-date Tiger, so I can actually run most of the modern browsers and applications. Sadly, however, just like my Dad's ancient laptop, this one too also doesn't support WAP2 so I can't connect wirelessly to most networks, which is all sorts of sad pandas.

Our house now has Christmas lights up for the first time! Cute little white LED ones. I'm so excited, they look really nice all lit up and it'll make this year feel much more Christmasy~ While I'm too lazy to decorate the entire house up like my Mom loves to do at home, there are a few holiday sparklies like Christmas lights and pretty trees that I insist on having since I moved out that help make the holiday special for me. :3

Mason also helped me install a much-needed extra shelf in our kitchen pantry this morning, in which immediately following I gleefully spent a half hour re-organizing all of our dry food. I'm not sure it's normal to get as excited as I do over a nicely organized pantry, but I think we've all realized by now that I'm strangely quirky like that occasionally. (You see what I mean when I say I haven't had anything interesting going on lately?)

I buckled and pre-ordered a copy of DC Universe Online under the tantalizing prospect of getting a chance to play the beta the same night -- only to discover afterward that I shouldn't expect to receive my beta key until at least mid-November. =_= Frankly, the whole pre-ordering process has left me rather irked on a number of levels. Sony's sort of dropped the ball with their customer service -- aside from the complete lack of details regarding beta keys prior to clicking the BUY NOW button, they send out no confirmation or acknowledgment of any kind when you try to actually submit your pre-order receipt, and from what I've read they're not bothering to take any time to ever reply to customer questions and clarify the lack of information. Shame, Sony. SHAME. While we're on the subject, the whole clunky system of "send us a photo of your pre-order receipt" seems a little... ridiculous... I've never heard of an online website processing a proof-of-sale through the use of screenshots and camera photos. o_O Either way, I look forward to eventually being able to create my own super hero/villain and running amok in Gotham City and Metropolis.

Mood: Not ready to go back into the real world again.

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.