Mood: Sailing on the shame boat

I didn't practice my piano homework nearly enough this week. I fumbled all through the first two pieces at my lesson today and looked like a complete arse, I'm sure. (At least I made it through the other two tunes decently enough.) ^^; I'll have to cram in a load of extra practice early this week to make up for the three days I'll be off camping during the weekend, or my piano teacher may begin to shun me.

I'd like to express my intense displeasure at looking out the office window today and seeing snow flying through the air outside. DURING THE MIDDLE OF MAY. *Grumpy*

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: Nose sniffly

They're getting a lot harder!

Okay, well it probably didn't help at all that I scampered off on a Caribbean cruise and didn't practice at all for a week and a half right as I was given my first set of actual melodies to learn. I came back and sat down at my keyboard and was like oh god, I don't remember any of this! D: the night before my next scheduled lesson. It's like I'm in high school all over again and I didn't finish my homework.

I definitely am learning though. I can hear myself getting better at each piece when I play every night and I'm slowly getting the hang of this crazy reading-sheet-music thing even though it takes me a moment to relate the note on the paper to where my finger should be positioned. (It's a work in progress.) Despite the fact that on a broad scale I obviously still really suck at piano, I'm finding it very relaxing. I get especially proud of my self when I get through a bit with no errors. And I'm not going to lie that when I'm waiting and listening to girl before me fumble notes in her lesson, I get a little smug. I could play that. Ho. Ho ho. La la la~ (Yes, okay, so she's twelve-years-old. Shut up. Let me be petty.)

X3

Mood: Ambitious

"Year", I mean. Though I suppose both are valid when you look at it. Happy first blog post of 2009, et cetera, et cetera.

As of tonight I am officially a student of piano. It's very exciting~ My first lesson was this evening (which I arrived late for and feel very bad about... I need to remember to go into work early on Tuesdays so I can catch the earlier bus home and not have to run around with my head cut off...) and it was very enjoyable. I have lessons to learn and practice over the next week: key names and beats and notes and what not. In order to keep the proper finger and hand posture I also had to cut my nails, which is very sad ;_; *wiggles short, blunt digits* but I admit it definitely helped.

And so begins my only two realistic New Year resolutions:

1. Rock at piano. (And by that I mean do decently well at my beginner-level lessons.)
2. Keep the apartment in a permanent state of less-messy. (We're going to start doing the dishes every evening to prevent the towers of filth in the kitchen that have built up in the past. Next we will hopefully designate a weekly cleaning day for each room of the house.)

*Determined*

Only ten days until we leave for the Caribbean! X3

Mood: Mellow

I can now play the first bit of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" on the piano by myself! *Feels proud* I really like this Synthesia program, it's fun times. I think I'll try to tackle "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" next, that one looks a little trickier because there's chords... :x My goal is to some day (years from now, I realize) be able to sit down and play some Journey -- they played it at the dueling piano bar we went to for the Nex Christmas party and I was like *hearts* and *sparkly eyes*.

In lieu of a holiday potluck which were originally going to do, we gathered everyone together and went to the new little Asian buffet. Somehow it managed to escape my razor-sharp casual observation that with the oriental-flavor of the restaurant name it was going to serve primarily Chinese food, but it turned out to be really tasty actually. And they had these wonderful little cheese-covered potatoes that were fantastically yummy~ I'd go back, but considering that they were in the midst of their grand-opening with only a couple tables filled, I don't think they'll be around long... *Sweatdrop*

I am so close to being done my Christmas shopping it's sick! If this damn weather would let up a bit, I would venture out and quickly finish up the last few items! It's really not fair how Alberta can go from a mild -5 to -30 practically over night... may I add that it's also very unfair how my car starter has developed an annoying habit of stopping to work as it gets progressively colder, which defeats the entire purpose. -5? It's good to go. But -30? I have to go out and start it by hand. Someone hates me.

I actually logged onto Guild Wars this weekend for the first time in... *strains* ...ages. I forgot how fun it is and how ridiculously AWESOME my necromancer is. Mason says I only have a couple more missions before I beat Prophecies, and then I want to start using my new ritualist~ With GW and piano, I don't know if I'm going to finish my Grievous picture in time for the contest deadline. >_<

Mood: Shiny!

One of these pretty Yamaha YPG-525 Portable Grand's is now mine! :B I found it for a really good deal on kijiji.ca. It was a little over my starter-piano price range ($500), but Mason pitched in half as an early Christmas present~ *Hearts* In a very roundabout return way, he ended up getting part of his Christmas present early too, his much beloved *goes to check name as per Mason's request* Odyssey 2-Ball SRT golf club since it was not-so cleverly hidden in the trunk of my car and we had to clean it out to go get my piano. My actual lessons don't start until January 6th, but in the mean time I have some built-in lessons that came with keyboard as well as this fancy program to play around with~

As a first, I've decided to make an entry into a user group DeviantArt contest. I don't usually pay much attention to contests because I'm exceptionally lazy and never manage to get entries done in time, but the theme was simply "Grievous in winter" and such a piece was coincidentally already on my to-do list. This does unfortunately mean that I'll have to haul ass to actually color a piece of art, which 1) I'm not very good at, and 2) will probably take me weeks because I really don't know how to use my tablet very well at all. *Shame cloud* D: In any event I've got the pencils finished and scanned in, so that's half the battle.

(The picture is obviously in two pieces right now because it's easier for me to draw that way, so you have to use your imagination that there's pretty snow and a dozen more droids in the background and you know... fabulous color.) >_<

Off to Whyte Ave tomorrow with Dad and Chelle for our annual holiday shopping adventure. There shall be donuts... there shall be shopping... and then afterwards there shall be a double-movie extravaganza! (And by that I mean going to see Bolt -- cute! :D -- and then being very ninja and sneaking into Twilight for epic lulz.)

EDIT: Fuck. I forgot Grievous' lightsabers. Fuckity wank bugger shitting arsehead and hole... *Debates whether to draw them in or leave as is* =_=;