I joined in on the fun and signed up for a Formspring account and will probably check it regularly until the novelty wears off. Until then, ask me anything!

A new season of America's Next Top Model has begun, full of high-pitched screaming girls, cat fights, crazy clothes, crazier hair, and of course some makeover tears. Bring it on! For reasons I can't fully explain I just love ANTM. It's my guilty pleasure show, best when combined with tasty chocolate cake. Apart from just loving to see the finished photos, I'm ashamed to say that I think one of the draws is being witness to the insane all-girl drama that erupts in the Top Model house each season from the safety of my living room. You'd have to pay me a helluva lot of money to lock myself in a penthouse with twelve spastic young women under the eyes of nation-wide television cameras for three months.

Three books checked off my to-read list over the last month: Part of the Pride by Kevin Richardson and Born Free by Joy Adamson, both about human-animal bonds with wild lions in particular. The stories and the people in them and how they're able to form relationships with big game predators like this are fascinating to me~ I also finished The Pact by Jodi Picoult, about two families torn apart by the apparent suicide pact of their two children. It was more or less the classic Picoult child angst/parental grievances/courtroom drama plot that I've come to know (and love) her for, which I still end up enjoying no matter how many time she does it. My only complaint with this one is that the ending and outcome of the trial itself was, in my opinion, completely unrealistic. }:P Her newest novel, House Rules, about a boy with Asperger's syndrome accused of murder sounds like another typical Picoult book, but like always I'm eager to read it anyway.

I went out the other day and made (what is for me) a rare venture to purchase some new cosmetics. I bought some new sheer foundation, some mascara, a couple new swatches of eyeshadow (which according to my Google researching should be ginger-flattering), and two new facial moisturizers (the sales associate that helped me was scandalized that I used Vaseline lotion on my face as it is apparently a big no-no and does more harm than good.) This is why I hate shopping for cosmetics -- I have no earthly idea what I'm doing or what I'm looking for, which leads to me inevitably having to ask a makeup associate for help, which in turn almost always ends up making me feel exceptionally stupid and embarrassed. I walk through the beauty section aisles paranoid that every other woman is staring and judging me on my complete lack of innate female prowess with makeup.

On a related note, holy jeeze I had no idea there were so many shades of black mascara. Classic black, very black, emerald black, black brown, soft black, and what I'm sure is the king of all black -- blackest black. o_O How different can one black mascara look from another? I'm glad I opted for the much harder to find (yet with a much less intimating range of selection) brown mascara. Among all of the leagues of various blacks, there is just... brown. Straight, safe, simple brown. Much less work in my opinion.

Am I the only one who's glad the Olympics are finally over and no longer have to wade through all of the sport play-by-plays on my Twitter and Facebook feeds? I swear, I think my Twitter feed doubled while 80% of the rest of the country was watching the Canada/U.S. gold game.

These last few weeks while everyone else in Canada has been glued to their winter sports (and thus, as I'm been told, are apparently more "truly Canadian" than myself), I have had a lot more exciting wedding planning going on~ I've bought my dress *check!*; have a meeting set up next week to book our photographer *check!*; and both ceremony and reception venues should be chosen and booked by the end of the month *check!*. Here that, To-Do list? That's the sound of me kicking your ass! *Flex*

Also, exciting news -- as their wedding gift to us, Mason's parents are paying for us to go along on one of their family vacations next year, another cruise! Honeymoon + family vacation = double the cruising for 2011! XD (The two of us are going down a day early to check out the new Harry Potter world at Universal as well, it's going to be geektastic.) We're going to have to start saving up our vacation days.

We had the not-so-fun task of dealing with water leaking into our furnace room downstairs this week. D: The drainage we neglected to fix before winter came back and gave us a little nip in the ass to remind us, "Hey guys, I'm still here!"; turns out the majority of snowmelt from the roof was draining down one side of the house so much that it was flooding out from the "weeping tile" (which I learned, despite the name, is not actually tile shaped in any way. How very misleading.) We spent a couple days repeatedly mopping up water and running fans to dry up new spills we found until we could make a run to Home Depot to pick up some stuff to redirect the drainage temporarily. Ta da! No more leaking! YAY, disaster averted! We'll have to do a proper job with fixing our drainage in the spring after the snow's gone.

Speaking of... wow, next month is April and I'll be turning 25 and will officially be a quarter-century old. Craziness. Half the time I still don't even feel like an adult yet, and the other half of the time -- well I know it's too early to say I'm over the hill or even approaching something remotely hilltop-ish, but I feel old. I don't know, maybe it's because I work in the same building as a high school and work on a site filled with teenagers all day who wear skinny jeans so tight you can't breath in them and plastic aviator sunglasses you can't actually see out of. Seriously? WTF is wrong with this generation? (Look, I'm becoming a crotchety old lady already. The big 2-5 will do that do you.)

So last weekend Mason had to make a run to Value Village, and in the twenty minutes we were there I ended up walking away with five (new?) beautiful sweaters. Suffice to say that I was, you can only call it, elated. Literally dancing the happy dance of happy sweater joy in the change room. With my five sweaters (some still with the original price tag on them) and Mason's two new shirts, we spent all of $42. (I got a practically brand new cashmere cardigan for $8.00! The rest of my sweater finds were $3 - $5.00!) I don't think many people I've told really understand how exciting that is to someone as frugal, but also very clothes-loving, as I.

Nevertheless, after witnessing my apparently hilarious celebratory flailing, Mason came up with the brilliant proposition that henceforth we shall embark on a single Value Village excursion once a month. The trick -- I have a maximum of only fifteen minutes once we set foot in the store to race up and down the isle(s) of my choice (change room time not included), thus preventing me from very quickly turning a cheap, monthly shopping trip into a wild money-spending extravaganza. I have it marked on my calendar and I am pumped. Pretty clothes each month for me without breaking our money-saving budget! *Hearts* X3 I figure my best strategy to keep from running around and flailing wildly all over the store is to pick one section per trip. So next up... jackets! (Or shoes... I can't decide!)

I have a very busy weekend coming up. Dinner/gaming tonight, we're going bowling for Mason's birthday tomorrow, and then bridal fair number two is up this Sunday! We got the DJ down, maybe this time we'll win some cheap photography or maybe even *shiny* a dress~? *Prepares to wade back into the bridal fair fray!*

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.

My Christmas shopping is officially finished, with a whole day to spare. Go me! Wrapping presents last night was a whole new adventure with the cat intent on trying to steal my tape, borrow through gift bags, and tear up my tissue paper. If my wrapping this year seems more shoddy than usual, blame Iroh.

I'm extremely sad that I still don't have any new boots yet. They originally arrived last week but unfortunately in a size that was slightly too small -- and I had them for all of twelve glorious hours before I finally relented and returned them and asking to re-order a half size larger. Hopefully the 9's they're sending me will fit perfectly. This is why I don't ever buy clothes or shoes online, I hate purchasing stuff before I have a chance to try them on. :P Boot fail.

With an absence of any of our usual big trips this past year, I took advantage of all of my saved up vacation days and am looking forward to a nice, extended Christmas holiday this season. During this time in between all of much tasty turkey gorging and shameless post stomach-full-of-turkey lounging, I am determined to:

• See Avatar (who wants to go with me? SOMEONE GO WITH ME!)
• Finally go and get my H1N1 shot so as to avoid dying of dreaded piggy flu.
• Play more Guild Wars. My warrior needs some loving.
• Sit back and finally get a chance to do some drawing. ;_; I miss drawing so much, I can't believe I haven't managed to get anything new done in almost a year. I had all of these wonderful intentions to draw a bunch of art pieces as gifts this year for Christmas, but as it is now nearing the end of December that plan has obviously flown out the window. Art fail. :x

OOH OOH OOH and there is a very strong possibility that I may have in my possession a shiny new iPhone by the end of the holidays~ However, this is still sort of teetering on the knifes edge considering the rational and very frugal part of my brain is overcome by guilt about such a frivolous purchase and the thought of a $20+ increase in my monthly phone bill. Inner turmoil, INNER TURMOIL!

Another one of our infamous Alberta winters officially arrived this weekend and has royally kicked our ass. My usual 45 minute transit ride home on Friday evening took an hour and a half, and there were some particularly tense moments each time our bus tried to pull away from a stop with its tires spinning frantically in the curbside snow drifts. I have to admit that one thing I really miss from condo living is waking up after a big snowfall and POOF! the walkway and parking lot had already been cleared by some unseen entity. Shoveling snow sucks. The fact that our driveway is freakishly long compounds on the suckage factor. *Pout pout pout* Where are all the tiny children who are supposed to ring our doorbell and offer to shovel our driveway? What a bunch of slackers.

On the upside from the past week, I finally got my (temporary) engagement ring! I still have to wait a few weeks for my custom-sized one so the one they gave me for now is like two sizes too large, but it has a little sizing bar bit that snugs it up to my finger enough that it doesn't fall off. Either way, it's pretty and sparkly and is something to show to people that says "Look look! I really am engaged, it's not a giant sham!" *Loves her new ring*

I finally sucked it up and ordered a pair of actual winter boots, as my kiss ass little dress boots that I somehow managed to wear all through last winter provide neither traction nor warmth of any kind to speak of. While it was a $100 I wasn't really inclined to spend right now, they're very cute and I'm excited for them to arrive (and I know my toes for one will be eternally grateful.)

Sigh. I can't believe how fast this month is going. December is so busy. It's dawning on me much slower this year that I really need to get a move on a buy some Christmas gifts. :x (0/6 gifts purchased... EEP.) It's going to have to be a very small Christmas gift-wise, what with mounting monthly bills, credit cards with some big purchases on them, and now we're saving for weddings and cruises; all the while with Mason back to school in his final year of school starting in March. *Must save save save save* :x

Ther33e was something else I'm sure I wanted to include in this post, butzzsssssaaaaaaa kitttttttasaaAAAATY HAS chosen thisppppppp mom ent to insist on trying to find a comfortable spot to lay directly upon my keyboarrrrrr55rrffvvvv-- /....... WTF kitty. I am giving up on any more of this,6ti