Back from B.C. sister road trip! I'm contemplating changing the name to Bacon Vacation, however, due not only to the undeniable fact that it (sort of) rhymes and everyone knows that rhymes are fun for everyone -- but also paying homage to the additional fact that I don't think we ate one meal in Sean and Liz's home that didn't include bacon. It was a plethora of bacon! On top of, inside, shredded into, sprinkled on, and wrapped around! A variable bacon cornucopia, if you will. I know a few salivating individuals who would indeed have some fine dining at Sean and Liz's House of the Crispy Fried Swine.

Anyway, our trip was lots of fun, minus the actual sitting in the car for twelve straight hours there and back again -- that starts to lose it's appeal after the first hour or two. For the first time in all of our many B.C. excursions, we actually hung out in downtown Vancouver for a day. It's a much nicer city to stroll around in than Edmonton, visually-wise, what with all its envy-invoking mountain/bay scenery that puts us to shame. It also scores bonus points on the personal Brenna scale with it's monumental vaguely-coliseum-like Public Library of All Kinds of Win!

Seriously cool. I bought a used book from their gift shop and every time I turn a page I shall think back to the VPL fondly and FILLED WITH JEALOUSLY.

We also spent a day down in Seattle checking out the Space Needle, and before that the Seattle Zoo (I got super close to a grizzly bear! Like, SUPER CLOSE! D: The entire lack of actual fences around the animal enclosures do not help at all with soothing the fearful concept of serious bear mauling.) I had to stop and have a "the hell?" moment when in one of the aviaries they featured ...wait for it... magpies. *Blink* Really? We could have carted a whole car load of them over from Alberta for you, and I think I speak on behalf of all Edmontonians when I say we'd be glad to be rid of them. Though I suppose they're considered exotic to someone. When you think about it, I'm sure somewhere in South America, the locals are all like "Fucking toucans! Get your exotic profile and beautifully-colored giant beak out of my fucking backyard and off my breakfast cereal! Jeeze!"

On the way home we also made a pit stop by our favorite B.C. roadside fruit vendor and I bought some delicious fresh cherries. Yum~ X3

Tomorrow, CT's wedding! *Excited flails!* Very excited and happy for them. I tried the few dresses I own all on yesterday and realized that they all either: a) don't fit anymore, b) never did fit in the first place but I was too style-stupid to realize it, or c) fit but are made a material so see-through that undergarments can clearly be seen. So I ventured out today to buy a much-needed dress slip to hide unfortunate pantie exposure, except that I couldn't manage to find a bloody slip so instead I spent two hours frantically hunting for a whole new dress. Fortunately I managed to find one that was on sale and ended up being more or less the same amount of money I would have spent on the slip in the first place. That's a win in my book.

Mmm, have no doubt that there shall be cake and possibly other tasty desserts at wedding tomorrow. That's always a delightful perk. Is it acceptable these days to slip the groom a fiver in order to score an extra piece? A corner piece, maybe? With a grotesque amount of icing...?

The following is the one and only positively rad bear-related portion part of this blog post:

Me:	@danawhite I had a dream where I was being attacked by bears and you came in and were all "I'll handle this" and fought them off, saving me.
Me:	@danawhite Long story short -- you're sort of my hero.
	*No reply for many days*
Me:	No reply from @danawhite in response to my msg about dreaming that he saved me from a bear. I think I may have made him uncomfortable.
Me:	Or perhaps @danawhite was in fact in real life bear battle and was brutally mauled? Bear fighting prowess does not exist beyond dreams?
Dana White:	I didn't see it. Glad I could help :)
Me:	@danawhite Huzzuh! Glad to hear you were not in fact mauled by angry bears. Rock on.
Dana White:	lol

\o/

I am having serious doubts about this mountain camping trip. I was having doubts before, but after reading Fairfax Lake's far too convenient "Bear Smart e-Book" I feel like I'm mere moments away from a panic attack at the thought of driving four hours away tomorrow just to camp at some backwater mountain campground with a chance of bear encounters and "serious mauling" (the e-book's words, not mine) thrown in. There is something we have termed the "Brenna bubble" and bears are not a part of that bubble.

If you can't already tell, I have a pretty solid history -- which I believe I genetically inherited in some fashion from my mother -- of being terrified of bears. I have never seen one up close, but I positively, 100% sure, instinctively know that if I ever do I will end up dead. Watching The Edge when I was younger was like sitting through my own personal 2-hour nightmare.

If I end up actually going tomorrow I'm not even going to be able to walk to the bathroom alone. I will be a campsite Nazi. "DID YOU PUT AWAY ALL YOUR FOOD INTO THE CAR?!" "YOU CAN'T GO TO BED IN THE SAME CLOTHES YOU COOKED DINNER IN!!!" "IS THAT TOOTHPASTE I SEE IN YOUR TENT?!" Oh god. Hated and shunned by close friends, or hideous bear mauling? What do I do, what do I do, what do I do.

:x

I've been lazy with blogging over the last week or two, so I'll try to keep these all short and sweet!

• Edmonton Pride Parade
  
  Awesome! Went with Sister and friend and walked in the parade along with the Grant MacEwan GLBT group. I was originally assigned the task of enthusiastically giving out temporary tattoos to the crowd, but I'm too shy and am not a huge people person so that fell flat pretty quick; so instead I got to blow bubbles~ X3 Much more fun. By the end of that parade I had some proper bubble blowing technique down, I tell you. *Smug*
  
  It was a great turn out for both the parade parties and the crowds watching. This was the first time I've ever actually walked in the parade, and only the second time I'd ever been to it at all. Every year I mean to go, and then something always comes up and it's always the same old "okay, well maybe next year." I enjoy going out and showing my support, and I really love the atmosphere and watching all of the different people laughing and smiling and just being with each other -- some unfortunately whom I'm sure don't usually feel the same easy comfort in walking hand-in-hand down the street any other day as they probably do during pride day. I wish everyone could feel as confident, open, and happy all the time as some of the people I saw today. What a thought.


• Homeland by R. A. Salvatore
  
  A race of dark elves called the Drow live underground and are feared by all for their vicousness and single-minded drive for power no matter the cost, least of all when it comes to killing their own, which is practically encouraged. The newborn Drizzt is born and grows up to be not quite as malicious as his family and culture would prefer him to be...
  
  I don't know what to think about this book. I guess it was okay, I made it through to the end fast enough, but it was just too... evil? As in a complete over-abundance of. Usually I'm a sucker for the villain. I have a long, sordid history of always rooting for the bad guy, and almost every one of my favorite characters from any fandom has been the the villain; but my biff is that evil is not interesting unless it's dished out with some good alongside for the ride. All this story had was Evil Smiles and Evil Plotting and Evil Ambitions, where mothers kill sons and sisters kill mothers and brothers want to kill sisters and all it is is a giant clusterfuck of hate and assassination and EVIL. It made the villainous aspect of any potentially interesting character really boring and redundant. I think Homeland had potential, but fell flat.


• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
  
  A boy with Asperger's finds his neighbor's dog dead, impaled with a garden fork in the yard; despite his father's demands otherwise, brilliant young Christopher begins his own super-sleuth story to discover who killed the dog and ends up finding out more than he bargained for.
  
  This one's been on my to-read list for a while, and I was more eager to read it after finishing off House Rules recently by Jodi Picoult. The Curious Incident (etc) itself was good and an interesting read. The thing that struck me the most between this book and Picoult's was how very different the first-person PoV narrative was. Picoult's character is very aware of his Asperger's and why and how it affects aspects of his life and those around him the way it does; yet his inner dialogue was for the most part precise, articulate, thought out and -- for lack of a better word -- "normal." Haddon's character, on the other hand, is a whirlwind of thoughts and stories and descriptions and feelings, served up by the way of simplified language, many run-on sentences and topic derailments. It made it a bit exhausting to follow what the character was thinking some times, but in a way I think that's the point. Different books with different takes, though both very interesting in separate ways.


• Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
  
  This one was a light read with lots of laughs. Think Bridget Jones but for teens. Basically it chronicles diary-style a school year in the life of fourteen-year-old Georgia Nicolson, and predictably all manner of teenage girl drama and hyjinks ensue. There were some pretty funny bits, mostly because I remembered thinking some of the same things and using the same ridiculously silly logic at points back in my teenage days; and also because the narrator is British and uses lots of fabulously amusing English slang, terms like "nuddy-pants" and "jimjams" which are automatically hilarious to anyone who is not British.


• Sex and the City 2
  
  Awful. :c It started off well enough for the first half hour or so and geared up by introducing the new life hurdles that were going to be addressed for each character -- and then they all promptly jumped on a plane to Abu Dhabi and the remaining hour and half of the whole movie was a giant boring vacation slide show. Look, here we are on a camel! Look, here we are sipping cocktails by the pool! Look, here we are singing karaoke! What? Plot, where did you go? Did you accidentally miss the plane to the Middle East that your leading ladies were on? *Story plot sits sadly alone, abandoned completely in airport waiting lounge* So very very disappointing. My sad face was very sad indeed.


• Splice
  
  I have no words for this movie. We all left the theatre exchanging equal WTF expressions of "Ngggwha...?" Seriously. Here's the movie: Scientist couple create crazy human/mult-animal hybrid creature. Man wants to kill it, woman wants to raise it like a adorable monster-like puppy. Man is weary, woman loves it as a daughter. Man loves it like a daughter, woman preforms crazy mutilating experiments on it in the name of science. Man mates with it, woman is horrified and hates man. Man confronts woman. Woman loves creature! Woman hates creature! Man hates creature! Man loves creature! Man and woman go to kill creature! Creature dies, man and woman love creature, cry over loss of creature! Creature rises from the dead and swaps gender, so now she's a he who kills everything! Man and woman hate creature! Creature rapes woman and kills man! Creature is killed and woman is left impregnated with creature's own incesty, double-hybrid spawn.
  
  Potential sequel...? I hope not. o_O

In other news, I'm a horrible kitty mother and I forgot that everything including pet stores close freakishly early on Saturdays and now I have no breakfast for Iroh tomorrow morning. Bugger. I fear much drama and kitty woe (of the loud, especially obnoxious variety) shall occur when he notices the complete lack of tasty kibble in his bowl. :x

...is not as good as I remember it.

I swear I remember it being really tasty when I used to bake it all the time years ago. Same recipe... new taste buds maybe? In any event, shamed by the idea of wastefully tossing an entire loaf into the garbage, I'm instead utilizing the left over buttercream frosting I made for a batch of cupcakes a couple of weeks ago and slathering a slice of unappetizing mocha loaf in confectionery sugar to make it remarkably more yummy. This is part of my effort in cutting back on the excess money I usually spend on fulfilling my daily chocolate fix, which reminds me that I should probably use some of my excessive, unemployed free time in the next couple of days to bake some more cookies before we go camping this weekend.

I can't wait to get in our first camping trip of the year~ Other than the fact that I really enjoy camping (which really in essence makes no sense if you know me at all) and we got the chance to do so very little of it last year, I'm looking forward to this weekend in particular as I feel it will be a nice "break" from what has begun to feel like my never ending period of sitting around on my unemployed ass. Job search. Send out resumes and cover letters. Hear nothing. This has become my average day and it's becoming discouraging. I realize there is in fact little difference from sitting around a campfire for hours doing nothing but reading and eating junk food, than sitting on my couch and just reading and eating; but I feel at the very least the switch in scenery might be a refreshing change. Plus it will force me to upgrade from pajamas to grubby camping clothes.

Speaking of clothes, my god nothing makes you want to shop more than being unemployed with no growing income. I blame all of the episodes of What Not to Wear I've had the chance to watch recently. Luckily I've been stockpiling a small amount of guilt-free clothing funds for a while now in the form of mall gift cards from my birthday as well as two Winners gift cards I have on order from cashing in our left over Save-On More points, and when they come in I'm going to do some very light, feel good splurging~ X3

In the mean time I still have our monthly Value Village excursions, which despite the looks I still get from some people for shopping at, I adore wholeheartedly. I have brought home some amazing, practically brand new finds from that place for pocket change. My recent Value Village highlights have been a really cute black pencil skirt that'll look saucy with a pair of heels (good for any interviews *crosses fingers* I may get), several very pretty tops, and a sweet blueish white plaid fedora that I think I sort of pull off but I'm still trying to figure out what to wear it with. All pieces that I had to thumb through tirelessly through racks of crap to find, but that I believe my little Stacy London shoulder angel is happy with.

It has just only occurred to me that what with the way my allergies have been spasming out on me lately, this upcoming weekend of fresh air and the great outdoors may not be as refreshing as I'm hoping it to be and may in fact kill me. How many extra strength Reactine can you take per day while fueled on a diet of nothing but campfire hot dogs and nacho cheese Doritos?

PS. I'm excited for so many movies being released over the next couple of months, holy cow. Iron Man 2, Sex and the City 2, Robin Hood, The Last Airbender... typically I don't even know what's ever playing at the box office. Very exciting, and I still have movie money stockpiled from Christmas to boot! *Glee!*

Thanks, April, for once more conspiring with Mother Nature to shit all over my birthday weekend. *Looks at snow and cries*

No luck yet on the job front. I'm hoping that before the end of the month I find something I would really like, because I don't want to have to resort to the alternative of getting an easy-to-find-but-I'll-hate job. ;_;

On the upside, I haven't had so much free time in years. With that in mind, I'm trying not to become a complete bum -- I'm making sure to still wake up at a reasonable time each morning (usually 8 a.m.) and every day I try to strike off some items from my ever expanding to-do list of stuff, because it keeps up the feeling that I'm being productive and not wasting all of this extra time I suddenly have. There are errands to run and appointments to make and chores around the house to do, among my copious baking of home made garlic cheese buns and slow but steady work through Mists of Avalon.

Since I have time to fill, I've also been working out a lot more again finally. I've gone for a couple of good walks during the afternoons and I've restarted my Wii EA Sports Active exercise regiment again four times a week. My latest one yesterday introduced the horrible, evil concept of crunches that practically killed me, my abdomen is super sore this morning; there's also another one where you have to reach your arms straight out behind you while stretching the resistance band is also really surprisingly hard. T-T And then it goes and makes me sprint and run right as I'm already already wheezing and cramping, and I end up flopping around and flailing there in agony screaming profanities at my television.

On the topic of my sporadic attempts to be healthier, we're probably going to start up a curling team in the fall. I went and watched Mason and a couple of the guys play in their first bonspiel the other week and, much like golf, it looked like a very Brenna-friendly sport. There's no running involved or scary objects being thrown at me. WIN. \o/

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.