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!

Awesome news!

It's my day off tomorrow!  *Hand flail*  Sorry to everyone who felt like that piece of awesome news was anti-climactic, but for me it really is very exciting after working for six days, especially when today was all sorts of annoying at The Job.  *Vexed Brenna is vexed.*  Mason and I went out to dinner at Bonanza though when I got home from work and all of the tasty food in my belly was a fabulous cure for all of that horrible vexation.

So yes, Mondays are my free day so tomorrow I'm going to lay around my house in my pjs like a bum for the morning before heading off in the afternoon to a) volunteer at the library!, and b) go to yoga!  WHAAAAAT, you're saying?  Brenna is willingly engaging in a class that involves physical exercise?  It is my newest attempt at trying to steer myself away from an untimely end at the hands of diabetes, heart disease, or other gruesome fates people meet when they aren't active enough.  :P  I realize that yoga isn't on the same level at all as going to the gym five days a week or playing sports, but give me a little credit here at least.

I'm actually enjoying the experience though, I find yoga so far to be very relaxing (though surprisingly sweaty.)  Because my right wrist will forever be a tad gimpy from when I broke it this past winter I can't always do all of the positions where weight is put on the hands unfortunately, but the instructors have given me some good workarounds for those instances.  I'm determined to continue going to classes twice a week for at least the two months my Groupon deal entitles me to, and then after that it will depend on my money situation.  I even bought a yoga mat~!  It is pink and has flowers and now I won't have to use the sweaty second-hand rental mats, plus carrying it will make me look hardcore.

Oh god, our house is so dirty.  So so dirty.  >_<  Another result of being employed again, the dishes in the sink tend to pile up... for like, an entire week.  (Also on the to-do list tomorrow, before volunteering and yoga, though perhaps after laying around in pjs.)  We have officially run out of all plates, utensils, and appropriately sized tupperware.  We are horrible slobs.  When I scrounge around in the mountainous pile of dishes capsizing over in our sink for a half-decently clean fork to eat with, I can even feel the cat staring at me shamefully.

My Miche Bag arrived today!  XD  (I never expected the delivery man to arrive on a Sunday, but he must have known how excited I was for my package and made a special trip out on his day off just for me, what a guy.  That's service for you.)

I love my new pretty purse(s)!  It's just a tad larger than the purse I carry now, so it easily holds all of my stuff plus a book (or two) and I could probably even fit a laptop in if I needed to.  And it's so simple to change the skin on!  It's like "hey, I think I'd like to use my brown purse today, NO PROBLEM!" *Unclasp!  Pull off first skin!  Slip on second skin!  Clasp!  BAM BAM BAM!  Done!*

Never again will I have to dump the entire contents of my purse out to transfer it all over to a different bag!  Gone are the dark days!  I have evolved to a new state of superior pursedom! *Bright shimmery light falls down on Brenna and her purse from on high*

In other news, during a girly hanging out evening at Nickie's last night, we embarked on a hilariously fail-filled attempt at making paper flowers for the wedding ceremony.  The results were not exactly what I envisioned, and served to prove that I am not very adept at anything crafty.  =_=;  Also, OMG ONLY 20 DAYS TO GO!

In all of the crazed wedding prep hubbub, I've sort of forgotten that my birthday is also coming up right away.  I had a lengthy debate with Mason a few nights back about how old I was turning this year; me insisting I was turning 27 and he quite confident that no, I would be turning 26.  As it turns out, apparently I don't even know my own age.  I am, in fact, only 25 -- not 26 as I've steadfastly believed all this time.  This realization is extremely discontenting.  I've been living a horrible filthy lie for the past year and I didn't even know it!  D:  *Awash in a traumatizing sea of sudden insecurity and double-guessing of oneself*

On the flip side, you know what the perfect present a man could get his soon-to-be 27 26 year-old confused wife?  That's right, a Miche bag! *Glee!*  I decided on the bigger "max" size bag, because I'm always cramming extra stuff in my purse, not to mention the occasional giant hardcover book.  Selecting my choice of two shells was hard, there's a lot of really nice ones, but I finally settled on the "Allison" and "Lauren" styles:

So pretty! Plus you can find pretty good deals on second-hand shells on eBay, so that'll be the next place I hit up next time I'd like to buy a new one.  Very excited for my shiny new bag(s) to arrive in approximately 5 - 10 business days~  :3

In book related news, here's the lowdown on my reads over the past couple of weeks:

• Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
  A once-successful writer, Henry, living in a foreign city receives an envelope one day among his usual fan mail, containing a note asking for help and a single scene from a play featuring two characters named Beatrice and Virgil.  He decides to deliver his response to the letter in person and finds himself in a taxidermist's shop.  There he meets the eldery, mysterious owner who introduces him to the two characters from his play -- a stuffed donkey and howler monkey, and Henry's life changes forever.  *Du du DUUUUUUH*  (Can you tell I totally rip these summaries off from other sources at times?  I'm so lazy.)  I was really excited to hear that Yann Martel had written a new book, as his second novel, Life of Pi, is one of my all time faves.  For whatever reason this new book hasn't been very good reviews on Goodreads, but I liked it myself.  Not amazing, but enjoyable.  I think I actually appreciated it more than others because I'd accidentally spoiled the ending for myself beforehand so I was reading into all of the abstract stuff knowing what most of it meant before the realization is supposed to come at the end.  3/5
  
  BTW, looks like a movie adaptation of Life of Pi is finally in the works.  Like all great books I love that get turned into movies, I'm excited but apprehensive about this news.  Please do the book justice!

• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
  The first novel in a trilogy, this steampunk-ish take on some of the events surrounding WWI splits its time between two main characters -- Aleksandar Ferdinand, fugitive prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and Deryn Sharp, a daring British airwoman disguised as a boy.  The book pits the mechanical might of mecha-like "clankers" against fabricated splices of specially-engineered "beasties" in the place of the usual WWI war machines (hence the steampunk slant.)  The story was okay, slow to start off with (especially Alek's storyline, which I found dull compared to Deryn's) but it did pick up as the book went on.  To be honest I think the biggest turn off for me in this book was simply the steampunk theme itself, I'm just not a huge fan of the genre in general.  I also have some serious issues with the disturbing way the British forces apply the use of the spliced creatures they create...  Hurling bats into propeller blades as a weapon...?  Engineering giant flying whales with pipes and airship engines molded into it's gut...?  The creep factor is high here, folks.  I hope the WWI equivalent of PETA lays some much-needed smack down in the sequel.  3/5

• Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
  I probably shouldn't even be talking about this one yet since it's our most recent book club assignment and we haven't had our meet up yet, but oh well; I'll just rant about it a second time in much greater detail at our next meeting.  If that wasn't a hint for you, no, I didn't enjoy this book very much at all.  It takes place in a high-tech futuristic version of Cape Town, South Africa, following around a couple different groups of all equally annoying, obnoxious, hipster-like central characters who I spent most of my time just wanting to smack across the face.  It's unfortunate that the characters were all so unlikable because the story concept itself could have been pretty interesting otherwise, if not for the constant feeling like it was being narrated by four punk teenagers from Nexopia.  *Rips at hair*  2/5

While I was by the library today I picked up a few new books, the first one of which I just started this afternoon and isn't actually that new for me at all.  Beauty is a YA retelling of the classic Beauty and the Beast tale that I absolutely loved when I was in Junior High.  I think I checked it out from our school library three different times, and I just couldn't resist picking myself up a copy today and seeing if it was as good as I remember it being.  Turns out -- it is!  :D  I'm really enjoying reading through it again, and I think I may need to track myself down a copy of it to buy permanently for my own bookshelf~

Someone from on high atop the cosmic plain of germy doom has seen fit to ladle me up a helpful heaping of sickness this past week.  For the past four days I've been stumbling around the house in my pajamas in a zombie-like (and extremely sexy) state of non-stop sneezing, coughing, achy, shivering dizziness.  I've been popping Cold FX and the occasional Advil Cold & Sinus to make me coherent just long enough to finish up some contract work I had to do this weekend, but other than that I've been fairly horizontal.  My throat feels like a particularly vicious cat has clawed its way up out of it and taken a good chunk of my vocal cords along with it, and I've spent most of the last 96 hours curled up in a nest of blankets under the mistaken delusion that if I sleep long enough this cold bug will just get bored and leave me alone and find a different hapless victim.  (No luck so far with that.)

To make matters worse I think I've unintentionally passed my havoc-wreaking germs to Mason, a feat neither of us can comprehend, since it's been a long-standing ritual in our house that Mason refuses to come anywhere near me, much less touch me with a ten-foot pole when I'm sick with anything for fear of catching it.  Though personally I blame this plague on him in the first place -- he was the one that was sick a couple weeks ago.  His residual ninja-like germs must have been hiding somewhere in the house all this time, biding their time until they could let loose with their terror once more; and now the two of us will be forever cursed to pass them back and forth between one another again and again until we both finally succumb to sicky death and are buried side-by-side in matching antibacterial face masks; or until wild dogs break into the house while we are too weak to fend them off and are found by the authorities days later nibbling on the remains of our pale, pasty toes.  (Don't trust Iroh and Toby either -- their love only goes as far as their bellies.  Once they realized regular meals were no longer forthcoming, don't think they wouldn't join the dogs in picking the clammy flesh from our bones!)

I'm crossing my fingers that the worst is over and hoping tomorrow will finally mark a turn for the better.  I suppose it's a small blessing that we're both getting the whole cold thing done with and out of our systems now and not right before the wedding.  *Knock on wood*  Excuse me while I go swallow more drugs now and crash in my bed once again, but not before I board up all of the doors and windows against any roaming packs of savage canines.  ...And lock the cat and rabbit up in the bathroom.  ...Just as a precaution.  *Iroh and Toby exchange shifty glances.*

Mood: A little less pathetic.

Well, sort of. Kinda. Not really.

My cast came off a couple of weeks ago, so I'm significantly less gimpy than I was last time I posted, but not 100% gimp free yet. While it's great that I can finally do things like write and type properly again, and use two hands for tasks like washing dishes and cooking, my wrist still has a ways to go. I have about half the movement and strength in my right wrist as I used to so it can only do so much still, and some times I accidentally put too much weight on it or jar it in some awkward way and that causes all kinds of not pleasant sensations. Currently I'm going to physio twice a week and it's definitely helped, but I was hoping to have had better progress by now. We'll see how it goes.

So we're half way through January now and I'm starting to take the time to do yet another revision of my resume and cover letter to format it for non-library related inquiries. These past months have been incredibly disappointing on the library job front. I suppose I was naive to think that it would be easy to eventually get in as an entry level page, but I never thought it would be this discouraging. Where I used to be optimistic and excited any time I applied for a new position, I'm now frustrated and anxious, and it's hard to keep a positive attitude now while I'm expanding my search into other areas and fields of work once more. Depending on our financial situation after the wedding, I may need to bite the bullet and enroll in some more schooling. The priority now though is to find something at least temporary until then.

On a more upbeat note, I was thrilled to read last week that the family-owned Paradise Pets store in St. Albert has taken a giant leap forward and made the decision to stop selling dogs and cats from breeders. Instead they're partnering with various rescue organizations in the Edmonton area to use their storefront to adopt out animals in need. It is such a positive step in the right direction and I'm immensely proud of them for taking the initiative to do so. I can only hope that some of the bigger pet store chains will see the value in this move and make the same change. It's positive media attention for the pet stores, it helps ease the burden of the rescue organizations, and it makes healthy adoptable animals more accessible and promoted to prospective pet owners. Everyone wins. (Well, except the breeders but I don't much care about them.)

Also, I've never been so excited for movie documentaries! National Geographic's The Last Lions is coming out in February and it looks beautiful. PLUS, it's narrated by Jeremy Irons! My brain just exploded with awesome! XD In addition to National Geographic's production, there's also Kevin Richardson's project, White Lion: Love is a Journey I want to see; as well as DisneyNature's African Cats. It's a good year for lions~