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

</melodrama>

Seriously though?  The combination right now of school, homework, and working part-time is all kinds of unpleasant.

I spend my entire day walking around in a constant state of fretful anxiety, worrying and strategizing on how I'm going to get the current class assignment finished and how little time there is to finish all of the rest of the assignments following afterward.  It's not that I'm doing bad in my classes -- I am, in fact, doing pleasantly well grade-wise -- but trying to stay on top of my course load and maintain my marks while at the same time not completely neglect the rest of my life is becoming... problematic.  I think we can all agree that I hit an especially low point last week which involved me having a mini meltdown while cleaning the kitchen at 10 p.m.  Let me explain: in our house, the chores are split up and one of my jobs is washing the dishes.  It's pretty safe to say that for the past two months since I started school, the dishes have not been clean.

"Why can't I do the dishes?!" *Sob sob sob* "Why can't I even keep on top of something *sob sob* as simple as keeping the kitchen clean?!" *Sob hiccup sob*

True story.  Somewhat pathetic (and hilarious in hindsight,) but true.

I know I'm not the only one in my class suffering from a severe case of November burnout, and it's a little bittersweet to think that there's only nine days until I escape for a much-needed week away in the Caribbean.  On the one side, YAY VACATION YAY OMGINEEDTHISSOBAD.  On the other side, I now have even more assignments I need to get finished before next Thursday to make up for the time I'll be away.  As it stands, I will already be bringing a backpack full of school work with me on the ship.  Nothing dampens a day at port in the Bahamas like spending it in your stateroom doing homework.  :P

All right, no more whining now.  Suck it up, princess.  *Brushes the angst off her clothes*

In other somewhat belated news, Toby finally has his glass door!  It's fantastic.  Toby once again gets to see what's going on outside his room, we get some natural light in our hallway again, and Iroh gets hours of endless entertainment and frustration.  Everyone wins.

It is, at times, hard to physically pry the cat away from this spot now.

Sorry for the tardiness in honeymoon blog posting, the return to real life has sort of gotten in the way of my blogging.  *Sad face*  In any event, quick honeymoon cruise recap!

• Friday, May 13th: We discover that our flight leaves six hours earlier than we originally thought it did!  Panic!  Frantic running around!  (Apologies to Mike who housesat for us while we were away, even though I didn't end up having time to clean as much as I wanted to or tidy the bunny room.)  We spend most of the day sitting in airports and airplanes and more airports and airplanes.  Then when we arrived in Miami we ended up being evacuated from the airport because of a bomb scare.  Collapsing into bed that night was the best thing ever.
• Saturday, May 14th: Cruise time!  Met up with the rest of the gang to taxi it down to the port and board the fantastic Carnival Liberty!  *Flash flash sparkle sparkle*  We spent most of remainder of the day exploring the ship and reacquainting ourselves with the smorgasbord of free buffet food that we would be gorging ourselves with for the duration of the trip.
• Sunday, May 15th: Our first port, Half Moon Cay.  The epitome of classic white beach and blue water Caribbean island paradise.  The island is actually owned by Carnival, so literally the only people there were the people from our cruise ship which was cool.  Copious amounts of beach laying, ocean frolicking, and squealing was had -- the squealing a direct result from our first excursion, swimming with stingrays!  OMG.  They're huge!  And awesome!  And terrifying!  Every time one brushed my leg or swam underneath me I squealed with exhiliarating fear into my snorkel mask which sounded a little like "*Muffled scream* *Bubble bubble bubble*".
• Monday, May 16th: Sea day.  As much as I love days at port and going on excursions, I really like the days at sea.  So relaxing.  I spent the entire day sleeping, and reading, and eating, and sleeping and eating some more.  Also, mini golf!  FYI, trying to mini golf on the top of a ship in the middle of the ocean in the ripping wind is very difficult.
• Tuesday, May 17th: St. Thomas.  Shopping, yay!  I scored a new fake Prada purse (pretteh!) that I love from the flea market.  Then in the afternoon we went snuba-ing -- basically like diving but with a snorkel mask attached to a long air hose.  Very cool, except I didn't have enough weight in my belt to actually sink at all, so our very nice diving guide pulled me down by the hand and pretty much dragged me along the bottom of the bay bed.  Wait, did I say nice diving guide?  I meant horribly mean and cruel!  He scared the crap out of me with a fake shark set up along the bottom of the water that I had been convinced earlier was very real.  Yes, I'm just that gullible some times.  =_=;
• Wednesday, May 18th: San Juan.  We went on a tour excursion of the rainforest, which was actually much more enjoyable than I thought it would be.  It's gorgeous up there -- super hot, but very pretty.  Surprisingly little to no bugs either, apparently the altitude and temperature is too high for them...?  (Obviously we need to relocate Edmonton to the top of a mountain so I can stop worrying about spiders and bees.)  I have to admit that despite the good time I had, my respect for the people of San Juan went down a few points when our tour guide proudly proclaimed that the number one sport on the island is cock fighting.  Seriously?  That's sick.  Dear San Juanians: please take up an actual sport like soccer or baseball that doesn't entertain the masses at the expense of innocent animals.  :P
• Thursday, May 19th: Grand Turk.  My first time kayaking!  It wasn't as difficult as everyone made it sound, it wasn't until the last stretch on our way back to the dock that my arms started to feel the strain of it, and mostly just in my shoulders.  It was a lot of fun actually, and the kayak had a plexiglass bottom so we could watch all of the little jellyfish swim amid the reeds below the boat.  The only part I could have done without was when the guide dragged us all out of the boats and up onto a sandy, incredibly hot hill to talk endlessly about the tress and the shrubs and the eco-whatnot.  Oh god, the sun burn!  D:  More kayaking, less eco safari!  My legs were a hideously mottled red finger painting of PAIN.
• Friday, May 20th: Sea day.  More sleeping!  More reading!  More eating!  (I had to make the eating especially count this day as it was our last day on the ship and my last chance to gorge.  Oh food, I miss you so much!)  We also spent some time down at the casino and Mason introduced me to a game even better than slot machines -- video poker!  Well sort of, you're not really playing against any other people or even virtual players, but it's horribly addicting and we played Jacks or Better for an hour and a half and won $12.  :3  *Cackles maniacally over their big twelve dollar payout while actual serious gamblers look down on them with disdain.*
• Saturday, May 21st: Arrive back in Miami and must debark the ship and make the long flight back home.  *Epic sad face*

Coming back home after a vacation is always bitter sweet.  I miss the cruise ship terribly and its maid service and towel animals and balconies over the ocean and wonderful amount of free already-prepared food.  But on the other hand, I was glad to get home to Iroh and Toby (though I doubt they missed us very much once they realized that Mike now provided their food for them.  How easily they forget me.)  I was also relieved to finally have taps running cold water.  I don't know why, but the staterooms on the cruise ship have no cold running water.  The best you could ever get was sort of a luke warm temperature, it drove me nuts.  At times I was tempted to steal ice and cold drinking water from the lido deck buffet just to brush my teeth.

So yes, it's back to real life now.  *Sigh*  This is amplified by the fact that I have finally, after more than a year of freedom, returned to working full time.  Yes, you read correctly.  Brenna is no longer an unemployed bum (sadly, might I add.)  I started work at (insert name of major automotive/hardware/houseware department store here, which I will thus refer to as "The Job" so as to avoid any potential complications if my blog is Googled) this past week -- it's not glamourous by any stretch of the imagination and I'm not wild about being in the land of retail again, but it's a job and it's paying me money and it means I can stop doing the web contract work that I loathe so much.  I've been hired on as sort of a multi-department monkey -- I help with stocking on the floor, and I'm being trained as a cashier next week, and I also do morning deposits some times and will eventually be trained for customer service.

So far deposits are my favorite thing to do, mostly because it's quiet, solitary work off in the cash office for the whole of the morning, away from the noise of the store and all of the customers.  My biggest gripe so far, apart from the fact that it's shift work and I forgot how much I hate not having a steady weekly schedule followed by a customary two-day weekend, is the complete lack of any sort of training I've received so far.  I was fully trained for the deposit part of my job, but as far as my afternoons so far spent entirely out on the floor stocking and helping customers, I've received absolutely ZERO training.  I mean it, nothing. I was given a price gun and assigned a pallet of stock and that's it. It's been five days and I still don't know the procedure (if there even is any) for locating or dropping off stock in the warehouse, I get customers coming up to me every five minutes asking me questions that I don't even know the most basic answers to, and I spend most of my time bumbling around trying to find other employees who can answer questions for me and the customers I'm trying to help and just generally looking and feeling like an idiot.  I've never worked somewhere where I feel so completely frustrated and unprepared.  Will someone please instruct me on how to do my job?

I miss the cruise ship.  :c

It's official!  I'm an old married woman now!  \o/

What a week.  Epic wedding was epic!  The final seven days ramping up to the big day were full of running and lists and phone calls and driving and printing and cutting and folding and flailing and just a general boat load of frantic insanity.

Thankfully, said insanity was interspersed with evenings of awesome such as my stagette party.  Much love and thanks to my wonderful posse of bridesmaids that orchestrated the epic WEM photo scavenger hunt filled with hilarious bead games, 18" dildos, escalators, funny hats, edible panties, and many cupcakes~  XD  Also, singing!  Amid an evening filled with ringing renditions of "Soft Kitty", Nancy proved her epic improv prowess when she fearlessly went up to the stage during the open mic night at the pub and made a song up off the top of her head, which was frankly freaking amazing IMO and can be heard here on her YouTube channel.  I've never been serenaded before!  :3

For me, the wedding sort of officially started on Friday, since the entire day from when we woke up to when we went to sleep was pretty much devoted to final prep.  We picked up linens, practiced a ceremony walk through at the Citadel, followed by the rehearsal dinner and then the setting up and decoration of the reception hall in the evening, and finally us ladies proceeded to all go back to my parents house and wrap 400 sugared Timbit favors.  I had meant to write a quick entry here the night before the wedding, a "last single girl blog post" sort of deal, but I just didn't have time :P -- instead I crashed into bed and had a surprisingly good sleep considering how stressed I had started out earlier that day.

The morning of the wedding was more or less pretty relaxing.  Coleen and I swung by Timmies for a sausage-egg-muffin breakfast of champions before our hair appointment, and all went according to plan other than my elaborate little hair curlies went a little long (I loved my hair!  :3  I was so sad the next day when I had to shower and wash away all the beautiful bouncy curls.  I should really buy myself a hair curler and learn how to do it myself.) which cut down time for the makeup session and thus made us sort of frantically hurl myself into my dress to get out the door in time.  ^^;

It's strange, because I wasn't nervous at all leading up to the wedding or when I woke up that morning.  Excited, but not particularly nervous.  It wasn't until my sister began lacing up my dress that I began to get the stomach butterflies; then sitting in the car as we drove to the Citadel, I started feeling more nervous.  (BTW, climbing in and out of a van in a very form fitting mermaid skirt?  Not easy!)  By the time I was standing with my dad behind the curtain, the music playing while we waited to walk down the aisle, I think I looked like I was close to hyperventilating, leaving my father no choice but to whip out the big gun, our magic family word, to make me forget my nerves and break out laughing as we were walking out.  (I was totally all "AHHHHH AHHHHH AHHHHH!" and my dad was sort of *sweatdrop* but then he was all "BANANA!" and I LOLed.  True story.)

My brother Sean acted as our officiant and did a spectacular job (much love and hugs, Seanathan!), though admittedly I don't really have a clear memory of most of the ceremony because I was so busy trying to remember to breathe.  I remember my mom crying during the rose ceremony, and I remember feeling so worried I would jumble my words and fail-whale up the vows (I didn't though!  Go Team Me!), and I remember Mason looking smoking hot in his very sexy, Bond-like tux~  Seriously yummy. X3  I'm looking forward to seeing the video of the ceremony from start to finish.

(As for my dress, it was gorgeous, but was intent on trying to kill me before the day was out.  The bodice had these bones running vertically up the torso that dug right in under my breast bone that was particularly uncomfortable when I sat down.  We ended up loosening the corset a few times which helped, but it was still easier to just stand than sit at all.  It was worth it though!  I loved my dress despite its apparent hatred of me.)

Between the ceremony and reception was: a) fancy limos! b) photographs! c) ice cream!  Awesome sauce.  We managed to make it to all three of our picture locations, and the photographers from Scade were great.  They took soooooo many pictures, I'm so excited to see them!  *Perches on edge of seat waiting for previews to be posted on the Scade blog*

And then the reception!  XD  It was so perfect!  The hall looked fantastic, the fully Brenna-approved buffet was delicious, and the photo booth was the cherry on the fabulous wedding reception cake!  (Only not literally, since we had cupcakes, and the cake tier we did have was in fact pineapple and coconut and not at all in any way cherry, but still tasty.)  But yes, the photo booth seemed to be a hit -- almost everyone got some snapshots done and some guests really went to town fancying up their guestbook page.  It was so worth the extra investment.  It really made the guestbook unique.  Mason and I were flipping through it the following day and there's some especially hilarious photos and entries.  Eventually I'll try to get around to scanning some and post them up.

Such a great day!  (Exhausting, but awesome.)  I couldn't even be bothered to try and pull out the hundred or so pins holding my hair up when we got home that night, I was so tired -- I just slept with them in and woke up the next morning in a what I'm sure many would call a very sexy state of dishevelment.  (On the bright side, I will never have to buy another bobby pin again ever, I'm set with a life time supply.)

Love, hugs, and hair ruffles to all of our friends and family who came out to celebrate with us on Saturday and helped make the day as fabulous and memorable as it was!  (Also thanks to everyone who's sending me their pictures from the day, there's some great shots, some of which I've used on this post.)  I would give you all extra cupcakes in thanks, but let's face it, I'm a big greedy cupcake hoarder and will probably stuff my face full of all of the left overs.  I have already eaten two today.  *OM NOM NOM NOM*

Next up... honeymoon cruise!  OMG only four more days!  *Glee*

Mood: Peckish. Craving some sort of foodstuff.

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...?

Mood: Content

Survived camping in bear country, hurrah! \o/ Next week I'm off again for our biennial Road Trip of Sisterly Win to visit equally awesome Brother of Awesome and Sister-In-Law of Rad over in B.C. This involves our traditional 12 hour drive through the mountains, the same ones I just returned from this past weekend; the only difference being that if we encounter bears, I will already be safely in our car traveling at 130 km/h on the highway. Ha HA! How do ya like them apples, bears?! *Smug*

Still no interviews. *Sad face* In the mean time I've begun taking on contract work again to at least bring in some sort of income aside from my EI. Last week through word of mouth I managed to pick up a couple new web projects, so that's keeping me nice and busy during the day when I was formerly just laying around watching episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl and napping.

In addition to contract work, I've started volunteering at the St. Albert Public Library! :3 (I've also put in an application at the EPL, but they haven't contacted me back yet.) It's great because it'll finally give me a little experience to put on my sad, library-lacking resume; plus, I'm really enjoying it. The people there are super nice and I find the shelving work very relaxing. They have me for a couple evening hours each week, though I'm hoping that I can eventually increase my hours -- then the next time they have a part-time page position open for hire they'll be all "Hey, that Brenna girl sure is a hard-working, enthusiastic volunteer! She's just the lady we're looking for, yes sir!" and BAM! Hired. That's my brilliant plan anyhow.

Over the past week, Mason and I have paid a couple of trips to various home hardware stores in an attempt to start planning out a tentative budget to remodel our very sad, ugly kitchen. No huge construction renos or anything, mostly just aesthetics -- painting the cupboards, new countertops, hardware, light fixtures, getting rid of ugly apple-print drapes, maybe a fancy shmancy new faucet~ I would love a new dishwasher as well (because it's getting to the point that our cat could lick clean our plates and utensils better than this silly machine) but that's a whole different time and budget all together. We've also picked out some paint swatches and have wonderful plans for when we eventually want to spruce up the upstairs walls. Very excited. (For the work to be finally done and finished, that is -- I am not looking forward to the actual physical labor of remodeling at all.)

FYI, the sexy Old Spice guy has managed to somehow defy the laws of awesome and become EVEN MORE AWESOME. They're putting out new spots (some of which that are quite hilarious) on their YouTube channel in which he personally responds to comments and questions from fans. This man is so awesome, in fact, that I have added him to my Hug Bucket. I bet hugging him would be like hugging every awesome person in the world at the same time, while listening to Journey, while standing in the the most beautiful sunny and grassy panorama, among the grand scenic backdrop of looming mountains made entirely of chocolate, immediately after being rescued single-handedly from a hoard of ravenous bears. Ooh. Not to mention my Hug Bucket would forever carry the wonderfully manly fragrance of Old Spice scented body wash.