Mood: Dreadful agonizing fear.

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

\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

Mood: Reclines in the cool, bug-free comfort of home.

As enjoyable a time that you always have on a camping trip, as relaxing, and stress free, and wonderfully lazy and refreshing as they are, there's always this little inner breath of relief let out when you walk back in the door of your house afterward. I love camping, but I forget sometimes how much more I love indoor plumbing. Especially spider-free indoor plumbing. And the complete lack of irrational fear of being eaten by bears on your way to pee during the night. And the added bonus of a cool basement in which you can finally escape the scorching heat -- a new plus that I particularly welcomed after sweating my proverbial balls off outside all weekend.

Despite my earlier worries that my cat would disown me when we returned home after leaving him on his own for the first time, Iroh was so relieved to see us walk in the door and was so constantly underfoot that I was more afraid of accidentally stepping on him as we unpacked. The one whole day he spent alone seemed to have left him a little distraught and under the impression that he'd been abandoned, and more importantly, that he'd never be fed again (as I'm sadly sure his love for his breakfasts and dinners takes priority over both Mason and I.) Knowing him, he probably greedily gobbled down all of the extra helpings I food rations we left for him before Saturday morning even came and then spent the next twenty-four hours moping that his food bowl wasn't being refilled. In comparison, Toby is a pro at weekends alone now, he just looks up when we come in the door and is all "Oh, you're back. Splendid. Dinner time yet?"

WARNING: HOUSE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

Season finale of House on Monday was FABULOUS! XD For the last two minutes of the episode I was frozen in a position of wide-eyed, arm-raised, squealy triumphant rapture. It was like waiting for Josh and Donna through seven years of West Wing all over again. I'm as giddy as a school girl for the next season and what I hope will include lots of hot Huddy snogging (and oh yeah, probably some little side plot to do with Thirteen beginning her slow and sad decline with Huntington's disease as ambiguously implied at the end of the show, but I think we know which is the more enticing storyline. Or perhaps I'm just a horrible person...) In any event, depending on what they have planned it may end up being a fitting place to end the series, in my opinion.

Mood: Crazy going slowly am I 6-5-4-3-2-1 switch!

...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!*

Mood: Mysteriously absent from her blog

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.)

Mood: Yum~ Just ate the best cheddar cheese perogies EVAH

While we were camping this past weekend we were given a copy of the Wabamun rules and warnings which included a note about wildlife to watch out for, emphasizing in particular "BEARS".

o_O

Well see, now we're just confused. Are these bears abnormal in some way? Are they actually ferocious man-eating bunnies that you like to pass off as bears? Or maybe park rangers dressed up in cheap bear suits in an effort to catch us off guard breaking the May Long liquor ban? They obviously pose a possible threat of some sort since you went out of your way to wield the PWR OF TEH CAPSLCK. Were the ambiguous air quotes really necessary? Now we can't tell whether it's a legitimate warning or an inside joke on behalf of the campground clerical staff that we're not in on. Or perhaps some idiots still do not understand that quotation marks ≠ emphasis.

I just finished My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and I think it's the closest I've ever come to actually crying reading a book. The ending was... just... *anguished little noise* For fear of spoiling the story (which apparently I very often do unintentionally -- sorry!) you should just take me at my word when I say the book is amazingly good and you should all go read it now.

I started watching the first few episodes of Batman Beyond and it manages to fill the little empty hole that BtAS left after finishing off the final season. It's much darker than the original series... Watching the first episode suddenly makes the whole scene in Revenge of the Joker where Terry descends down into the graffitied Batcave so much more gut wrenching. D: Also, I don't know whether it's just because he's crotchety and old in this series or not, but Bruce is much more of a dick sometimes in BB. "Bring back the suit." "No!" *Beep* "GAAAA!" ^^; (Oh Batman, disgruntled and wrinkly as you may be, we still love you.)

On a reverse note, does anyone else cringe at how often Batman says "chum" in the older comics? I realize the character has changed a lot since over the years, but it's very... un-Batsy compared to today's modern Batman who's much more broody and much less... bromancey. Look at him, he smiling too much! It's unnerving. Like ol' Brucie's trying to throw you off and at any moment he's going to whirl around and punch you in the face when you're not expecting it. (Or rape you if you're Robin.)

"Come on, chum. Let's go home... and 'go to bed'." *Grins and swings off into the sunset.*

Suuure.

Mood: Both happy and sad to be home again.

I really really did. And Ichiban. And beef noodle Hamburger Helper! Mmm... Don't get me wrong, the cruise ship had tons o' wonderful food (much more on that later) but at times I missed some of the do-it-yourself half-assed dinners we make at home. Call me a simple gal.

(I'm lazy and didn't want to re-write every bit of the cruise all over again, so for those who I emailed while away, you've already read most of what follows, except for the change of tense.)

Our cruise was awesome! The boat was FREAKING HUGE. D: Twelve or so decks, swimming pools, theaters, tons of restaurants and buffets, an arcade, shit loads of bars, a casino, shops, a mini basketball court, and... and... *sits there bewildered* It was a little jaw-dropping when you first walked on deck.

The only thing I would say I'd change for the next time if we ever go cruising would be to fork over the little extra money to get a room on the upper decks. Mason and I were on the very bottom left corner of the boat at the back, and while the room itself was pretty nice, you could hear all the ship engines and really feel the ship swaying at times that far down. Not too bad though.

My absolute favorite thing on the cruise was THE FOOD. OMG. *Drools* There was SO MUCH OF IT. And it was ALL FREE. X3 *Dies a little inside of happiness* Deck 9 of the ship was called the Lido Deck and it was pretty much just non-stop buffet -- every section you went to had a different sort of style or type of buffet (oriental, grille, grand buffet, deli, etc.) I spent a lot of time there. :B Chicken! Pizza! Ice cream! Chocolate cake! Pasta! They sort of changed the specifics of the buffets each day, but the basics were usually there all the time, and you could just go at pretty much any time of the day and grab whatever you wanted! *Happy flails!*

For dinner we usually went down for our nightly scheduled sitting at 8:15pm in the Platinum Dining Room restaurant which excitedly was ALSO FREE, only instead of buffet food it was like, amazing really expensive-like meals that I could never afford here at home. BUT IT WAS ALL FREEEEE! If I wanted three whole appetizers and two main courses, I just got them all! *Flails and sputters incoherently* It's a good thing I have a healthy metabolism or else I'd have come home a whale.

The day-by-day recap:

Friday was just a shit load of flying. Boooo. Though fortunately I took Gravol far enough in advance this time so I didn't feel sick at all for the flights. We got to Florida and got a hotel for the night. Very very tired.

Saturday we went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things, then went off to the port to get on the ship. We spent a good amount of time exploring the boat, it was all a little sit-there-with-your-mouth-gaping at first.

Sunday, our first full day on the ship, we stopped at port in Nassau, Bahamas. Unfortunately, with it being Sunday most of the city was completely shut down for the Sabbath or what not. We turned left when we should have turned right and everything was closed and empty and very depressing so I got a little sad as we just walked around doing nothing. Then we figured out that as long as we stuck to the couple roads that the cruise map had on it, all the touristy shops were still open so the day took a positive turn~ That evening was the first Elegant Night on the ship, so all the guests got all gussied up in their formal wear which was so much fun, and we went for fancy dinner~

Monday was our first full day at sea. It was also Mason's birthday *BIRTHDAY LOVE!* so we got him a fancy cake delivered to the restaurant when we went for dinner. It was soooo relaxing~ Our basic itinerary for the trip so far at this point had been 1) sleep late, 2) get up and wander up to the buffet for breakfast, 3) wander around, read, watch a movie in our room, 4) nap nap nap with some lunch in between, 5) lounge, 6) wander up for dinner and then either 7) see what shows or entertainment is going on, or 8) go back to the room for some Doctor Who and go to bed. It was wonderfully lazy~

Tuesday we arrived at port in St. Thomas. We went into town with Mason's parents and shopped for the morning. (I scored a beautiful knock off Coach bag that I luuurve.) X3 Getting from the dock down into the city, we took a boat/ferry thing with a piratey flair, and on the way back they went around some of the islands and gave us a bit of tour which was pretty cool. We went back around noon for lunch (buy food at port? You mean pay money? PFFT.) and then went back to our room to nap and steal a few minutes of free internet from Mr. Huffman's wireless card while we were still close enough to land to write a quick email home. After dinner we went down to the Amber Palace theater and watched a pretty cool magic show.

(My only real sour spot up to this point had been that this was the one day we let the steward in while we were out to the clean the room, and when I got back after shopping there was no towel animal waiting for me! ;_; I was so excited for my towel animal! Mason's parent's got one every day and Tuesday was the one day I was going to get one and I didn't! *Mope mope mope* In desperate towel-y hope, I let them clean the room again the next day though while we were at the next port. If they didn't leave me a towel animal again I thought I may do something rash. *Flails pathetically and cries*)

Wednesday was St. Maarten and as we got into port we started off the day with some bad news and some good news. The bad news -- the weather was stupidly windy so the water was super choppy and therefor cloudy and not fishy-viewing-friendly. Color me very sad. :c The good news turned out to be that they refunded our tickets and we proceeded to have probably the best day in port we had through the trip~ The weather, despite being windy, was gorgeous. The town was beautiful, the shopping was great~ (I bought myself a very pretty jewely/flowery necklace.) Then we literally came out of a dark alley between shops and suddenly OMG BEACH! White sand, turquoise water, splishy splishy splashy! XD Nothing completes a Caribbean cruise than a day of frolicking on a Caribbean beach~ When we got back we finished off the evening with a really good comedy and magic act on the ship.

(OOH OOH and I got not just one, but TWO towel animal menageries on Wednesday! One and two! *Glee glee glee* The towel animal gods decided to make up for their lack of love earlier.)

Thursday was the beginning of our final two days at sea before we get back into port. We lounged all day -- slept, ate, watched movies, read, and ventured into the casino. I brought ten dollars to gamble with, but I'm not sure how much I actually lost or gained as when I sat down at a slot machine there turned out to be $20 worth of credits which I wasted no time in cashing out and fleeing away with my (only somewhat stolen) bucket full of shiny jingly quarters~ ¬_¬ Muh ha. We also had another elegant dressy night for supper.

Friday was another day of lounging. I don't remember exactly what we did this day, but it was very similar to Thursday in the sense that it involved a copious amount of free food and lazing around. I got a giant piece of chocolate cake and watched the Sex and the City movie in the afternoon~ We also all went down to the casino again and I spent probably a full hour huddled around the quarter-tossing game with Mason's mom and went through about $80+ of her gambling money trying to help her get the wad of cash to fall off the little ledge. LOL so much fun, we drew quite a crowd with all of our shouting and hollering.

Saturday... we leave the boat. *Sad face* We had a full day just killing time in Florida since we were paranoid about the possibility of missing our flight home so we scheduled it for the next day, but it turned out we were off the boat and set to go by 10 a.m., so after a thwarted attempt at trying to change our tickets last minute to leave that afternoon, Mason's parents used some of their timeshare points and booked us into a fancy resort suite for the one night. I spent a good couple of hours catching up on my much-missed interwebs (the resort BLOCKED Facebook though. What? Seriously? WTF.) and watched the last half of Titanic on TV (probably a good thing I watched it after the cruise and not before.)

And finally Sunday freakishly-early-in-the-bloody-morning we finally flew home. It was a very tiring and somewhat cranky day, so I was pretty happy to walk into my apartment. Not so happy to be greeted by the cold and snow, however. It's a pretty raw deal to leave for the Caribbean only to find out that the weather back at home is a balmy +7, and then have it plunge back to freezing when you walk off the plane back in Edmonton. I didn't bring my coat either. It was miserable scamper back through the parking lot with all our heavy bags.

As fun and awesome as the trip was and as sad to not have free food (paying for food sucks!) and warm weather anymore, I'm still always glad to go back home. I huggled my bunny who I missed very much *HEARTS* (millions of love-filled thanks to Chelle, Nickie, and Brock who took care of Toby while I was gone!) and mooned over my lovely computer and fast non-crashy non-Facebook-blocking internet.

Pictures to be posted on Facebook hopefully soon!

*Munches on her beloved Save-on-Foods crinkle fries and Swiss Chalet sauce* *JOYGASM* X3