The past week, and today specifically, has been extra awesome:

• I finished my last exam today, officially marking the successful end of my first year of school!  AWESOME.
• I received my rocking new retro Batman tee from ThinkGeek today in the mail!  AWESOME.
• I'm going to the dentist on Thursday to have a root canal done!  AWESOME.  Not awesome.  Not awesome at all.  }:[  (But don't worry, the next two items make up for any dentist-related lack of awesomeness.)
• I got an email from Grant MacEwan saying that I'm being awarded a $1,000 scholarship for academic excellence!  AWESOME FREE MONEY IS AWESOME.
• I also received a call from my hometown library where I currently work as a page -- and recently applied for a higher-level temp position as a library assistant -- and I got the job!  ABSOLUTELY.  100%.  AWESOME.

I realize this post has an obnoxious over abundance of all-caps, but I am of the opinion that the caps are justified in this case (except, obviously, in the instance of the root canal.)  I am also aware that for anyone reading this, the word "awesome" has most likely lost all semblance of meaning -- for that, I apologize.  I do not, however, apologize or feel shame at all for the ridiculous and incredibly undignified happy dance I'm performing in my chair right now.

Shine on, April.  Shine on.

Sorry for the long absence.  I'm not what really happened to March, it sort of just slipped in and then slipped right back out again like very sneaky, early spring ninja with nothing much of note to show for it other than my SHINY NEW iMAC OMG!  Yes, for anyone who has some how missed my fangirlish squeeing last month, I finally bit the bullet and retired my faithful old 2006 computer and its perpetual spinny beach ball of doom for the newest sleek model, complete with OS X Lion *rawr*.  It's fantastic to once again be able to run more than one program at the same time without my computer sputtering and coughing and wheezing like a 102-year-old man with asthma.

*Pats computer adoringly and spoils it with treats when no one is looking -- which really consists of force feeding Ghirardelli chocolates into its super drive while making disgusting cooing noises at it, and then a month later looking perplexed and distraught when her new computer dies on her without warning and only the curious, smoking smell of burning chocolate trailing from the CD slot.*

So April is here and with it promises a month full of exciting shinies~  Not only does it herald:

1. the end of my first year of school (huzzuh!  Rejoice!  I get my life back!  ...Or at least I do for a couple of weeks before I start my two online spring classes... =_=;)
2. my birthday (once again I am at a complete loss with remembering how old I'm turning unless I take the time to actually do the math, so I'm just going to refer to it as my 20-something birthday)

but it also marks...

3. the start of the second season of Game of Thrones!  *Squee squee squee!*  I MUST FIND A TEAM TYRION SHIRT.
4. the premiere of the new Avatar series, Legend of Korra!  *Even more fangirly squee-age!*
5. the official (and long-awaited) Guild Wars 2 pre-order event (which just happens to fall on the same day as my birthday.  You can bet that the avid gamers in my life are far more excited for April 10th to arrive for this reason alone than they are for my birthday.)

And oh, I'm also going on a fabulous road trip this month to the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo!  Oh yeah, and did I mention that James Marsters and Patrick Stewart are going to be there?  And Stan Lee?  And Adam West?  And Wil Wheaton?  And hey, the rest of the entire Star Trek: Generations main cast (which conveniently is also half of the cast from Disney's Gargoyles, which I'm an even bigger fan of than Star Trek.)  This is going to be fabulously NERD-TACULAR.  :B

While we're down there we're going to visit the Calgary Zoo too, which I'm also excited about because I've heard it's awesome and I've never had the chance to go.  It seems like every time anyone I know plans a Calgary Zoo day trip, I'm always left behind.  (This makes Brenna a sad panda. A sad, adorable RED PANDA which I will see AT THE ZOO.)

*Glee!*

Also, for anyone who's the least bit interested, I've added a new Twitter account (in addition to my personal one) that will be mostly centered around library and book/reading-related stuff that I find around the web and think is interesting.  I've set up an adjoining Tumblr account along the same theme.  FOLLOW ME AND LEARN LIBRARY-RELATED THINGS.  Or just laugh at amusing items like this.  That's cool too.

What follows is a dream I had a couple of weeks ago, co-starring my sister and a certain clinically insane Batman villain.

Okay, so my sister and I are highly skilled, top secret agents for some random, un-specified government organization.  I know we were highly skilled and top secret because we were both wearing snazzy black suits and sunglasses, and everyone knows that's the mark of a very highly skilled and top secret agents.  Unfortunately, I don't think we had any sort of top secret code names, so for the purposes of this blog post I will call us Agent Chelle and Agent Brenna.

So we're given the very dangerous but important assignment of infiltrating the hideout of the infamous Joker, the clown prince of crime, though for what purposes I couldn't tell you.  I remember there being a distinct air of anxiety surrounding our mission, due to not only the common sense knowledge that getting on the bad side of the Joker in any way is extremely hazardous for your health, but also the extra caution and care needed on our parts to ensure that Agent Chelle was never spotted by J or his goons or else he'd recognize her (for reasons unknown to me -- my dream self is obviously not high enough in the secret dream agent pecking order for the people in charge to tell me anything.)  In any event, we were dropped off in the middle of a suburban street, and due to our extra caution to remain hidden we spent a lot of time hiding behind giant piles of plowed snow along the side of the road.  I don't believe either of us were wearing sensible enough shoes to be doing so, either.

So anyway, in that unexplainably convenient way dreams have of moving you seamlessly from one scene to another, we magically go from snow dune diving outside to suddenly successfully having snuck into the Joker's factory-type lair -- we also seem to have superb timing, as Mr. J is just arriving back from some nefarious criminal doings.  We're hiding around the corner of a wall as he walks in, flanked with henchmen, but (here comes the plot twist!) for some reason beyond my understanding (probably because my brain is on crack... or in the throes of crack withdrawal... I'm not sure which) the Joker who walks into the room is in fact a Joker-shaped teddy bear.  He's two feet tall, brown, fluffy, and bear-shaped, only he's got the Joker's creepy grin and is wearing his trademark purple suit.  (The closest comparison I can make it to think of Lotso from Toy Story 3, but a much snappier dresser and about a hundred times more psychotic.)  But of course, being a dream, this all seems completely normal and comes to no surprise to either of us.

We watch unseen as Joker-teddy's goons lift him up to sit on this disturbingly violent looking spike-covered chair, and then they hoist the chair up like a tiny elevator to the floor above; all the while Joker-teddy is very angry and complaining that he needs to change his clothes because his suit got all wet.  I don't remember how we end up getting to the upstairs floor of the factory without being seen (though I'm confident it involved some very clever and tech gadgety-filled 007 hijinks on our part), but magically we do, and as we're sneaking around we're confronted by Joker-teddy henchmen.  GASP!  OH NOES!  CUE EPIC BRAWL MUSIC?  No, not at all, actually.  Instead of bashing our Secret Agenty faces in with lead pipes and brass knuckles, these poor goons catch us sneaking around in their hideout and their first priority is cajoling us into helping them pick out a new outfit for Joker-teddy to wear.

And so with that, we are escorted to another room where we proceed to shift through piles of tiny sets of jeans, leather pants, dress shirts, and fuzzy sweaters, trying to find something Joker-teddy would like to wear.  Selection is crucial, since presenting a crazy homicidal clown with the wrong ensemble will end with him becoming cranky and most likely shooting all of us in the face, so it goes without saying we were all feeling a little pressure at that point.

While we continue to argue amongst ourselves about which outfit would be best, I remember asking a goon if they had any nice teddy-sized dress slacks available (since we all know Joker-teddy does not typically wear jeans,) and then remarking to Agent Chelle about how badly I wished we had brought all of the Cabbage Patch Kids clothes along with us that we used to use to dress up our toys in when we were kids, because I was so sure we could have found something suitable in there.  The most amusing aspect of this thought process was me very clearly thinking to myself how, in particular, I wish we'd brought along a specific dress we used to put on one of my stuffed toys; it was red with little white flowers on it (and to be honest it was, in fact, an apron and not a dress at all, as it tied around the neck and waist but had no back to hide my doll's shame at all.)  However, despite that, I remember thinking perfectly rationally, "Yes, of course, that would be the most sensible choice."

Unfortunately, I woke up at that point and was never able to find out which outfit we ended up choosing and nervously presenting to the psychotic plush teddy bear in the next room.  Kind of disappointing, actually.  I would have liked my dream self to make an emergency call on my secret agent shoe phone (because all secret agents have shoe phones) and request HQ to chopper in the garbage bag of Cabbage Patch Clothes sitting down in my basement storage room.  I probably would have pulled rank somewhere during the conversation and started shouting at my superior on the other end of the phone and calling him a maggot, and how GOD DAMN IT, MAN, THE WORLD DEPENDS ON YOU GETTING US THAT FLOWERY APRON.

It was one of those absurd dreams where I woke up and just laid there giggling and smiling idiotically to myself.  Sometimes those are the best kind.

• Taliesin (The Pendragon Cycle, #1) by Stephen R. Lawhead
  A retelling of the Arthur Pendragon and Merlin legend, this first book in the series is the first I've read that delves deep into Merlin's parents, their lineage, and the events that unfold to bring about the conception of the great wizard.  It was interesting in the sense that this version weaves the mythos of the lost city of Atlantis and its mysterious destruction in with the famous Arthurian saga, but if you're only in it for the Arthurian side of things then it's a rather disappointing start to the series; don't expect Merlin or Arthur to be popping up in any significant way here yet.  I struggled to connect with the characters and plot in this book, and while the story was decent, I found myself wishing I could just skip over it and get to the good stuff later on in the series with characters I actually recognized and cared about.  3/5

• Be Ready When the Shit Goes Down by Forrest Griffin
  Sometimes you just need a completely ridiculous, nonsensical read, and that's where UFC light heavyweight champion, Forrest Griffin, comes in with his apocalypse survival manual.  Occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious, often offensive, and even a bit genuinely informative at times, this book is a good in-between book reader, as long as you're not immediately turned off by Griffin's blunt, crude humor and can take the shit he says for a grain of salt and recognize most of it as the satire it really is.  My suggestion is to avoid trying to read this book in one sitting; take breaks, read something else, and come back to it now and then -- because a third of the way through, the poop and sex jokes, the macho man preaching, and the general buffoonery will begin to get old.  3/5

• The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2) by Patrick Rothfuss
  The second highly-anticipated book in the Kingkiller Chronicle fantasy trilogy, continuing Kvothe's story both in and out of the University.  It was a great follow-up to The Name of the Wind; the characters are great, the story is fantastic.  Similar to its predecessor, there are a few lulls here and there (I personally could have done with about 50% less Fae-filled sexcipades,) but nothing unforgivable.  I eagerly await Rothfuss' completion of book three, where Kvothe will hopefully come into his prime and unleash his utter awesomeness and badassness to the world at large. 4/5

• Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
  Can't help but enjoy anything Gaiman writes, even if it is usually a bit of a crackfest half the time.  Similar to American Gods, Gaiman introduces a pinch of fantasy-filled, supernatural hijinks into the mundane life of Joe Shmoe -- in this case, good-intentioned Fat Charlie discovers both that he's the son of a god, and that he has a brother he's never met who's coming home to make his life considerably stranger.  The title alone of this book was enough to catch my eye.  My limited knowledge of various God mythology consists of a rickety foundation of what I learned in elementary school and from watching Disney's Gargoyles; however, coincidentally, one of the episodes of Gargoyles just happened to be based around the spider and trickster god, Anansi.  (See?!  Cartoons were always teaching me something.)  Gaiman spins a web that is high entertaining and engaging.  (See the pun there?  Yeah, sometimes I do that.  *Flicks her shirt collar up in a "too cool for school" move*)  4/5

• A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2) by George R.R. Martin
  Okay, so even after my lacklustre review of book one, A Game of Thrones, I decided what the hell, and plunged into the second book -- and a good thing too, because holy crap, the story starts getting amazing!  *Wild and violent flailing of the fangirlish variety*  Seriously.  Book one was tedious at times, but by book two, I was hooked.  Tyrion, Jon, and Dany are still my favorite characters, but the Arya and Sansa chapters even started getting interesting; Theon I could take or leave, and Joffrey is still a rotten little maggot that I want to punch in the face, but overall this sequel was vastly more entertaining than the first (even despite disturbing scenes depicting shadow demons clawing forth from bloody wombes which may or may not have damaged me permanently on some psychological level.)  D:}  I think it helped this time around that I had recently finished watching the HBO Game of Thrones series, so all of the plot stuff and countless characters that overwhelmed me from book one was conveniently condensed and solidified down for my poor brain.  Next time I get all snotty and turn my nose up at a series like this, I give you permission to smack me upside the head with something hard and heavy.  4/5

• Merlin (The Pendragon Cycle, #2) by Stephen R. Lawhead
  The sequel to Taliesin, this book picks up where the first left off, and tells the story of young Merlin's years growing up.  I don't have much to say about this one since I didn't actually finish it...  *Shame clouds rain down shamey-filled rain*  I couldn't help it.  I had just finished reading A Clash of Kings, and I found myself in withdrawl; faced with the decision between the exciting prospect of plunging into the third Song of Ice and Fire novel or continuing to plod through a somewhat lacklustre retelling of Merlin's pubescence, I broke down and abandoned it for more epic fantasy, George R.R. Martin style.  While I don't regret my decision one bit (OMG THE THIRD SoIaF WAS SO AWESOME!), it was a little disappointing to leave Lawhead's series hanging like that.  Let's be honest though, the book wasn't really holding my attention.  This is probably due in no little part to both the fact that Lawhead's writing so far is pretty dry, as well as the simple truth that after reading Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga a while back, other versions just can't hold a candle to it.  2/5

Well, we survived our first bout of classic Alberta winter last week.  Given, it was much later than usual and didn't last very long (thankfully,) but it's nice to know we can always depend on at least one agonizing stretch of skin-biting frigidness that even gives Antarctica a run for its money.

While we were braving one of our infamous flash cold fronts last week, I caught an episode of What Not to Wear and couldn't help but feel a little chapped as I watched the 30-something hapless fashion victim of the day be stripped of her baggy sweaters and sweatpants and don a new wardrobe full of cute, flowery tops and adorable strappy sandals.  That's all well and fine when you live in balmy Florida, or hell, even Chicago, but where are the fashion gurus for us poor Albertans?  Where's our What Not to Wear: Freeze Your Ass Off Canadian Edition?  I'd like to see Stacy and Clinton make me look respectable in giant, clompy winter boots, a parka, and oven mitt-like ski gloves, achieving style that is both sexy but will also keep me from freezing to death in -40°C while waiting for the bus.  Good luck with that, TLC.

D:{

Also, since I'm already feeling cynical and ranty, why are mothers always so chipper and smiley in paper towel commercials?  You know what I'm talking about: a pristine white kitchen, a child sitting at the dinner table, and out of no where the little goon is splattering pasta sauce all over the place; enter mom, who gives little Bobby that little smile and shake of the head, as if saying "oh, you little scamp," and then proceeds to demonstrate how easily one sheet of Bounty can wipe up that tough spill.  High five, little man!

Ugh.  Seriously, what the hell?  It's as if there is nothing more adorable in their world than their obnoxious, bratty four-year-old smearing chocolate sauce or finger paint all over the counter top.  Fuck that.  That shit would never fly in our house.  That kid would get a sharp smack on the ass and be sent to their room without any freaking pasta, chocolate, or dinner at all to speak of.  Little hoodlum.  It's bad enough that parents already spend most of their time running around cleaning up after their kids already -- but then the brat thinks it's funny to smear their greasy little rugrat hands all over my counters?  They should make a more realistic commercial where the parent shoves a roll of Bounty in little Bobby's grubby fingers and orders him to clean up his own mess.  "And put some elbow grease into it!" as my dad used to say.

Sorry, I don't know what prompted the impulsive television ranting.  Obviously I haven't had enough homework to keep me busy this semester.  *Knock on wood*  More blogging later when I actually have something to blog about.

I hope Santa was good to everyone.  I, for one, must have made it somewhere on that nice list, as I received all sorts of shinies, such as a very badly desired clothes steamer (no more ironing, hurrah!); several awesome paintings commissioned by Sister, courtesy of her lovely friend, Jill; and a wonderfully obscene amount of chocolate.  Also, wonderful husband is wonderful -- he ordered me my perfectly perfect new Miche purse, as well as set me up with a year-long subscription to both Batman and Detective Comics~  X3  The timing couldn't be more perfect, what with the whole DC reboot, which I've been meaning to give a try; admittedly, I'm not thrilled from the snippits of Harley Quinn's head-to-toe revamp I've seen floating around online -- and when I say "not thrilled", I actually mean a little piece of my fangirly soul has been ripped out, gored to death, and left to shrivel up and be picked at by scavenging wild dogs *twitch twitch*  D:{ -- but aside from that, I've been told that it's still more-or-less the same Batman I've come to know and love.  I eagerly anticipate glossy pages chock full of caped crusaderdome to begin arriving monthly in my mailbox~  *Squee!*

Speaking of a certain Dark Knight, what's with DC's complete lack of officially licensed Batman art?  In an attempt to spruce up the walls of our depressingly bare basement, I geeked out and ordered a couple of great Doctor Who prints to hang up -- namely, this one and this one -- and have also been trying, without success, to find something awesome and Batman-themed to hang over our shuffleboard table.  Unfortunately, it seems that when you do a search for Batman wall art, all you get is the same dozen poster prints over and over again.  Don't get me wrong -- I schmooze over Jim Lee's sexy drawings as much as the next comic book fan, but is it too much to ask for a little variety?  You'd think with all of the different artists that DC enlists, they would release a steady stream of for-sale prints for fans to plaster their homes with, but there's really not much to speak of at all.  ;_;

Ideally, I would pee rainbows of joy to have a copy of this magnificent canvas print mounted on my wall:

Sadly, it is a tad more ridiculously expensive than I'm willing to pay, so unless an unlikely $20 clearlance copy pops up on eBay, I'm out of luck.  Like all *coughcough* highly illegal *coughcough* fan produced prints, they're hard to find copies of in the first place -- and when you do find a nice one, they're usually pricey.  It's so very unfair that finding pretty Batman art for sale should be harder than going out and purchasing a bag of crack cocaine (this is a guess, obviously, as I actually have no idea how hard it is or isn't to buy crack, or any type of drug, really -- however, I stand by my assumption, as evidenced by the fact that I have met a depressing amount of people who seem to walk around permanently stoned, yet I have met a total of zero people who sport any type of fashionable Batman artwork on their walls.)  Sigh.

Sad fangirl is sad.