Saturday Shopping

Look at that, I remembered to post ;)

The weather yesterday was quite lovely. When I went to the library with Dad, I only needed a light jacket. I really should have sat outside with a book yesterday, but I never did - although it did start to get very windy, so maybe it was a good idea that I stayed inside.

Today I went to Michaels with my parents. I didn't buy anything, but my mom bought some stuff. Afterwards, we went to PetSmart to buy new toys for the dogs to replace the smelly old rubber bone and a chewed-through ring toy, and then we went to Indigo, where I finally spent the $10.44 on Mom's Christmas gift card (she gave me the rest of the gift card). I bought City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, which I hear is an excellent book. I thought about buying Coraline by Neil Gaiman, but decided on City of Ember. Maybe if I get another gift card from Grandma and Grandpa for my birthday, I'll buy Coraline.

I feel like I've been abandoning my NaNoWriMo novel from last November. I looked at my draft the other day, and was a little annoyed with some parts of it - I want to work on it, but I want to edit it at the same time. But tomorrow, when Dad's watching his Nascar race, I'll probably work on it.

That's all - I have to go eat soon. Bye :)

The Grammys, a journal, and a lot of library materials.

I meant to post about music on Monday for a 'Music Monday' feature, but I never got around to it. Sorry :p

The Grammys were on Sunday, but I only watched the last hour because Big Love was on (I've turned into a shameless HBO junkie since HBO Canada came on the air). I managed to catch the Best New Artist category - I was a little bummed out that Mumford & Sons didn't win, but then I've never listened to Esperanza Spalding. Her CD is on my to-listen list, though. And yay for Arcade Fire winning Album of the Year! I've only heard a little bit of their music, but I like what I've heard, and it's cool to see a Canadian band win that category.

I've been meaning to finish up my old journal and start my new one, but I can't bring myself to finish the old one. It's silly, I know, but that journal was kind of my buddy through some tough times, so it has some sentimental value to it. But at the same time, I want to start fresh with my newer journal - I got the journal for Christmas from my sister and her boyfriend two or three years ago, and I still haven't used it! It's a lot nicer than the exercise book I've been writing in, that's for sure.

I checked my library account online today, and I have eight items in. Two of them are DVDs, three are CDs, and three are crafting books. I'm pretty happy that I have all these items waiting for me to pick up, but at the same time I'm frightened by the number of items. I always feel guilty when I have a lot of items checked out :p I'm not sure why, but I do. Maybe I worry that I won't get through all of them?

I should probably eat soon, because my stomach is growling, so I'll bring this post to a close. Until next time...

New Monitor, and some epic cuteness

Sorry for not posting in a while. I kinda forgot :p

I have a new monitor now :) I might have mentioned before that my first computer monitor went kaput, and I had to use my dad's old monitor, which had a very dark screen. For the longest time, I had to squint at photos! But then my dad took me to Staples and bought me a new monitor. It's pretty :) I'm still getting used to the brightness of it, and I might have to adjust the contrast a little.

Since I finished the bobble pillow, I hadn't been knitting much, so I started a dishcloth to relieve my itchy fingers. I'm trying to use up my older yarn to make room in my storage bins for newer stash, so I'm trying to find patterns to use up my acrylic. I have three economy-sized skeins of Red Heart Super Saver in dark green, which I might make a throw blanket out of. I swatched for a throw blanket out of an issue of Knit Simple, and the swatch turned out a little bit big, but for a blanket I don't think a bigger gauge will matter too much.

And now, for the epic cuteness part of this post...





I might start a couple of regular features on my blog, like a 'Music Monday' or 'Friday Funny'. Thoughts? Feel free to comment!

Reading list, and Oscar predictions

I mentioned in my last post that I set my reading goal on Goodreads to ten books. I tried to compile a reading list the other night, but found that I was close to going over ten books. So, I shall compile a list of ten books that I want to read this year...

Merenwen's To-Read List, 2011

1. Beastly by Alex Flinn
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
3. The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu
4. Eon by Alison Goodman
5. The Forest in the Hallway by Gordon Smith
6. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
7. Leviathan by Scott Westerfield
8. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
9. Terrier by Tamora Pierce
10. Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

There are other books that I really want to read, but might not get to. It depends on how quickly I can read.

On the subject of Oscar predictions, here are mine. I've only seen a couple of the nominated films (Alice in Wonderland and How to Train Your Dragon), though, so I'm just making educated guesses here.

Best Supporting Actress: I think Melissa Leo's gonna take it. I'd like Helena Bonham-Carter to win, because she's one of my favourite actresses, but it sounds like Leo's performance in The Fighter would totally earn her an Oscar. It would be cool to see Hailee Steinfeld win for True Grit, but I have a feeling that Leo will win it. I am disappointed that Mila Kunis wasn't nominated for Black Swan, though.

Best Supporting Actor: I'm not keen on Christian Bale, but then again, I haven't seen his role in The Fighter. My guess is that either he or Geoffrey Rush will take it.

Best Actor: This is a tough one. I like Colin Firth as an actor, in both comedic and dramatic roles (I saw A Single Man on DVD last year, and thought he was pretty darn good in it), but I've heard that Jesse Eisenberg and James Franco did well in their roles. It would be nice for either of them to win it. And then there's Javier Bardem... okay, I'm totally stuck.

Best Actress: I think Natalie Portman will win this one, although Nicole Kidman could take it for her role in Rabbit Hole.

Best Animated Feature: I haven't seen The Illusionist, but I really want to. I don't think it's being played in my area yet, or if it ever will be - I might have to wait for the DVD. I'd really like How to Train Your Dragon to win, though, because: 1) The script was pretty clever, 2) The animation was pretty good, and 3) Craig Ferguson as a Viking - need I say more? Although The Illusionist looks spectacular, from the trailer I saw. Toy Story 3 earned a Golden Globe for Animated Feature, so it might take the Oscar as well. I really don't know.

Best Original Score: Am I the only one who's annoyed that Alice in Wonderland didn't get nominated for this category? The movie had a really awesome score! Hmm... I think Inception might take it - it got the Golden Globe, and Hans Zimmer wrote it. Zimmer seems to be one of the most popular film score composers. I'm not too familiar with his work - I only just found out via Wikipedia that he did the score for Sherlock Holmes, and I liked that score. I think he'll get the Oscar.

Best Director: It's a three-way tie between Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan, David Fincher for The Social Network and the Coen brothers for True Grit. I'm not sure if Tom Hooper will win for The King's Speech, but I'd be happy if he won. It looks like a good film.

And finally...

Best Picture: Wow. I'm really not sure. Shall we say... three-way tie between Black Swan, The Social Network and The King's Speech? Or then there's 127 Hours. And Inception. Oh dear, I do believe I'm stuck.

...I'm suddenly aware that this post is very long. I should probably go now. Bye!

Reading Goals

One of my goals for 2011 is to read more. I'm trying to finish up the novels I started a while ago, but I also want to start and finish a good amount of books this year.

Fortunately, Goodreads now has a feature where you can set a goal of how many books you want to read in 2011. Because I read so slowly, I decided on 10 books - Mom recommended that number last night when I told her about the Goodreads feature. I think it's a reasonable enough goal for me, and I can always go past the goal if I think I can.

Speaking of last night, Mom gave me a brief lesson in long division last night. It was late - about 11:00 - so my brain wasn't at its sharpest. But perhaps I'll actually remember what she taught me.

Mom also got out some books on math by Danica McKellar (she played Winnie on Wonder Years). At first I was skeptical about them, because they're written for girls to enjoy math more, so I thought they'd be overly-girly, but I was wrong: I flipped through the middle school math book, Math Doesn't Suck, and it has some useful tips. I know some of the math in Math Doesn't Suck, like factoring numbers in algebra, but I might still use it to brush up on decimals and percents, because I never did work through decimals and our Key Curriculum book on percents got lost somehow.

I cast off the bobble pillow a week or so ago :) It's not quite done yet, though - I have to buy a pillow form yet, and then it'll have to be seamed up. I'm still happy, though, because it's one less project on the needles.

That's all for now. I'll post again soon :)

The Pros and Cons of Fluffy Snow

Today has been an interesting day. And somewhat terrifying.

My parents and I went to a Chinese buffet restaurant today for a relative's birthday. On the way there, it was starting to snow, in big and fluffy flakes. It started out as being okay for visibility, but the closer we got to the restaurant, the worse it got.

Now, crazy weather and I don't mix well. I get a little tense, because I sit and hope that nobody hits us, because the roads are usually greasy and slippery, and some drivers tend to drive like idiots, which makes matters worse :p So I sat in the backseat of our van, trying to look at the snowy buildings instead of the traffic and focus on the songs being played on the radio. One of those songs was 'Time Stand Still' by Rush, which is one song by Rush that I seem to hear waaaay too much, but I hummed along to the song anyway. What was funny was when the radio DJ was talking about the snow, and said something like, "Coming up next, a song by The Scorpions about weather that isn't quite as bad as what we have," and after the commercials he played 'Rock You Like a Hurricane' :p

It got a little easier once we got in the parking lot. The lot was a lot less greasy than the roads, so getting into a parking space wasn't too tricky. When we got inside the restaurant, I kept my coat on, because even though it was fairly warm inside I was still pretty cold.

The restaurant was one we'd tried almost a year ago, on my dad's birthday. They were only open for a week or two, so the food had been mediocre and the layout of the tables was pretty tight. However, they seemed to have changed the layout since then, so there was a lot more elbow room :)

The food was okay - I generally prefer the food at Mandarin, another Chinese buffet in my city. Some of their food was fairly good: the torpedo shrimp were very tender and flavourful, and not too greasy; the shrimp dumplings were tasty (I got one that was a little crunchy, though), and the pork siu mai was tasty as well. However, the noodles were a bit greasy, there weren't a lot of vegetable dishes, and the General Chicken had too much breading for my taste. The desserts were better, I think: I picked up some Jello, a brownie, a mango-flavoured cake slice that Mom had liked (it had mousse between the cake layers :D), some blackberries, and a cream puff. The cream puff was a little dry, and the Jello seemed crunchy in texture (that's the best way I can describe it :p), but the brownie was pretty good, the mango cake was delicious (so much so, I want to attempt to make a similar cake :p), and the blackberries were delicious - I'd already tried one of Mom's blackberries, so I knew they were good. Oh, and I'd had won-ton soup to start, and it was delicious as well - the won-tons were packed with meat, which was nice to see.

Once we were done, the weather quieted. The roads were still a little greasy, but it had stopped snowing, so we could see things :p Right now, it looks like a Christmas card outside the spare room window.

In knitting news (it seems I don't post enough about my knitting anymore!), I'm almost done the garter stitch half of my bobble pillow from... June '09 :p It had been living in my wardrobe too long, so I'm trying to get it finished. Of course, I might not get it done for a while, because I'll have to buy a pillow form. But getting it off the needles is enough of an accomplishment for me :)

And in reading news, I'm trying to finish Blood and Chocolate. I've only got a few more chapters to go, but because of my habit of re-reading sentences, I was reading too slowly :p I'm trying to break that habit, though, because I miss being able to read books very quickly. I think I'm getting back to a better reading pace :)

That's pretty much it. Well, except that I made some late-ish goals for the new year: get out of the house more (which I did yesterday - I went shopping for a birthday gift with my parents, and my mom and I walked to Shopper's Drug Mart to buy a birthday card :D), drink less soda (because there's quite a bit of sugar in a can of soda), and eat for fruits and vegetables.

Until next time... :)

Big Holiday Post

I might have to save this post and continue it later. We'll see :)

First, I shall start with Christmas Eve.

I got up at 7, so that I could shower and eat breakfast before my dad and I went to buy cannoli for our Christmas Day breakfast. I think I've talked about this before: we buy cannoli and other pastries from our local Italian bakery for Christmas Day breakfast. We also had to go to the grocery store to buy bread and cucumbers for our Boxing Day appetizer get-together - we had my Uncle Brent, Heather, and Heather's daughters over to our house for Boxing Day.

We went to the grocery store first to pick up the bread and cucumbers, and we also picked up a turkey TV dinner as a gag for my sister, who had mentioned that she didn't like pork (we had crown roast of pork for Christmas dinner) and would've preferred turkey ;) Despite the fact that the couple behind us in the check-out were a bit pushy (they complained a little about the line-up, and then pushed past my dad and I as I was trying to head to the exit), I was somewhat cheerful. There was a little kid jabbering away in her mom's shopping cart in the check-out line beside ours', which was really cute :)

After that, we headed to the bakery, but they weren't open yet. Another patron was waiting in his car when we pulled up to find a parking spot, and he laughed when he saw us. We sat in the car for a few minutes, then joined the line-up outside the door. The place got pretty packed when they opened the door; but despite the amount of people, the line progressed pretty quickly. I think it was because a number of people pre-ordered their cannoli. Dad always says he'll pre-order, and never does ;P

The rest of Christmas Eve consisted of cleaning, and wrapping presents. Fortunately, most of the stuff I got for people wasn't too tricky to wrap - it was just my brother's meat tenderizer that was tricky. After watching George Stroumboulopoulos's Christmas special, I went to bed so that my parents could wrap my stuff - and just before they started wrapping, I remembered I had to fill my hot water bottle, so I hurried upstairs to do that :p

And now, Christmas Day!

Christmas morning was very peaceful. After I got up, my dad put the kettle on for coffee and tea, and then we emptied our stockings. Mine was jam-packed with stuff - I can't remember everything that was in it, but I can tell you that it contained a new mug, a bath mitt, a box of Walnut Whips from our local British imports shop, Coronation Street playing cards (I imagine those were from the British imports shop as well), and a 'things to do' paper pad, to list things that are 'not done', 'almost done' and 'so done'. Pretty neat stuff :)

As for my main gifts, they were:

THE FIFTH SEASON OF DOCTOR WHO!!!
The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu
Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love by Larry Levin
Tokyo Godfathers on DVD
Home for the Holidays on DVD (now I don't have to wait for it to be on TV!)
The Heavy's The House That Dirt Built
A set of Ralph Lauren sheets in pink, green and orange stripes :)

As you can probably tell, I'm very excited about the fifth season of Doctor Who :D I didn't get to watch it on TV, because Space is the only channel in Canada that carries it, and we aren't subscribed to it.

After we opened presents, my mom and I tidied up the spare room for my sister to use while my dad went to pick up Nathan (my brother) and Steph (his girlfriend). We had to hurriedly wrap the knit throw blanket my mom made because she decided to give it to my brother, and we had it wrapped just in time for when they arrived - I literally brought it downstairs and put it under our awesome red tinsel tree as they were taking their shoes off and saying hello to the dogs! :p

From my brother and Steph, I got a bag of assorted candies: two boxes of Pocky (I had asked for Pocky because they know a place that carries the fancier flavours), a box of Lemon Heads, some Necco Candy Buttons, a Chupa Chup, a candy stick that I'm not sure what the flavour is, a mini Cow Tail (a caramel fudge candy), a box of Japanese candies that Nathan wasn't quite sure what they are (they're some kind of strawberry candy, from what the packaging says), and a pouch of Pop Rocks. My parents got similar bags of candy, but instead of the Pocky and the unknown box of Japanese candies they got Malteasers and Peanut Butter Bats. I don't think they got the Candy Buttons, though, or the Lemon Heads.

At around 2:00, we headed to my grandparents' house. My sister was already there, and she gave us her presents to us first. I got a bracelet from Disney World (she had gone to a conference for her pedorthics internship, and the hotel she stayed at was right next to Disney World) and two sweaters from Old Navy - one is a brown and blue argyle cardigan, the other is a black cabled cowl-neck pullover. From my grandparents, I got a set of five pairs of earrings from Avon, a red and black wallet-on-a-string also from Avon and a Chapters Indigo gift card. I don't know how much is on the gift card, though, because Grandpa didn't write the amount on it.

Uncle Brent, Heather, Heather's daughters and their aunt arrived shortly after we did, and we gave Brent and Heather their wedding gift and watched Grandpa open the gift that Brent, Heather and my mom got for him (a new TV for in the kitchen, to replace the one he had), and we left afterwards.

When we got home, Katie opened her stuff from us and we ate dinner: crown roast of pork, mashed potatoes, turnip (which I didn't eat, because I don't like turnip), Brussels' sprouts, dressing, and lamb sausages for Katie. The pork was very yummy. We had trifle for dessert after we'd all digested dinner.

Lastly, Boxing Day.

We did more tidying up before Brent, Heather and the girls came to our house. Brent put on the World Junior Hockey game on and we snacked on cheese and crackers, veggies and pickle dip, chicken liver pate, smoked trout pinwheels, smoked salmon devilled eggs, kielbasa, and Christmas cookies. After the hockey game, Nathan plugged in his Nintendo GameCube, and I watched Nathan, Katie and Heather's daughters play Mario Kart Double Dash - which was highly entertaining.

After Brent, Heather and the girls left, Dad put on Kill Bill: Vol. I on MoviePix. I was pretty happy about this, because I hadn't been able to see all of Vol. I when it premiered on the movie channels, because Mom didn't want me watching past the hospital scene for some reason. I guess she thought the fight scene in the Japanese nightclub was too graphic for me :p Anyway, I absolutely loved it. MoviePix was showing Volumes I and II back-to-back, but I only got to see the first fifteen minutes of Vol. II because it was on really late and Mom wanted everyone to go to bed :p

So, that was my Christmas :) Hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season!