I started working on today’s book review (of “Cheesecake Extraordinaire”) about ten minutes ago. Then I got the phone call from the vet’s office, and I think now I’m going to put it off until tomorrow.

You see, it was finally time for our cats to get their teeth cleaned. For cats, this means putting them under anaesthesia–it isn’t a small undertaking, and it’s expensive. However, if you don’t do it they can develop a nasty bacteria buildup which can get into their bloodstream and make them sick–even eventually kill them–so it’s extremely important to have it done now and then.

When cats get enough tartar built up on their teeth the vets don’t really know ahead of time what they’ll find under there. They put a range into the estimate to cover any teeth they may have to pull, but of course you hope they won’t have to pull any.

I know I’ve mentioned we have two cats, Selene and Cahlash, sister and brother from the same litter. Cahlash had to have to small teeth pulled; that isn’t too bad.

Selene had to have NINE teeth pulled.

We’re talking about a very small cat here, about 7 pounds in total. The vet said that left her with pretty much her front teeth and her incisors. She’s going to be on pain meds and antibiotics for a couple of weeks–and of course medicating her is going to be quite an undertaking (even the vets have trouble medicating her–for such a tiny ball of fluff she’s incredibly strong-willed, and when she doesn’t want something done she does NOT want something done).

We can pick her up in a few hours; the vet wants to give her another pain injection before she comes home. All I can think of is how miserable she’s going to be.

So yeah, if you care about your cats at all, get their teeth cleaned the moment your vets say it’s an issue. I hate to think what it would have been like if she’d had to have even more teeth pulled.

No review today; I’m rather sleepy from spending some of the night in the ER with a friend (it’s okay; she’s fine), and the cats are preventing me from moving and thus getting to the book I want to review.

Last night I finally got around to trying GIMP, a free open-source image editing software that some folks use instead of Photoshop, which I just can’t afford right now (but could seriously use). The last time I tried GIMP (maybe 4 or 5 years ago?) I gave up in frustration. I came close to that this time–at first I couldn’t even get it to run, and now that it’s running I find the interface very non-intuitive; I constantly end up doing weird stuff I didn’t mean to, so I have to save VERY often. However, when I can figure out what I’m doing it is in fact very powerful. Here’s the first cafepress design done with it:

“Certifiably Bonzo* It’s a technical Term”

Technorati Tags: cafe press, cafepress.com, t-shirts

Today’s review covers James Villas’ Biscuit Bliss–and it is truly blissful!

In other news again, all of the cooking, food, cat, and writing designs have finally been moved off to Caffeinated Chicanery. I can now return to constructing our backlog of designs for both shops. *grin*

We have two new reviews up. My husband reviewed “Ruby on Rails: Up and Running,” by Bruce A. Tate and Curt Hibbs, while I took care of “The Christmas Cookie Book,” by Lou Seibert Pappas. More still to come!

In other news, our shop at cafepress outgrew itself, and was definitely making enough money that we could afford the fees to open a second shop. So, we’re splitting the non-gamer material off into Caffeinated Chicanery . I’ll gradually move over all the food, cooking, writing, and miscellaneous designs. It’ll also have a few new things, such as this fun little holiday shirt:

“Yeah I’ve got the holiday spirit.
I’ll put my foot up your ass so
fast you’ll think it was missile toe!”
Mistletoe for the holidays…

Traditional edit: Make that three new reviews. My husband also reviewed Agile Web Development with Rails: A Pragmatic Guide, by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson with Leon Breedt, Mike Clark, Thomas Fuchs, and Andreas Schwarz

Technorati Tags: book reviews, cookbook reviews, t-shirts

I’m officially taking today off after spending the last few days cooking (and eating, of course). Phew! Tired but happy. And we have a fridge and huge freezer full of awesome food. All we needed to pick up this week was some milk, pretty much!

Tomorrow I’ll start in on the rest of the cookbook reviews; I’m looking forward to this. I’ll get them up hopefully over the course of this week–in time for holiday shopping!

Also, we have a couple new designs up at cafepress in addition to the new Epic Coffee Mug of Ultra-Caffeination:

(I’m not sure why I labeled the last post day four… it should have been three!) Yesterday we spent all day cooking, although we goofed off in the evening. We made a Black Velvet Chocolate Mousse, a lemon pudding, a cranberry mold (using plain gelatin and cranberry cocktail, not jello), bacon cheddar biscuits, parmesan herb drop biscuits, and a wild mushroom topping for bread (or whatever). We also made the frozen coffee yogurt for the Cafe Viennese Yogurt Milkshakes recipe, and the crusts for the two pies. Today, even more cooking!

By the way, Cafepress is holding a bit of a contest for its shopkeepers. We entered our Out of Mana dark T-shirt. I know, I know, an RPG design probably doesn’t stand a chance against Santas and political humor. But that won’t stop me from trying! So, our OoM dark T-shirt is discounted through December 24 at the above (or below) URL. Buy one for your favorite gamer for the holidays!

Out of Mana Dark T-Shirt

Technorati Tags: cafe press, cafepress.com, cooking, t-shirts, Thanksgiving

This morning I made blueberry turkey sausage–I thought it might be interesting to make our own sausage for the sausage stuffing since I found the recipe in one of our review cookbooks. I also made the frosting for the caramel pecan cheesecake (which is DIVINE), and this afternoon I made macadamia white chocolate chunk brownies, which are currently in the oven. I’d like to be a little farther along than this by now, but ah well. We make what we can!

In the meantime, here’s a new Warcraft design that I thought of and put together this morning, obviously available on cafepress’ selection of mugs:

Epic Coffee Mug (of Ultra-Caffeination!)

Technorati Tags: cooking, Thanksgiving

Today I made lemon curd, macadamia cookies (very shortbread-like), and a caramel pecan cheesecake. Mmmm. This means I’m very close to being able to review “Cheesecake Extraordinaire”–I just need to finish today’s cheesecake by frosting it tomorrow.

When we lived in Boston we knew a lot of people who were current or previous students at MIT. Many couldn’t make it home for the holiday for one reason or another–they weren’t on good terms with the family; it cost too much to fly so far for such a small occasion; their families didn’t celebrate the holiday. We rounded a bunch of those folks up–we found we could handle a total of about 8 including ourselves in our apartment–and made a huge dinner, taking requests such as “something with corn” or “mashed potatoes” or “you’d better make that white chocolate cheesecake you made last year!”

I have some wonderful memories of those get-togethers, and since we moved away I’ve really missed that. We have one friend who always comes from Massachusetts to join us, and sometimes my mother makes it, although now that we’re in Maryland it’s a bit far for her to go in that kind of holiday traffic. So it’s wonderful that we’ve finally lived in Maryland long enough to start making enough friends to have folks to invite over. It gets harder as you get older; we’re at that age where a lot of the friends we make have families (their own or in-laws) to visit. But there’s always one friend or another you can drag along, and it’s so much fun to get to do that again!

Technorati Tags: cooking, Thanksgiving

Thanks to yesterday’s baking I’ve finally made enough recipes to review Elinor Klivans’ Big Fat Cookies. YUM!

Today I’m hoping to make another batch of cookies, maybe another cheesecake, and some lemon curd. But first, perhaps a nap. I seem to be back to waking up in the middle of the night again.

Technorati Tags: book reviews, cookbook reviews, cookies, cooking, Thanksgiving

Individual vanilla cheesecakes look awfully good. They’re currently in the freezer firming up so I can pop them out of their mini tart and cheesecake pans. At least they allowed me to remove 2 lb of cream cheese from our strained fridge.

I think I might have super-sized the marble butterscotch blondie drop cookies accidentally. And the second sheet of them sort of became one large sheet cookie. But damn they taste good!

I’m now giving my feet a rest (I swear I typed cookies first–I have baking on the brain) while the second sheet of cookies cools and firms up enough for me to remove them from the pan. Maybe later I’ll make lemon curd.