I know there was something I wanted to post about, but my brain seems to be in a fog and I have no idea what it was. Oh well. I can at least link to the new site stuff.

First, the reviews. There’s yummy stuff in The Superfood Cookbook—how can you resist a combination of delicious, easy, quick, and nutritious??

I’ve also posted reviews of Mathias Freese’s enchanting Down to a Sunless Sea and Robert Cutler’s The Secret Scroll. In case you ever wondered whether all those high-scoring reviews indicated that I was too easy on review copies, worry no more—I don’t pan books very often, but that latter one made me want to tear my hair out.

Next, two more T-shirt designs. There’s a bit of relationship humor called going unsteady and a shirt for the Gnomish Air Force:

If I remember what I was going to say, I’ll just post again later!

I will spare you. I will not do the ‘omg I just got a new camera and have to illustrate EVERYTHING’ thing of taking a picture of the mountain of tissues next to me. And I was only tempted to do so for a fraction of a second, I promise. I was up at 3 am this morning because lying down made me feel like I was drowning. So, here’s the slightly punchy result: a 3 am review of Lynn Kurland’s With Every Breath. (Is it just me, or is there something ironic about that title under the circumstances? Maybe I should call it ‘With Every (Gurgling) Breath.”)

What is it with the apparent popularity of Scottish Highlands time travel romances? And how many of them are out there? Is this a micro-genre? Mini-genre? Or has it gotten to full-blown sub-genre status? And if so, why? I mean, yeah, it’s fun, but wow is that a specific set of constraints for a group of books!

So, that review there is the reason why that book doesn’t make an appearance in my latest photo of my review book stack. And Lynn Viehl’s Twilight Fall isn’t in it because I’m reading it today. The hysterical thing is that it’s only two days since I took that last photo and I already feel compelled to update it.

By the way, I’ve now updated the designs in the entire MMO category of Gamers’ Heaven (well, those that I planned to update). Take a look, and more will come!

Many things have changed since we first started selling shirts & stuff through cafepress at Gamers’ Heaven and Caffeinated Chicanery. I have a better sense of what will translate well from my screen to a T-shirt, mug, or poster. Cafepress now allows us to use the same transparent-background image on dark and light items since they have better printing processes. I have a copy of Photoshop. I have some actual—*gasp*—experience!

Now that all of these things have happened, I noted that our earliest designs were kind of… embarrassing, frankly, next to the recent ones. So, bit by bit, I’m going back through and re-working them. I’m also cleaning house on the designs that never did well. Here I will present you with some of the new/old designs that I’ve done so far; I’m starting off with the gaming shop. First, “I’m not lazy I’m just out of mana,” also known as our first runaway bestseller, which won second place in a Cafepress holiday contest based on sales:

(more…)

Today’s book review is

…

*Sigh* Let’s start over. That’s where the timer beeped and I had to move banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (part of testing a review cookbook!) to the cooling rack.

…

Take three. That’s where my husband got home from work, still deep in the throes of a conference call. So far today I’ve written two book reviews (today’s review of Donna MacMeans’s The Trouble with Moonlight and tomorrow’s queued up review of Emmett James’s Admit One). I’ve cleaned up cat puke from the doorway of the guest room. I’ve put up a new design at Caffeinated Chicanery:

Still looking for my muse

I visited a goodly handful of cool book blogs (just check out the blog roll on the reviews blog if you want some ideas for where to start!). I made a marinade for Chinese BBQ pork (cha siu, if I recall correctly). I got a package of gardening stuff and got all that put away. I still need to do a load of laundry and clean up the living room and dining room, and my husband gets to vacuum.

The cleaning is because an old friend of mine is coming tomorrow and staying for a week (yay!). The rest of it is just me apparently going a little crazy.

Printed so that it read upside-down (yes, I can read upside-town text quite easily; it’s one of those useless skills you pick up in childhood and never quite lose):

Today’s book review is of Eldress Bertha Lindsay’s Seasoned with Grace, and today’s entertaining t-shirt design is:

The Human Gee Gnome Project
Discover the little oddities in life

Last week I wrote an entry in my Epiphanies blog (it’s a place for posting writers’ exercises and such for people to play with) that explored my grandfather’s history just a tiny bit. He’s one of those people who has a naturally story-inspiring life, and I happen to have very vivid memories of visiting him and my grandmother as a child.

I don’t tend to think of technology in connection with my family. Which is odd, because my mother has been a programmer, and became a programmer at a time when that wasn’t a common field for women to go into. My grandfather was a chemist. I guess it’s just that when I think of that side of the family mostly what I think of is visiting my grandparents at their old rural house in the seventies and eighties, strolling through the apple orchard and swimming in the pond. My grandfather was born in 1900 and died in 1994; he wasn’t exactly around for the height of the internet age. So it was with some amazement that I heard from relatives we’d fallen out of touch with after my grandfather’s funeral, thanks to their having found that post that I made. Emails and addresses were exchanged all over the place, all because of a spur-of-the-moment blog post.

That feels kind of surreal, but very cool.

This morning’s review is of Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo. Also, I’ve posted a new T-shirt design at Caffeinated Chicanery and another at Gamers’ Heaven. The monthly newsletters with their subscribers-only sales go out tonight barring a hiccup in Cafepress’s software, so if you aren’t subscribed already, this is a good time to do so (there’s a form at the bottom-left of the front page of the storefronts). Since I’ve been reading & reviewing so many mysteries lately it seemed appropriate to do a mystery addict shirt:

Mystery Addict
Where’s the body?

I also couldn’t help adding to our alignment series. Don’t worry, we have plenty of stored-up design ideas to present to you this year:

chaotic brilliant!

But first… the latest book review is of Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s The Perennial Boarder. Also, since people have been asking me for more detail about the bar code scanner option over at LibraryThing after I mentioned it the other day, I promise that once I’ve gotten my scanner and played around with it a bit, I’ll make a full report/review of what I think of LibraryThing. I can tell you so far that I’m totally addicted, however, and that the 200+ books I’ve entered by hand are barely scraping the surface. I also still have to decide whether I want to use LT with tags the way some people do to keep track of those books I’ve read but don’t end up deciding to keep—some of the books I review, for example, I end up donating to the library when I’m done if I know I won’t read them again.

Now, to pass on the latest T-shirt designs. First, we’ve added one to the Caffeinated Chicanery shop; great for creative people who are tired of always finding out that someone thought of their brilliant idea first:

I hate people who steal
my ideas before I think of them

And we’ve also added to the Gamers’ Heaven shop:

“What do you mean I don’t get frequent flyer miles for gryphon flights?!” and “Invalid Target”.

We were taken by surprise when our Level 70 Mom design turned out to be the runaway success of this year’s holiday season at our Cafepress store; we made it in time for Mother’s Day this year, but apparently the winter holidays are seeing a big resurgence in love for moms. We quickly designed a Level 70 Dad design to go with it. When that proved popular as well (apparently all the cool parents are wearing gamer gear this year!) we knew we had to branch out a bit. You guys sure do keep us busy! First, for married couples, the 70 Husband and 70 Wife designs (hmm, I guess since my husband helped to come up with this idea it would probably be anticlimactic to get him one of these for his holiday present; back to the drawing board!).

[Urk. Brief pause to convince my cat to stop stepping on the mouse button. Devil-kitty indeed.]

And finally, the 70 Boyfriend and 70 Girlfriend designs:

In unrelated news, today’s book review is of the Red Lion Inn Cookbook, Third Edition. It’s one of the major books that provided the recipes for our Thanksgiving feast. Enjoy!

Afterword: You know, there’s something wrong with a day in which I get most of my major productivity done before 6 am. Not that I’m complaining about being productive, mind you.

Just a quick note to point you to today’s review, the first of the holiday cookbook reviews: The Pastry Queen Christmas. YUM!

Also introducing: the Gamers’ Heaven Holiday 2007 sale section and the Caffeinated Chicanery Holiday 2007 sale section! Enjoy the discounts on all sorts of gamer, geek, book, and humor-related T-shirts, mugs, buttons, and more!

Today’s Booking Through Thursday:

Today’s question comes from Conspiracy-Girl:
I’m still relatively new to this meme so I’m not sure if this has been asked yet, but I’m curious how many of us write notes in our books. Are you a Footprint Leaver or a Preservationist?

I’ve been both over the years, but overall I’d say I’m a preservationist. I’ve had my spates of underlining or highlighting non-fiction books, usually a habit brought on by taking classes, but I’ve always returned to my habits of leaving books relatively untouched, with at most a dog-ear or two that I smooth out after I’m done writing my review. That way, after all, if I decide I don’t want to keep the book, I can donate it to the library when I’m done. Cookbooks, however, I absolutely write in. I put a rating on recipes as to how good the results were, and I note any changes to the recipe.

Yesterday’s book review was the delicious Hot Drinks by Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss. I’m making progress in The Gift of Rain; it’s somewhat slow, but has definitely caught my interest, so even my limited attention span can hang on for the ride! Last night we made cranberry-walnut scones as our first recipe from The Pastry Queen Christmas, and they were awesome.

We have some a designs up at the shops, one that we’d originally intended to be infant wear, until a clever teenager pointed out that it would work for just about anyone:

Someday I’ll use words
to express my extreme
dissatisfaction with the
current situation.
Meanwhile allow me
to scream.