Well, I suppose we should be grateful that whoever-it-was just ran up a $1600 phone bill in my husband’s name. Or I suppose, that’s all we’ve found out about so far. It apparently happened 2-3 years ago, and we’re just now getting the collection notice. Fingers crossed that we can get all this worked out easily. Police reports and all that will be involved. Urgh.
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:
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.
It’s appointment day. This morning I went to see my GI doc. The last HIDA scan showed no gallbladder problems (which doesn’t fit with the symptoms, but that’s the weirdness of the human body for you), so in about a month I’m getting an upper endoscopy done. Wheee. I’ve always wanted someone to stick a camera down my throat. (Yes, that’s sarcasm there.)
There’s nothing like invasive tests and chronic mild pain to make you feel like you’re getting old. Mid-30s shouldn’t be old. (Ick, I’m whining! I’d better move on to another subject, quick!)
In different news, I’m finally looking at the possibility of getting a digital camera—I’d really love to liven up the cookbook reviews with some home-grown food photography so you can see what some of the yummy results look like. My tentative pick is a Canon PowerShot SD1000—it looks like it’s good quality, and capable of taking crisp, clear photos, even when food is involved. And it doesn’t cost a fortune (well, when we’re talking digital cameras). Speaking of which, yesterday’s review was of Betty Rosbottom’s Coffee cookbook. YUM!
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:
Regular posting will return soon. I came down with a flu or cold (whatever comes with fever, congestion, aches, etc.) later in the day yesterday after going in for my second HIDA scan (to see if they can take my gallbladder out yet). I feel like I have perhaps two functional brain cells right now, and that’s an optimistic assessment. Mostly I’m spending the day sitting between the cats and staring at the computer screen with a blank look on my face. I’m pretty sure I’m not drooling, though, which is good.
I was up late last night playing D&D, so I’m a bit dead on my feet today. One of the cats seems to be a bit sick, too, so cleaning up cat puke at 11:30 pm (yay, raw bunny vomit that apparently had been drying onto the hardwood all day while we were gone), 5:30 am, and 11:30 am didn’t help. I hope he feels better soon, poor thing. 
There’s plenty for me to put up this week (including reviews of Demolition Desserts, The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, Bettie Sharpe’s Ember (coming tomorrow!), and New England Cooking), but they won’t go up today. I’m also putting off playing Pirates until later, because the update seems to be wreaking a little havoc with my ability to play, and I don’t have the patience this afternoon to try again; maybe tonight or tomorrow.
So, I’m mostly posting to point you to a blog that you really should check out. It’s authored by our partner-in-crime Jervis, and called Thraveon.
What makes it worth reading? Well, Jervis has been all over the world, and somehow managed to have all sorts of insane experiences. Better yet, he’s a hysterically fun storyteller. If you want an example, check out the entry he calls ‘Airport Skiing’ and I call Bowling for Monks. Share it with your friends, leave comments… help us encourage Jervis to write more and more about his entertaining experiences. 
Book reviews to come soon. 
So how was everyone else’s vacation? What did you do? Where did you go?
My husband had the week and a half off from work, so it was quite nice. We did visit some friends in Virginia at the beginning, but after that we stayed home. We cooked a lot, went out to dinner a couple of times, played video games together, watched the first-season Heroes DVDs Jeffrey got me for my birthday (not quite done yet!), and fun things like that.
The only sour note was Amazon. We ordered a sewing machine from them (we had some gift cards to use) and ordered it via overnight so it would arrive two days ago (Monday). This was important to us because there are some things we want to sew for Saturday, when we go to a Twelfth Night feast at the home of some friends. Unfortunately, Amazon shipped it by ground shipping instead of overnight. Luckily it’ll arrive today because it shipped from only one state away, but the sewing will be a tad rushed—particularly since we’re making bread for 25 people for the same event. At least after I wrote to Amazon they did agree to do a partial refund of the shipping costs.
We happened to be asked to make bread just after I received a review copy of a cookbook of traditional breads from around the world, so I’m very much looking forward to taking advantage of that coincidence to test out the recipes!
I think since I managed to read & review three books between Saturday and Monday, I will take a day to do other things today. I have a special project I’m working on that’s related to our cafepress gamers & geekdom store, but I can’t give you the details of that yet—it’s a surprise! I need to decide before the Hellgate: London game ships whether I’m going to buy the game. Not that I should be buying more games, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and you can play the basic game without a subscription fee (which is the only reason, really, why I’m even considering this). Of course there’s the huge list of books to read & review. And I’m behind in catching up with my email and with other folks’ blogs.
Back to the health issues from a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling a lot better until I lost all self-control at the d&d game this weekend and had cupcakes; they’re a weakness of mine. So yesterday I was back to not feeling too well. Anyway, the first set of tests didn’t show anything, so yesterday they took blood (some sort of pancreas-related test) and next week I go in for longer scans with dye contrasts and all that. Hopefully it’ll show something. On the one hand I’m not too worried, since I know that eating an extremely low-fat diet makes me feel better and thus I can control this. On the other hand I’d like to know for sure what it is, so that I’ll know, for example, whether eating something high-fat on occasion is just uncomfortable or actually dangerous to my health. Knowledge is good.
Anyway, off to grab the mail from the mailbox, finish my lovely cup of coffee, and work on that special project. Can’t wait to be able to tell you about it!
Yes, it’s time to take one of our cats to the vet again. Selene is chewing on one of her back paws until it hurts her; I expect it’s allergy-itching. For the moment I have some anti-itch salve for pets—all-natural stuff—I’m putting on it (she hates the smell, but it does seem to help), but I don’t want to use it too much. With our luck, after all, she’d end up allergic to it.
In this way, she and I are surprisingly alike. My husband and I often joke about it, it’s so eerie. She and I both tend to have allergic reactions to inconvenient things like medications and topical preparations, and we both become easily sensitized to things over time. We also both have asthma.
Unfortunately it’s a bad week to have to take her to the vet, as my husband has some long work hours coming up. I think we can manage some morning toward the end of the week, however. Now we just have to convince her not to chew on her foot in the meantime.
I mentioned recently that our KitchenAid stand mixer died (*sob*). Well, thankfully it was still under the extended warranty we’d gotten for it (just!), and KA has awesome customer service. Without any questions (other than what was wrong with it) they sent us a new one and had us send them the old one in the same box (at their expense). The new one’s a slightly newer model, so of course I’ll have to review it eventually. (*happy sigh*) We even had a chance to make cookies with it when we went to a friend’s on Saturday. We’ve been told our cookies may well be the best chocolate chip cookies in the world, but we have to give due credit to Shirley, the delightful food scientist who created the master recipe and all the tips we use.
We also finally had time to do some gardening this weekend. We weeded the little plot under our bay window, mulched it with pretty dark pine bark nuggets, and put in some silly-looking cockscomb annuals—furry-looking neon things in orange, red, fuschia, and gold. I think they appealed to the kid in me. I’m looking forward to being able to afford a good composter again one of these years, as well as everything I need for some good old-fashioned edible gardening (tomatoes, peppers, squash, kitchen herbs, strawberries…).
Anyway, too much to do today, too little time. I’m sure I’ll write about something interesting again in a day or two.
I’m discovering just how much work it is to change over your email address after having the same one for… umm, 7 years? 10 years? Something like that. Especially since I’m not nearly as good as I should be about keeping up with my email.
(more…)
