Furniture troubles don’t seem nearly so bad when you find out the house of some friends was torn up by a tornado and they aren’t even allowed on their own street yet.

Thank god they’re okay. When it comes down to it, that’s what really matters.

When I was 16 I got a phone call one early Sunday morning telling me that two of my best friends were dead. I can feel an echo of that reaction pounding in my chest, that sense that in just a moment, something unforeseen can change… everything.

Here’s the good thing about IKEA: while it’s true that a lot of their items are cheap in a pejorative sense, if you look around carefully you can get some great deals on some wonderful pieces of furniture. We found an awesome dining room set there, a couple of very nice dressers, and some bookcases we desperately need.

Here’s the problem: since there’s no way we could fit that stuff in our car, we ordered it over the internet and arranged to have it delivered. It arrived last night, and about half of it is going to have to go back.

Three bookcases were totally loose. As in, the shelves and hardware were stacked freely in the truck. The delivery folks even looked shocked when they saw that. One of the pieces of backing is cracked through; several shelves are splintered, crunched, or broken, even just at first glance; and we have no idea whether anything’s missing.

Several other boxes had been so thoroughly broken open that things got damaged or, once again, we have no way of knowing if anything’s missing—that’s a fourth bookcase and BOTH dressers. In fact, the only things we’re going to be able to hold onto are one full-sized bookcase, one narrow bookcase, and the dining room set. Truthfully a couple of those boxes were damaged, too, but the damage was little enough that we could see the items themselves weren’t damaged or missing anything.

Well, it’ll be an interesting test of IKEA’s customer service to see if we end up with what we ordered, and how difficult the process is.

In the interests of not simply griping on this rainy Friday morning, here are two review links and two cute cat pics. First, reviews of Crichton’s classic The Andromeda Strain and Pamela Clare’s new and fantastic Unlawful Contact. Finally, cuddly cat photos. Well okay, the first one isn’t so cuddly; if you tried, you’d probably get a few playful scratches:

Last week I reviewed Elizabeth Vaughan’s Dagger-Star, a fantasy-romance. The lead character, Red Gloves, is a female mercenary, and her love interest is basically a farmer. I enjoyed the book on a great number of levels: it possessed wit and humor; the characters had depth and dimension; the plot executed some unusual twists on the typical fantasy prophecy plot.

I also loved the somewhat unusual Alpha female to Beta male relationship.

This morning I read through the Amazon reviews, which were all over the map. Coming on the heels of skimming a discussion in a popular blog last week about men vs. women in which it quickly became obvious that some very outdated views of women still hold sway when folks think they’re talking anonymously, it left me with a few thoughts I had to put onto virtual paper.

First, a simple correction of perception. One of the opinions I saw on the book railed about the fact that Red enjoys and engages in one-night stands, and is casually sexual. To engage in a mild spoiler about her background, she was abused as a child. The reviewer thought it ridiculous that after such trauma, Red would be willing to sleep with a man at all, much less so casually. In truth, it’s not unusual for people who’ve been molested to become ‘hyper-sexual’ instead of the opposite—either can happen. From my knowledge of the subject (I’ve known multiple people from that situation and I was working on a psych degree from Harvard before we left Massachusetts, in addition to my own subsequent readings and research), I’d say the depiction was entirely believable.

Next, another reviewer said the book read as though the author had simply made her female character into a male and vice versa. I didn’t get that impression, although I can see how one might come to that conclusion. This makes the assumption that certain traits are exclusively female or male. If you have any kind of in-depth experience with the wide array of people out there in the world, I can’t see how you could seriously believe this, but as that blog discussion I mentioned proved, there are still plenty of people who do. While I’ll agree that there are traits that are more commonly female or male (or at least stereotypically female or male), I believe that’s a different issue that doesn’t preclude the depiction of, say, a strong, martial-minded female lead.

As an example of what I mean, one reviewer said that women simply don’t engage in emotionless sex—that this is strictly a male trait. I had to re-read that several times to be sure I was reading it correctly, because I was amazed someone could think that. It may be more common for men to do so, but it’s hardly an act that’s exclusive to them.

Finally, there are ways to make a character recognizably female or feminine without her having to wear pink or lace, cry at every opportunity, or get tied up in emotional knots at the drop of a hat. To my mind, Elizabeth Vaughan accomplishes this. Perhaps those who equate femininity with pink, lace, crying, etc. didn’t see it, but it seemed quite clear to me. Red had her softer side; it just wasn’t a stereotypically feminine thing, and to my mind that’s great. Many of the ways in which she was feminine or noticeably female were a part of her strong, Alpha personality, not in conflict with it. That’s only a problem if you think that females inherently can’t be strong, can’t be leaders, etc.

But then, I remember seeing a comment in that blog discussion that stated outright that men were suited to be leaders and women weren’t, so perhaps that’s what’s at issue. I wouldn’t have thought Dagger-Star to be so far ahead of its time in terms of gender depictions, but it seems that I was wrong. I hate it when I get a hard reminder that at the end of the day, a lot of men—and yes, some women—still believe all that crap about women being weaker, more foolish, unable to lead, etc.

The funny part is, romance novels often get accused of setting us back in this department, of perpetuating harmful stereotypes of weak women who need to be rescued by men. Instead, enough of today’s romances are being written by independent, strong-willed women that the opposite is coming to pass—many romance novels are now ahead of society in terms of promoting a strong, independent female image.

Special comment note: Look, the argument over men vs. women is already going on over at that other blog. If that’s what you want to talk about, go do it over there. If you want to talk about gender depictions in these kinds of books, great—as long as it stays reasonably calm and on-topic. I have neither the time nor the tolerance for yelling and name-calling, so if it happens, I’ll delete the comments and, if necessary, close comments on the post. (Go ahead, call it censoring—I don’t care.) I’m hoping my readership is small enough—and enough made up of all those cool, thoughtful book-bloggers instead of ye general internet audience—that I won’t have to worry about it.

On a separate note, I give maybe 50-50 odds on posting a review today. I think I’ve caught my husband’s cold, so I’m not getting so much done.

Not familiar with the concept of honor killings? Familiar with them but don’t know much about them or how you of all people might do something about it? Read this post by Azteclady over at Karen Knows Best; read Joss Whedon’s original 2007 post; and then pick up a copy of the book, Nothing But Red to help raise awareness and money for the cause. Heck, buy one for a friend, or a local library.

And please, do read Whedon’s post. I have nothing to add because he already said it all, far better than I could have.

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!

This morning I went shopping with a neighbor.

That sounds so strange. You have to understand, I’m not the shopping type. All those stereotypes about women and shopping? The only time they apply to me is when I’m in a bookstore or a kitchenware store, or MAYBE a gardening supplies store. And even then I’d much rather order online, and I try to make my shopping trips quick, preferably right after the stores open so they won’t be crowded. (In particular I hate, HATE clothes-shopping.)

Anyway.

We have this really nice neighbor. She’s short, kind of round, and a minister. I’m not religious, but she’s the kind of religious person I can appreciate, who constantly tries to live by her morals and ‘be a good Christian,’ but NEVER pushes her religion on others. Not once have I ever felt preached to by her. She’s just a sweet, sassy lady who cares about everyone around her, the kind of old-fashioned neighbor who’ll keep an eye out for you and yours, which is a rare thing in these times. I just love her to death—she’s the kind of lady you want to make cookies for and worry over when things don’t go well.

She invited me along to a Tuesday Morning store, which I understand I’d never heard of before because they don’t have them up north where I grew up. It’s actually rather fun—they get loads of discounted and discontinued stuff that hasn’t sold somewhere else, so you can get some great deals on nice stuff. I might even have to drag my husband back there for a couple pieces of kitchenware and furniture.

But mostly, it was nice to spend some time with the neighbor. Everyone tends to lump all religious people, or all people of a given religion, or all non-religious people, into stereotyped groups, just like everything else (such as that above-mentioned ‘women love to shop, especially for clothes’ stereotype). Atheists get accused of hating God or hating Christians all the time, just like Christians get accused of always trying to impose their beliefs on others. It was nice to have the reminder that there are plenty of us who are just people, who can have religion or a lack thereof be a strong part of our lives without having it separate us from our neighbors.

Differences only separate us if we let them.

Today’s review is of J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts’s Glory in Death.

Yesterday was a D&D day. We visited friends in Virginia, brought rice pudding, ate yummy spaghetti (I think when you have kids with narrow tastes and you make lots of spaghetti, you must get awfully good at making great spaghetti), and played D&D all day.

You could tell a lot of folks had had a rough, long, or stressful week. People were unusually cranky. But rather than taking that out on their friends as I’ve seen so many people do, they let it out through their characters. Our characters yelled, pulled weapons on each other, and yes, I think we had to roll initiative several times when there was no one but the party members in the room. The group even got kicked out of a part member’s aunt’s home for a couple of days.

And then we adjourned for dinner and chatted happily around the dinner table. Or adjourned for the night and had hugs and “when are we getting together next?!” all around.

That’s when you know you have great friends—when you all can let your stresses out together through your hobbies and activities, and at the end of the night you all still love each other just as much as when you arrived in the morning.

Recently I stumbled across a great post over at Grimwell’s awesome blog called nobody rides for free. It’s basically a discussion of why WotC would charge money for their upcoming “Gleemax” service. To quote Grimwell:

When someone says “I don’t care if they cover their costs.” I hear “I don’t care enough about their product to care if they go under.” As the title of this entry says, nobody rides for free. Companies that fail to make profits quickly fail to make products — because they are closed.

So if you like a product you had damn well better care if the company that makes it is covering their costs. Businesses are not charities, and if they go out of business, that ends the product cycle. Period.

There’s more to his post (go read it!), some thought-provoking devil’s advocate replies, and great responses from Grim.

I had to respond, and then post my response here, because this is an argument I’ve come across before in other forms and I have strong feelings about it. Here’s what I said in response to his post:

This reminds me of the old argument about how tabletop company X is trying to ‘rob’ its customers by ‘forcing’ them to buy endless supplements.

Which always kind of got my blood boiling a bit (no, I was never employed by those companies, but did freelance for a while, and had a friend who was a line developer at White Wolf for a while).

First, since when are they forcing anyone to buy anything? Buy the supplements you want; ignore the rest.

And second, how the heck else are they supposed to keep their doors open and pay their staff? The money has to come from somewhere, and if it doesn’t, that game you so love goes out of print and eventually you can’t get it any more except by shelling out $100 or whatever at an ebay auction. Yeah, that’s SO much better.

Sigh.

Part of it, IMO, is that folks constantly confuse what they want to pay for something with the value of something. The value of something is a much more complex issue that’s partly how much you’re willing to pay for it, and partly how much it cost to provide, and partly how much it costs to keep in operation. When those various aspects of value don’t jibe at all, then you have a problem that causes products to sink. If we all could pay what we want to pay for things, everything in life would be free. Nice thought, but impossible goal.

Another part of it is the current attitude of entitlement that infects so many people. “I want it, therefore I’m entitled to have it” seems to be the prevalent attitude. It doesn’t matter who else is put out or has put huge amounts of time & effort into what you want—if you want it, you should get it for whatever you’re willing to shell out, right? That’s the attitude that really seems to be at the heart of the problem, and the one that makes me throw up my hands in disgust.

If you don’t think something is worth the price, don’t pay for it and don’t use it. I really think it’s that simple. If enough other people agree that it isn’t worth the price, the product will fail and you’ll be proven right. Otherwise, if you really want to use it, pay up. The only time I can see a decent argument against this is when you’re talking about vital services like power, basic food & heat, and gaming doesn’t fall into that!

To me, “I wouldn’t pay more than $5 a year for that” or “I wouldn’t pay for that service” is a perfectly valid argument. But “they shouldn’t charge for that” doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t take into account any of the other aspects of the situation.

On an almost-related note, I’ve been using the bar code scanner I got to enter books into my LibraryThing catalog (semi-relevant because the ability to BC scan is what pushes some people over the edge into using LT’s fee-based service over other sites’ free services). I have to say, it’s a joy to use! I had some trouble at first until my husband figured out that I was trying to go too slowly. I’m used to finicky devices that you have to be slow and careful with. As it turns out, you’re supposed to whip this thing across bar codes with great speed! Wheee! I entered about a hundred or so books in last night in the maybe 30-45 minutes before I went off to an appointment, and most of that time was spent running back and forth to my bookshelves.

…a distinct lack of keeping up with everyone’s blogs and my own reviewing and such this week. I’m trying to make it to my tests on Thursday without having to rush the date to the doctor’s, and it’s taking some trial and error to figure out what I can eat without having serious problems. As it turns out I’m extremely glad I happened to have review copies of Tosca Reno’s Eat Clean Diet and Eat Clean Diet Cookbook—it’s perfect super-low-fat food, which is just right when I’m potentially having gallbladder problems. It’s also surprisingly delicious so far. Most such diet cookbooks are on the bland side for my taste, but so far these aren’t. There’s a parchment-baked fish recipe in there that’s wonderful, despite the fact that white fish isn’t my favorite. There’s also a very simple roasted salmon recipe that’s wonderful.

Along those lines, if you’re having problems with fatty food making you sick, umm, salmon is a REALLY BAD idea. You’d think that’d be obvious, of course. But there I am thinking, salmon’s all healthy, a bit will be fine, right? *groan* Thus ensued much pain and a day of mild fever. (I never claimed to be a rocket scientist, and when I’m tired I’m even worse.) Never got above 99.5 F; if it had broken 100 I probably would have been heading straight for the doctor’s. Anyway, since then I’ve been going back and forth between normal and 99.5, and eating super-low-fat food. We made oat bran bread this weekend from Whole Grain Breads and that was PERFECT.

One thing I find really surprising about all this is how much my body & brain conspire to make me do what’s right. For the most part, with a few exceptions that fool my taste buds (such as the aforementioned salmon), fatty or oily food doesn’t even sound good, much less taste good.

But, I’m also really exhausted through all of this, so I’m getting almost nothing done. I’m sleeping more than anything. I think that’s probably the most frustrating part, as I have a bunch of books I want to read & review, T-shirts to make, a project to work on, gardening I want to do. The cats worry over me, which is really cute. I wake up from a nap sleeping on my side and find one on curled up on my hip and the other on my side.

I am hoping, however, to review Michael Turback’s Mocha tomorrow. I did manage to slip one not-too-fatty last recipe in this weekend (well okay, I also sipped it really slowly and had it in several sittings) and I think we’ve made enough out of the book to review it at this point.

Anyway, none of this is meant to be whining, since gallbladder problems are common and generally not very serious (assuming that’s what’s going on, which seems likely). Partly I’m babbling out of tiredness and partly I wanted to make sure folks weren’t left thinking I’d just abandoned the various things I should be getting done.

I wonder if Comcast realizes that their catchphrase has become a sarcastic statement used to refer to an event that’s surprising (or should be, but isn’t) in an annoyingly bad way?

It’s the start of the TV season, and there was an unusual number of shows that looked potentially interesting. I set up the DVR to record by series since Comcast has finally given us that ability, and set it up for six shows. A very high number for us; usually we’re recording two to three at most.

So how many did it actually record?

Two. Yes, that’s 2. T-W-O two.

A 33% success rate is pretty foul. Particularly since some of those are recordings I’ve had set up previously, which simply stopped working randomly.

Random observations:

Insta-food sucks. I end up living off of the stuff when my husband is out of town on business, as he was last week, and it really really sucks. At least the stuff from Trader Joe’s isn’t half bad, but last week I ended up eating stuff from the regular grocery store, and it was so horrid and fat-filled that the very idea of it made me feel nauseous by the end of the week. Yes, that was despite trying to pick my insta-food fairly carefully. I know, I should cook real food, but being alone does very bad things to my motivation level.

Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison is an awesome book. Read it. It also makes a great basis for a writer’s exercise or two.

I can’t decide if it’s hilarious or just tragic when your cat barfs all over your bay window. I guess the cleanup is tragic and the memory is hilarious!

I swear I’ll write something more coherent soon.

Chaotic Selfish