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:

Oy… I meant to post a bunch of stuff today. I put up some new designs in the Gamers’ Heaven cafepress shop, finished a book to review, wanted to chat a bit about a 48-hour reading marathon coming up in June (and some friends who will most likely be guest-posting here as a part of that)… lots of stuff like that. I also wanted to do more agave nectar-baking today, although I think that’ll have to wait until Sunday.

Anyway, at least I did get some gardening done, and I’ll post a slideshow of the latest pics at the bottom. I’m also going to see Ironman tonight—usually I try to avoid opening weekend, but it’s one of those ‘meet up with a bunch of friends’ things. It’s also at 11 pm, which is rather late for me. And tomorrow there’s a friend’s retirement picnic…

But I’m babbling, so I’ll just post those pics and go. Have a great weekend!

Sorry about the lack of reviews. It turned out there’s a gluten-free baking mix recipe in the gluten-free eating book, and I wanted to test it out before reviewing that book. I just made a final recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey, so I hope to review that soon. I also plan to make a final recipe from the superfoods cookbook tonight.

Wednesday was the upper endoscopy. Apart from a killer headache that I couldn’t take anything for (no food, water, etc. for 6 hours before the procedure) it was quick and easy (not to mention I was blessedly unconscious for it). No ulcers; it looks like I just had acid reflux masquerading as gallbladder trouble, etc. A month on an acid-reducing proton-pump inhibitor med plus an improved diet has definitely helped, so, looks like I’ll be taking an acid-reducer for a while. Meanwhile they’re doing biopsies just to make sure there’s no h pylori infection or celiac disease (since the latter runs in the family and the former is often a cause of acid & ulcer problems).

Then I spent yesterday gardening, since my tomato seedlings arrived Tuesday. I planted nine seedlings (three each of three varieties), and six medusa pepper plants that I bought at the last minute (a decorative but edible sweet pepper with a bush growth habit). Some nifty new furniture that we got also arrived yesterday.

Here are a few gardening photos:

The red thing around the tomato seedling reflects red light at the plant, which is supposed to lead to a larger harvest. It acts as a mulch so you don’t have to weed around the tender roots. And if you pour water into the tray, it directs it down toward the roots of the plant, so they grow strong and deep instead of shallow.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve gone crazy with the camera.

Oh come on, you just knew it couldn’t last. I have a camera. I have cats. Of course this would eventually mean cat photos. If you’re insane enough to want to view lots of ‘em (well okay, I’ve been trying to exercise some minor bit of restraint) you’ll find more at my flickr album, errant cats. Yes, I use my flickr account strictly for my cat photos. I realize that’s silly and I don’t care.

I’ll at least try to stick to only one or two photos posted directly here, so if you don’t care about a ton of cat photos you won’t have to run screaming. Deal? Good.

Now I just have to upload my latest homemade pizza photos to my photobucket account before I finish with that book and review it…

Oh, speaking of cat photos, go look at this post at B&b ex libris for a hysterically unusual tale of cat love and an adorable cat photo.

And now, Cahlash and Selene:

Sometimes I latch the screen door and leave the door open; they love to roll around in the sun in the doorway. They’re remarkably kitten-like given that they’re nearly 7 years old!

Since I had to order a case for my camera anyway, I ordered Elizabeth Vaughan’s ‘Warlord’ trilogy, using the excuse that it would bring me over the limit for free shipping. (It just leapt into my cart, I swear!) It got shipped in two parts, and although the first package that arrived listed the first two books of the series on the invoice, instead I received one of the books and… a classical music CD I’ve never even heard of before. That was odd. Luckily Amazon has a very easy return process, although they had no option to select for ‘you sent me the wrong item’.

Anyway, speaking of fiction, today’s review is of Lynn Viehl’s upcoming Twilight Fall. Enjoy!

I haven’t actually taken any cat photos in forever (one of these years we’ll get a camera, I swear), but I’m feeling the need to share a pic anyway. Even though this was taken more than three years ago, back when we lived in New Hampshire, it’s very accurate to what the cats look like now. Most of the old photos show a much paler Cahlash; we call him our cappuccino cat now, but he used to be white(!). One advantage of old photos of Selene are that her fur is in better shape, actually. Unfortunately, ever since the dental incident of ‘06, when for a couple of weeks she couldn’t groom herself because she was wearing a plastic collar, she’s had a bad tendency to pull at her fur, leaving small bare patches. I suspect it has something to do with how frustrated she got over being unable to groom, which left her repeatedly and rather aggressively grooming those couple of places she could reach, namely her legs and hindquarters.

Oh, hey… Amazon reviewer rank of 994. Broke 1000! That’s kinda cool.