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:
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”.
Today’s review is of Mollie Katzen’s Recipes: Soups. It’s good, but it didn’t bowl me over. Which is too bad, because it’s exactly the kind of food I could use right now.
Sorry for so few reviews, posts, visits to other folks’ blogs, etc. this week. It’s been a very low-energy week. I finally saw the gastroenterologist yesterday, and he basically told me this: yep, looks like my gallbladder is slowly deteriorating and on its way out. But until a test like the HIDA scan or ultrasound shows that unequivocally (the HIDA results were borderline), a surgeon won’t be willing to take it out. So in the meantime, we try a few drugs that probably won’t do much but might if I’m lucky, and mostly we wait until my gallbladder gets bad enough that tests aren’t equivocal and a surgeon will take it out.
As the doc said, “welcome to 2007.”
On the one hand, I’m glad to have surgeons be a bit conservative, and not want to just open patients up and take out our innards at the drop of a hat. Every time we go under anaesthesia and they open us up there’s some risk, even if the procedure is incredibly minor, like this one. However, when they know a certain set of symptoms and test results mean they’ll have to do it eventually, then I can’t help thinking delaying is mostly about insurance: i.e., they won’t do the procedure unless they can prove to insurance they had to. Which means that in the meantime, I have pain and nausea.
*grumble, grumble*
Well, at least it’ll force me to eat a very low-fat diet, because damn do I hate nausea with a passion.
Anyway, I am aware that most of the site (the regular pages, rather than the blogs) is inaccessible right now. Unfortunately I need to wait for Jeffrey to get home from work to do anything about it if it doesn’t recover on its own. In the meantime, I can distract you with the rather hysterical shirt design Jervis came up with:
Also, since most of our old WoW guild has kind of died away until nearly all that’s left in terms of active players are a bunch of us who all know each other in real life, Jervis decided it was time to just go form our own guild, so we could have a guild vault and all that fun stuff. I don’t know who suggested it, but somehow we ended up with a guild name of “Innocent Bystander.” I find it incredibly funny to have that under my character names!
Since I’ve been so low-energy this week I’ve been playing around in the Pirates of the Burning Sea open beta. I love that game, and look forward to perhaps writing something of a review of it. I adore playing around with the economy. Wealth is your friend. 
Of course, going out and pirating merchant ships is an awful lot of fun too…
Oh, and I almost forgot. Apropos of nothing, you’ll need a whole box of tissues for this story.
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!
*blinks sleepily and glances at the watch*
Yes, yes it is.
Here are some links to the latest book reviews:
I now have the ability to easily add new links to the main page of the site, so it’s being updated quickly now. I’m in the middle of reading Bill James’s Wolves of Memory and hope to have a review up for that Monday at latest.
An early-morning conversation:
Me: I’ve noticed a pattern. I’m most prone to insomnia after sugary, fatty desserts.
My husband: Another good reason to eat well and take care of ourselves.
Me: Oh, speaking of, I ran some EVE missions last night and sent you another 3 million ISK for implants.
My husband: I’ll pick up some cupcakes on the way home from work.
Actual conversation.
I deployed three new designs to the cafepress stores last night. One went to Caffeinated Chicanery, the writing-reading-cooking-humor-etc. store:
THAT
They told me I couldn’t
wear that on a T-shirt
Okay, so we might be over-fond of wordplay and irony-based humor, but I think lots of other people appreciate it too.
The other two went to Gamers’ Heaven, our gamers & geeks store:
It’s the companion piece to our Level 70 Mom design; I noticed sales of the latter were going up noticeably as the Christmas season approaches, figured folks were buying them as gifts, and thought it would be nice to have a matching design for dads too. So I set our business partner to the task of brainstorming image designs, and then I put them together. Fun process. 
The other is called ‘Boss Faction,’ and it’s for all you working Warcraft or other mmorpg players:
I’m not kissing ass
I’m just grinding boss faction
Don’t forget if you sign up for the monthly store newsletters (left-hand navigation column, at the bottom) you’ll get access to a subscribers’-only sale each month. Also you won’t have to worry about missing our special announcement later this season!
That’s it for now, I think, although I’m sleepy enough that I’m not sure.
