In New England we had little black crickets that didn’t even make me—notorious bug wimp that I am—nervous. In Maryland we don’t have crickets, we have Dire Crickets, a reference that any D&D geek will understand in a heartbeat. They’re about five times the size of the things in New England, and way weirder looking. They look like those old crickets after a radioactivity “incident” out of a horror movie about mutants. Worse, they can survive being played with, hunted, and even chomped on by my cat for more than an hour. They’ll repeatedly play dead until he loses interest, then go on the move again. I had to trap one under an empty tea tin the other morning until my husband woke up (I’m enough of a wimp under normal circumstances when it comes to bugs; it’s worse when I have insomnia and bare feet).
Latest book review: John Levitt’s New Tricks. Coming soon: a review of Patricia Potter’s Behind the Shadows.
The holiday shopping has begun! We’re seeing sales jump of our long-time faves the level 70 designs, as well as of our new level 80 designs. Grab ‘em now!
Speaking of holiday shopping, don’t forget the etsy store (errantdreams.etsy.com), filled with hand-made jewelry, bookmarks, etc. in a wide variety of price ranges and styles! More going up every day, and more than 100 items already up; we’ve recently started adding the newest bookmarks we’ve been making. Here are a few example photos:
I spent most of last night vomiting violently and repeatedly, possibly as a reaction to an antibiotic. I was so sore by the time there was nothing left in my stomach, from all the spasming, but Cahlash pressed himself against my back in bed, stretched out against it like a perfectly-warmed and furry heating pad. It was awesome, and definitely helped me to get a couple precious hours of sleep. The cats didn’t even fight for once. And when we got up, Cahlash kept trying to lead my husband out to the living room where I was while he was getting dressed. Selene also spent much of the night cuddled against my shin. They get so concerned when their people are sick. It’s precious.
Anyway, I’d just like to say…WE WERE RIGHT.
*ahem* Now that I have that out of my system…
Several people kept saying that Selene’s new-found viciousness was most likely a behavioral problem. We kept insisting there was more to it than that and that something seemed wrong. Turns out both cats have an infection of some kind. As soon as we know what kind, we can treat it and hopefully the violence will end and they’ll feel better!
In the meantime, we’re trying a product our vet recommended called “feliway”. It’s a feline facial pheremone, the same one cats use to mark you as theirs when they rub their faces on you. It’s supposed to calm them, and you can get it as a spray or as a room diffuser (called “comfort zone”). We’re using the latter. I don’t notice any odor, and it doesn’t bother my many sensitivities & allergies. We’re also cautiously optimistic that it might be starting to have some effect. We trust our vet’s recommendations, and even the lady at the checkout at the pet store enthused over the stuff.
Now I just have to keep the broth down that I had for breakfast, and go see the doctor again in an hour.
I’m worried that one of our cats may be ill or in pain or something. She tends to get territorial and cranky now and then, but lately she’s practically been trying to kill her brother. It seemed to center around a cat that was coming to the back door; she’d see it through the glass, hurl herself at it, and when that didn’t work she’d go after her brother. We closed off the room that door is in, though, and yet today she went after her brother worse than ever even without that. Sometimes when one of them is feeling ill or in pain they’ll get pissy at each other, so I’m worried there might be something else going on. I made a vet appointment for her on Saturday. That won’t help her stress level any, but when we reach the point where I’m afraid to allow our two cats in the same room for fear that the next time I won’t be able to separate them…
So that plus the possibility that I might have another infection and might have to go get antibiotics again are making me stressed and cranky today.
I have some very nifty new jewelry and such that I’ll be gradually posting for sale at errantdreams.etsy.com, including a few pieces that use some remarkable handmade Jaipuri pottery beads:
Harder to get things done these days. As someone with mental disorders, I find my motivation dramatically reduces during the winter months. I love winter, but the lack of light isn’t good for me. I’m sleeping much better now thanks to Seroquel, but it’s adding to the appetite-increasing effect of the Effexor, which also isn’t good. Particularly when you like to cook things like homemade honey-gingerbread marshmallows:
I plan to take most of the batch to a friend’s this weekend!
Two brief thoughts on politics. As usual, I prefer to stick to process here when I touch on politics at all, not partisanship. So take partisan arguments to other blogs.
First, I read an article this morning that said that young people really aren’t turning out much so far in Florida’s early voting. Guys—VOTE! We all like to complain that past generations have left us with a mess of a world, politically, environmentally, etc. But one of the major ways we have of trying to make a difference is by voting for the candidate we think will best clean things up. So I don’t care who you vote for—just do it! It doesn’t take that much effort!
Second, after Obama put out his ad quoting John McCain as saying he’d need a VP who could advise him on economic matters, and then showing Palin winking, there appeared a fresh wave of complaints of sexism. As a woman I’m calling bullshit. The question of whether Palin is qualified to lead the country in economic matters is a perfectly legitimate question. If she is, she’ll withstand the questioning by proving she has the credentials. If she isn’t, well, it’s important to find that out. We ask these questions of male candidates all the time. Refusing to push a female candidate for her credentials just because she’s female, THAT would be just as sexist as saying that she couldn’t understand economic matters because she’s a woman.
I’ve been making more jewelry, and I’m very pleased with some of the new pieces. Here are two that I particularly like, Ice Queen Jewels:
You can click on the images above to look at larger versions at deviantArt. Or, you can click on the text links above them to see 5 different photos of each at Etsy, and to buy them if you wish!
My last customer commented that she was extremely impressed with our packaging. You see, I try to package each piece separately within a little jewelry gift box inside of a padded mailer. I do this for entirely practical reasons. Our mailman has driven me insane with his treatment of packages. He’s shoved things into the mailbox so hard they split open and tore the contents open. He throws things at the house—and I don’t just mean a tiny little lob. So when I package something, I ask myself, “How can I package this so it would survive treatment by someone like him?” If this has a side effect of giving the customer a really nice little box for the jewelry, that’s great!
It’s been two weeks since I skinned my knee and it’s finally scabbing over. I’ve had notoriously weak ankles all my life—I do exercises specifically to strengthen them, but nothing ever seems to work. I was on the last step of the stairs to the sidewalk out front when my ankle gave way. My foot stayed on the step, and my knee hit the concrete below it. I’m really very lucky that all I did was skin my knee. But it took enough layers off that the center refused to scab over for two weeks. Once or twice a day I had to clean out my knee and make sure it wasn’t getting infected. It’s great to finally be able to wear long pants without having to tape gauze over my knee!
Anyway, between the fact that I was in constant knee-pain until a day or two ago, and the days getting darker, and my husband having been out of town on a trip, I’ve been incredibly unproductive. But I’ve made some jewelry, and I’m looking forward anxiously to this election being over. I hope you all have a great weekend!
We’ve pretty much finished rolling out the level 80 T-shirt designs at cafepress. This means two things: first, we expect to phase out the level 70 designs around the end of the year; we’ll keep them on sale until then, so grab ‘em while you can! Second, we think the level 80 designs are even better than the level 70 designs, and the level 70 designs have been quite popular. So be the first to get your own!
Also, cafepress has added some new items, like travel mugs and the flip mino camcorder. Yes, a pocket-sized camcorder. What will they add next?! Pssst—level 80 items make great holiday gifts for gamers!
In unrelated news, I almost always put brief excerpted versions of my reviews on Amazon, just for the heck of it. I thought it was kind of cool when I went from starting out in the 700,000s (back before there were millions of users posting reviews) to the 700s. Apparently today they started calculating the reviewer ranking differently. Partly to stop people from “ballot-box stuffing”, or finding ways to rate their own reviews. Partly to emphasize whether a person’s reviews are seen as helpful or not, so that quantity doesn’t trump quality. And partly to emphasize newness of reviews, so new reviewers get a chance to climb up the ladder.
And suddenly my rank went, literally overnight, from 679 to 64. That’s pretty cool.
… oh freaking crud! Wordpress ate my review of Bardsley’s latest book. I’ll have to recreate it later. Grumble…
And then, the post-readathon wrapup meme from Dewey’s blog:
1. Which hour was most daunting for you? Hour one. I’m on a new med partially to help me sleep, so I tend to be a little sleepy first thing in the morning. Made it a bit tough to get down to business at first.
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? On the one hand, boy did Fiona Patton’s The Golden Tower keep me engaged! On the other hand, it SO kept me engaged that it drained me dry and I couldn’t read anything else afterward.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Erm… nope. Can’t think of anything.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? Thank you for having someone come around and remind everyone ahead of time! Life is so chaotic that I’m not wholly certain I would have remembered otherwise.
5. How many books did you read? Only two. But in my defense, one of them was incredibly rich in detail.
6. What were the names of the books you read? I read the text portions of The Big Book of Backyard Cooking so I could finally review it, and I read Fiona Patton’s The Golden Tower.
7. Which book did you enjoy most? Patton. Is. Amazing. ‘Nuff said.
8. Which did you enjoy least? It was all good.
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? N/A
10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? It all depends on whether I’m going to be home on the day it happens on. And I can’t help it—I just have to be a reader.
Have you ever read a book that swept you up so thoroughly, so completely, into its world that you came out of it feeling… like you haven’t quite left it yet? Like its echoes are still present around you?
That’s how I feel now that I’ve finished The Golden Tower. I know I didn’t quite finish twelve hours… almost, but not quite. I have to call this it, though, because my brain feels like a sponge that’s been squeezed dry, and I don’t think I’m capable of either starting a different book just yet, or writing the review of this one.
I won’t be home tomorrow to take part in the post-’thon activities, but I fully intend to drop by Dewey’s blog on Monday and indulge. Better late than never, eh?
Look for my review of this one on Monday, and good luck to all the rest of you who are still going!
Title of book(s) read since last update: Fiona Patton, The Golden Tower
Number of books read since you started: 2
Pages read since last update: 63
Running total of pages read since you started: 342
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 1 hr 10 min
Amount of time spent reviewing since last update: 0 min.
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 7 hours 25 min
Running total of time spend reading & reviewing since you started: 8 hrs 30 min.
Reviews written: 3
Cups of tea drunk: 2
Cups of coffee drunk: 2
5:55 pm: Hey, I spent a whole uninterrupted hour reading! At this rate I doubt it will be more than two more hours until I’m done.
Title of book(s) read since last update: Fiona Patton, The Golden Tower
Number of books read since you started: 1
Pages read since last update: 48 (on p. 262)
Running total of pages read since you started: 279
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 60 min
Amount of time spent reviewing since last update: 0 min.
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 6 hours 15 min
Running total of time spend reading & reviewing since you started: 7 hrs 20 min.
Reviews written: 3
Cups of tea drunk: 2
Cups of coffee drunk: 2
4:45 pm: Yum. 3-cheese pizza, followed by vanilla & chocolate ice cream over crumbled graham cracker. Yes, I do usually eat more healthfully than this, but about once a week we have dinner from a box. At least it’s usually a good-quality pizza that isn’t greasy. Plenty of flavor. Anyway, back to my reading!
Oh, and I have decided that I have a goal for this readathon after all: when I finish this book, I’m going to call it for the night. This book is just too immersive and engrossing. I couldn’t immediately move on to another book right after it.
Title of book(s) read since last update: Fiona Patton, The Golden Tower
Number of books read since you started: 1
Pages read since last update: 13 (on p. 214)
Running total of pages read since you started: 231
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 15 min
Amount of time spent reviewing since last update: 0 min.
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 5 hours 15 min
Running total of time spend reading & reviewing since you started: 6 hrs 20 min.
Reviews written: 3
Cups of tea drunk: 2
Cups of coffee drunk: 2
3:05 pm: Mmmmm. Acai berry green tea, followed by much reading.
3:45 pm: Time for second break: gotta feed the cats, probably followed by an early dinner.
It’s absolutely fascinating to read this author’s take on the childhood and growth of a new god…
Title of book(s) read since last update: Fiona Patton, The Golden Tower
Number of books read since you started: 1
Pages read since last update: 40 (on p. 201)
Running total of pages read since you started: 218
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 40 min
Amount of time spent reviewing since last update: 0 min.
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 5 hours.
Running total of time spend reading & reviewing since you started: 6 hrs 5 min.
Reviews written: 3
Cups of tea drunk: 2
Cups of coffee drunk: 2
