“…a deficiency of Mayhem.”

Dust off your haiku-writing skills and write KitKatKnit a humorous haiku about knitting and/or cats before noon PST, February 6, for your chance to win some “fiber goodies.”

Ruth is desperately trying to find some yarn – she’s looking for Berroco Ultra Alpaca Lite (Ocean Mix), Berroco Ultra Alpaca (Carnelian), and Koigu KPPPM P315 (sort of lightish earthtones, heavy on the grey). Let her know if you can help – she’s already tried Ravelry.

Limedragon has some information about knitting comics – one online and one in print. And don’t forget that Natalie Dee often has knitting-related comics – does this encompass the misguided power of denial or what?!

Hmm – is it just my imagination, or does this IKEA hack of turning a doll bed into a cat bed (about $30) result in something very similar to this $300 pet lounger?

Anyone who’s tried to decipher my handwriting probably thinks that this is a very bad idea indeed.

Tea hee! Just when you thought it was safe to drink your tea

Congrats to my neighborhood co-op, the Wedge, for making the 2009 Saveur Top 100! (It’s in the American Bounty section.)

The Uptown Mpls Blog has more gorgeous pictures of my neighborhood – these are from an evening cross-country ski race (with luminaria) on my beloved Lake of the Isles last weekend.

I’m pretty sure that this primer on Minneapolis skyway etiquette can be applied to numerous mass transit situations. (“Crazy people, y’all have got to stop talking to me.”)

The dismal science indeed – college is 248.4% more expensive than it was in 1990?! Yikes.

Harlequin’s giving away 16 free ebooks to celebrate its 60th anniversary. The paranormal title is Kiss Me Deadly by Michele Hauf. And eHarlequin.com is giving away a trip for two to Mexico. (Do read the fine print first!)

Reading Update
Oceans of Fire, Safe Harbor, and Turbulent Sea (Drake Sisters, Books 3, 5-6) by Christine Feehan. Dear Christine Feehan: You can definitely write a compelling story, but please go back to remedial author school and review the section on s3x scenes. I think you must’ve skipped class that day. Your reliance on the words “channel” and “sheath” (to their occurrence up to six times in two pages!) is distracting and contrived. Thank you.
Edge of Darkness (The Men of T-FLAC: The Edge Brothers, Book 10) by Cherry Adair. Not great, but definitely enjoyable paranormal romance about wizards.
Whisper To the Blood (A Kate Shugak Novel) by Dana Stabenow. I received this book as an advance reading copy through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. I’ve been reading this series for a while now, and even in order (so you know I really like it). This is the sixteenth Kate Shugak mystery. I strongly encourage you to read the previous 15 (in order!) before starting this book (the first book is A Cold Day for Murder, just to get you started). If you like Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski mysteries, I think you’ll like the Kate Shugak mysteries.

Kate’s an Alaskan Native, part-time PI, and full-time “Park rat” (residents of a generic national park in Alaska, based on the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park). She’s nearly always accompanied by the mostly faithful Mutt, her half wolf, half husky. In Whisper To the Blood, a gold mining company is buying land and preparing to dig a massive open pit mine in the Park, while the Aunties shanghai Kate (more than the Aunties usually do, that is). During the first half of the book, I found myself getting cranky at Kate and companion (can’t say who that is, as it could detract from your enjoyment of the previous 15 books). But the last half of the book took me by surprise, swept me along, and left me looking forward to Book 17!

I highly recommend this series, not only for the vivid characters and intense action, but also for Stabenow’s clever writing and insights.

Oh yeah, and my favorite quote from this book? “What, you bored? Suffering from a deficiency of mayhem?” Yeah, that’d do it for me. 😉


“Huh. So that’s what’s wrong with her today.” -Chaos

30 thoughts on ““…a deficiency of Mayhem.””

  1. Not sure if you’ve read them before, but if you haven’t, you might enjoy the Key Series by Talia Gryphon. (Key To Conflict, Key To Conspiracy and Key To Redemption) They’re classified as Sci-Fi/Fan, but I’d say they’re much closer to a Paranormal Romance. A quite enjoyable read, even though I admit I got a little annoyed with how much the third book meandered all over the place. Hopefully the fourth will get back on track. 🙂

  2. I want a shark tea infuser!! WANTY WANTY WANT!! I followed all the links until I sadly found out that it isn’t for sale. *sigh* I have no interest in the red tea but I would really enjoy seeing that floating around my gigantic Alice in Wonderland teacup in the morning.

  3. That is a great picture of the kitties!

    I am LMAO at the personalized font idea – particularly because I have had to squint and sound out what I think what you’ve written says.

    🙂

  4. I read the latest Claire Fergusson/Russ Van Alsdyne book last week — once again, thanks for turning me on to those. Now to request #1 in the Shugak series!

    (And a hearty Hear! Hear! to the blog post about skyway etiquette. I would like to add my own personal ban: No people pushing strollers through the skyways between the hours of 11:30 am and 1 pm. Dudes, the rest of us only get a limited time for lunch and we don’t want to spend ANY of it stuck behind you. And that’s what I have to say about that.)

  5. I loved that skyway etiquette. It brought back all the years I spent working downtown. I guess not much changes…I haven’t worked downtown in 10 years!

  6. I have two comments today: 1)But the $300 cat lounger “has a unique mattress support system”…I’m sure Chaos and Mayhem would notice the difference. 2) How DO you people stand around in the snow like that without hurting yourselves? I’d have broken my entire body, walking around.

  7. Because I needed more books to read? Mr. M is pushing (gently) a series he picked up thanks to me (part of his Christmas gift) John Sanford Prey series. I have never seen him read a book so fast – in fact there may have been an emergency trip to the book store to get the 2nd installment.

  8. Your neighborhood has sights, you think, but my neighborhood (okay, 3 miles away) has a roving Mountain Lion! 😉 (Damn, they don’t have a link to the news story – but someone put in a security camera and ended up seeing a mountain lion across the street from their house!)

  9. Currently our kitty’s favorite resting place is the nook on top of my running shoe box (the tightest spot in the cubby). It’s just funny reading the comments on the hack and the number of people that thought that the kitty bed was too small. I mean, have they never seen a cat crawl into a space that looks about 6 inches too small for their bodies?

  10. Thanks for the mystery series recommendation. After nearly 1000 pages of Michener, I’m more than ready for a change of pace.

    I’m 100% certain that if I was stupid enough to spend $300 on a pet bed, the cats would decide that it wasn’t a worthy place to sleep.

  11. I had never seen the Modern Cat website before. It pretty much renders me speechless. I don’t spend that much on some of my people furniture.

    I don’t think you have a Mayhem deficiency. However, in the photo, May looks a little down. Like she looked out the window and there weren’t any birds because it is February and she lives in Minnesota down. Like Mom won’t get out the MWGT down.

  12. Surely you have plenty of mayhem. 😉

    I love those neighborhood photos from the cross country ski event!

    I’m the only way I’d get Katie to sleep in either bed is if I tried to sleep in it myself. (Now that would be worth a photo)

  13. There should never be a deficiency of Mayhem in your house!

    Read them in order? Why do you keep saying this? lol. But thanks for giving me the name of the 1st book!

    An over reliance on channel and sheath? Why do I want to work that into my tax interviews now?

  14. Sadly, not everyone has sufficient Chaos to make up for said deficiency of Mayhem. Alas.

    Also – I want a shark tea infuser. Though, only if I can use my own tea in it. I don’t want blood-red tea. Just normal tea, with a shark in it. Way too cool.

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