I’m doing the monthly blog over at the Aphrodisia Authors: http://www.aphrodisiaauthors.com/blog/2011/07/30/new-books

Yesterday was a special day in my house. I scrubbed from top to bottom, sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, the whole works. When it came time to try and mop my bathroom, my old bath mat had permanently stuck itself to my floor. Okay, I knew it was getting older, and it wasn’t exactly high quality to begin with. What? You could afford nice stuff right out of college? That’s what I thought.

Anyway, the bottom of the thing had worn away and the sticky stuff that kept the liner attached to the fabric was now stuck to the floor. It took a whole lot of scrubbing to get all that crap off the linoleum, too.

I have two bath mats in my bathroom, a big one in front of the tub and a smaller one in front of the sink. Since these were the same brand/age (it was the bigger one that stuck), the smaller got tossed too, just to prevent further sticky scrubfests.

This prompted an emergency redecoration of the bathroom. I’ve been meaning to get new mats, and maybe some new towels to match, so a quick trip to Ross and Bed, Bath, and Beyond and I thought I was all set. Awesome, pretty new bath stuff. Yay!

Until.

Until I put everything in the washer and dryer. Yes, I wash it all first, it’s been hauled in trucks, sitting in warehouses, and then touched, petted, coughed, and sneezed on by countless customers at the store before I got it. Ew. I read the instructions and washed everything exactly as it told me to. The towels were awesome–fluffy, luxurious, pretty. The two bath mats fell apart, the thread unraveled and they had bald patches all over them.

Oh, hell to the no was I keeping this shit.

I threw both of them in the bag, grabbed my receipt, and took them straight back to the store. Bed, Bath, and Beyond was great about taking them back, but I wasn’t buying another bath mat from them. I went home and did a little searching online and found that Kohl’s was having a sale in their bath department, so I made yet another trip to a store. (There may have been a side trip to BevMo for some alcoholic beverages at that point, because come on, I’d killed three bath mats in one day. Four, if you counted the smaller one I had to toss with the big one that stuck, and I do count it since I had to pay to replace it. So, four bath mats dead in one day)

I found some that worked with the towels I’d bought (I brought one to make sure I could get something close to a color coordination going on), and took them home and stuck them straight in the washer and dryer. If they were going to die on me too, I wanted to know before the return policy ran out. (There may also have been a side trip on the way home for a strawberry milkshake at In & Out. What? All I’d wanted to do that day was clean house and write. You’d need a milkshake after all this too. Don’t judge.)

From the looks of it, the Kohl’s bath mats survived. There was a little shedding, but nothing too bad. So, here are pictures of the winners of the 2011 Bath Mat Celebrity Death Match! *cheers*

Welcome to the sizzling summer contest with Sierra Dean, Crystal Jordan, JL Merrow and Shelli Stevens! Samhain Publishing is releasing four sizzling releases and we the authors of those books want to celebrate with a contest! Happy reading :D

How to enter. You must find the answers to the following questions (use hyper links above to each author’s site!) and email Shelli the answers at shelli@shellistevens.com . The prizes are certificates for $10 to either Samhain, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. Winner gets to choose. We’ll draw four winners.

The contest starts now and ends Tuesday at 8pm PST. The winners will be posted on our blogs and notified through email.

Here are the questions:

1. In Sierra’s book The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters, what is the name of Secret’s liaison with the vampire council?

2. In Crystal’s book Make Me Believe, what’s the heroine’s nickname for the town busybody?

3. In Shelli’s book Seducing Allie, what is Clint’s nickname for Allie?

4. In JL’s book, what is Larry Morton’s job at Cambridge?

WINNERS announced!
You’ll be contacted by one of the authors later today. Congrats!

BIRDSOOONG@aol.com
robindpdx@yahoo.com
booklover0226@gmail.com
judimello@gmail.com

If you haven’t checked out Etsy.com, you really should. It is, as the Prof. Moriarty likes to call it, “that artsy shit website.” He’s an eloquent man, that Prof.

I have to say that he’s not wrong, so much as just poking fun. He thinks “etsy” is a silly, nonsensical name. I think that was actually the point. In any case, I buy quite a bit of stuff there, simply because I can’t get it anywhere else. Most of the stuff is vintage, one of a kind, and/or handmade. I buy pieces for costumes I have to wear (not a fan of costumes, but do it right if you have to do it), jewelry, bath and lotiony stuff, etc. It’s amazing what you can find on there. Seriously, let me show you a tiny sampling of what’s available.

Things I’ve bought there:

A custom corset and skirt for the Smutketeers photoshoot from Damsel in this Dress. She did such a great job, and the steel boning on that sucker really cinched me in in all the right places. (That’s me on the far right in the picture.)

A custom set of earrings from Earth’s Opulence. I have the most sensitive ears on the planet. I can only wear certain metals and the earrings can only be so heavy or my ears swell up like ping-pong balls. She was very cool about customizing her earrings for me, making them smaller and lighter so I could wear them. So freaking pretty! This is them. I got a couple of pairs of extra dangles for the earrings, so I can switch them out if I feel like it. Neat, right?

A custom ring from Monkeys Always Look that’s stamped with the coordinates to a very special place. I’m not showing you my actual ring, but here’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

And I fully admit to eyeballing her custom vintage silverware garden markers. She may be hearing from me again soon.

This one’s not garden-friendly, but it makes me laugh every time I look at it.

This one is from pixxxie pie & posie, which I only partially bought. It’s this great handmade, steampunky bath oil, lotion, and perfume shop. See? The gear work is just so nifty.

The Smuketeers bought this vial of perfume oil as part of our raffle basket for the Authors After Dark conference (which is how I only partially bought something). La Petite Morte…so fitting for a group of smut peddlers, don’t you think?

Okay, I was talked into starting to post again, but it’s going to be on a pretty limited basis. We’ll see how it goes. I’m going to try for twice a month, not every single day like I was doing. *deep breath* I can do this and not get overwhelmed by having too much to do, right? Right??

Anyway. Hi, again. If anyone is still listening. *taps microphone* Is this thing on?