don't make 'em like they used to

I got a new lamp to replace an old one I've had since... well, since I was significantly younger.  The first thing I noticed is that it's new and shiny and not much different than the original.  The base is a bit less childlike, crisper, and I like the switch with the definitive switching sound rather than the rotational clicks the other one had.  Much more... me.

The second thing I noticed is that it's shorter.  No big deal.

Then I go to bend the neck and my hand slides all over the place.  The black "cable wrap" they put on there is not only brittle and, well, cable-wrap-like, but it's not secured.  To anything.  They pretty much wrap cable wrap around the metal neck (which I can easily see if I pull down on the wrap) and then seal the seam together, likely with heat or something, so I can't simply yank the mess off.

The light is perfectly functional, but the wrap must come off if gorilla glue or somesuch can't hold that sucker in place.  This inattention to detail about something rather important (you seriously can't move it suddenly without having things slide around) is very sad.

The other one is held by the fact the plastic wrap stuff is a) higher quality I think and b) sunk into the plastic on either end.

Anywho, we'll work with it.  It's a nice cheap lamp at any rate.  :)

~w

O...M...G... I love tea.

I have been making irish breakfast, earl grey, and english breakfast tea to take to work with me... in bulk, you know, have it in a thermos and such.  As such I sort of took it for granted.

Rose Puerh.  Dark.  One cup at a time, freshly made.  Wow.  I'd forgotten what really good tea was like.

I get to have pancakes soon, too.  W00T!!  :: happiness ::

morning.

It just occurred to me that a person's idea of fun in the wee hours of the morning may not be the same as mine.

I was just sitting here, logged into my work computer, watching one of the servers open connections, close them, fire off processes, write to disk... I got in here because its memory was a bit high and I was alerted, and ended up rebooting given I couldn't find a problem other than high memory utilization, but then when it came back I sat here watching it do its thing.  Not because I thought it needed watching, mind, but because it was drawing me in like a moth to a flame.  There's a reason I shy away from resource monitors.  They are the types of things that my inner geek is natively drawn to.  This means that once hooked, it is difficult to keep track of time.

The part that alarmed me was when I realized I was smiling at it thinking, "That's SO cool.  I can see you talking to your superior.  Oh!  And I can see me.  Hi, me!"

It's not good for people to have this power.  It's disturbing.  In other news, I think I want tea and eggs for breakfast.

~w

lunch! (or breakfast)

fried egg with fresh dill

fried garlic and onion (til slightly crunchy, nom nom nom)

bed of mixed greens

nasturtiums

cubes of bleu cheese

avocado

a bit of leftover turkey-rice-corn-yellowstringbeans from dinner a couple nights ago

english breakfast tea

Yum!!

Momma taught me right, but, still...

...I can be overly cautious.  Not that it's a bad thing, mind you, but when I have two very beautiful jars of kombucha in the fridge that are about a month old now and am afraid to even open them because they've been in there a whole MONTH, THAT is overkill.

I finally talked myself into opening them, mainly because we plan to make some refrigerator pickles today and I needed some empty mason jars to sterilize for the process.  So I open one.  Little bubbles from the slowed fermentation of course rise to the surface, and a mini explosion occurs.  I'm used to that in my new kombucha, so okay.  I sniff.  Smells a heck of a lot like Kombucha.  I put the lid back on and shake gently.  This time a bigger explosion on opening - the bubbles being more inclined to unstick themselves from the liquid, they wanted out.  Another whiff.  Yep, that's kombucha, all right.  SO I dump it in a glass and my mouth starts watering.  Bubbles froth to the top.  Looks like Kombucha, smells like Kombucha, acts like Kombucha.

Now I'm at the crossroads.  Recently we were warned about pickling being a botulism problem.  I had never heard of that, but I know botulism is easily obtainable with the right conditions.  The specifics had been told to me long ago by Mum, but suffice it to say, the b-word now floated to the surface of my mind given the lack of specific memory to how botulism comes about.

At this point the stuff has not been put into my body.  Maybe I shouldn't drink it.  But it looks so good, and it's one of two Kombucha jars I have left anyway.  The new batch will take a week to finish!!  It's been in the FRIDGE for Pete's sake, it's highly acidic, surely that combination, assuming I sterilized everything, will retard growth of other stuff.  Right?  For the most part, at least.  In one month, I would hope so.  I'm sure I've done worse.

I take a sip.  Tastes like Kombucha.  By now, it is possible that millions of tiny little bacteria have infested my stomach.  But by now, I have stopped listening to Mum's warnings in my head.  I take another sip.  I breathe the vapours back through my nose.  Yup, that's Kombu-- wait.  What was that?  I put the glass down, still recycling the vapours through the back of my nose and throat.  What IS that?  Did it SPOIL?  It doesn't taste quite like spoilage.  It almost tastes like... Irish Breakfast Tea.

Now I'm perplexed.  I've been using Lipton bagged tea.  I take a tiny sip and there it is again in the back of my nose.  Irish Breakfast Tea.  I was just about to dump it when it hit me:  A month ago, I was using Irish Breakfast Tea.  I had run out of Lipton and added Irish to the brew in its stead.

I hover.  Am I sure?  Am I 100% sure?  I sniff.  No sign of the tea there.  I sip, another tiny sip.  By now I've already got it in me, whatever it is.  Why not make it worse?  lol.  There it is!  Irish Breakfast Tea.  Very noticeable now.  It doesn't taste bad, just... odd.

I have since read up on botulism and found out that acidic items (like vinegar or Kombucha, which makes acid like vinegar), salty ones (like brine for pickling), and refrigerated items (like my Kombucha and future pickles) are amongst the least risky fermented foods you can have when it comes to Botulism.

I was drinking the Kombucha while researching that.  There were the specifics.  All the while I had been, in the back of my mind, keeping tabs on how I felt.  The mildly drunken-like rush had hit me a while ago and cleared, but I'm used to that.  It happens almost every time I drink my first half a glass of Kombucha.  After that it fades out.  It faded as usual.  But I was waiting for my stomach to go on strike.  I was waiting for sweating.  Nausea, dry mouth, paralysis...?  Foggy mind?  Falling off my chair without any laughter?  Nothing happened.

This time, as my mother would say.

Incidentally, cold Kombucha is really, really good.  And it just occurred to me that if botulism is going to occur, it would be while Kombucha is brewing.  The stuff itself requires warmth, it's moist, and for a while, it's not nearly as acidic as the finished product.  Hm.  Maybe I should look into this a little bit more...

~paranoid but okay with that

Tea snobbery and rambles

Dale brought in the mail yesterday left a tea catalogue on my desk with a note:

"You might be a tea snob when you get tea news."

I have informed him that it's a catalogue as well as a newsletter, thankyouverymuch.

Admittedly, though, it might scare me a tad bit that as I was reading through the 35th page (out of 50 maybe) that I was increasingly aware of how "simple" the catalogue's verbiage was to me and how it likely isn't to the uninitiated.

I cannot believe how many things the human brain can remember in its lifetime, nor how many subjects one can delve into with gusto without even realizing it.  I also know way more about cars than I ever thought I would prior to becoming interested.

And let's not forget D&D, which is no longer a foreign term.  Or servers, or networking, or any number of things.

Where does all this stuff go?  How does it stick?  And then I go around complaining because I can't remember things on the fly as often as I used to and sometimes I forget words.  I think I need to accept that my brain is going to age like everyone else's and I should be glad I had one to age in the first place!!  It truly is a remarkable computer in there.  I remember that for 20 years of my life I wandered around with 20 or more thoughts coursing through my brain simultaneously.  It drove me crazy when it got really speedy in there... it felt like a multitude of Europe Express tracks whizzing around delivering lightweight cases of trinkets and treasures.  I have always had issues forming spoken words - the mouth is so slow compared to the fingers - but at the time it was worse.  Now I talk "slow" (for me) because I can't come up with the words, but it used to be because the words I came up with reflected several thoughts:

"I'm happy today"

"Look at the pretty sunset"

"I think I'll read that book later"

"What if I added a nested loop to that program"

"I could use some chocolate milk"

"This computer is too slow"

"What if I'm in a parallel universe"

could all turn into an abbreviated sentence:

"I'm happy sunset think book later added milk slow universe-- uh..."  :: blink blink ::  "I have to go."

This morning I heard Dale talking in his sleep.  He does this a lot but I usually don't catch what he's saying.  As it happened, I was watching him sleep because I woke up an hour earlier than I should have.  Must be the cup of tea I had last night, who knows - yeah, it wakes me up the next day, it doesn't KEEP me up.  So I propped myself up on my elbow, noting that the water pillow did indeed leak a little (been wondering if it was or why it wasn't) and stared creepily at him, smiling maniacally - "Whee, I can't believe I still see him when I wake up in the morning.  Is he still real?  Really real?"  Yeah, the expressions on my face must be creepy indeed.  So I'm staring at him and he starts tossing and turning a bit.  Then he smiles a bit and says, "Look at - she's wearing a hat."  Or something.  I cocked my head and hoped to hear more, but he fell silent and began to snore lightly, having concluded the little peep session into his dreamworld.  In the past I've heard him discussing technical specifications and rocket launching.  I think somniloquy is fascinating.

I don't remember what I'd dreamt but I know people I knew were in my head because I recall feeling like I was watching familiar beings and that they were OK with my presence.  I have vague memories of fields and grass and... oh.  That reminds me that I should check in with an old friend again and see how he's doing...

AND I should also contact a couple other friends of mine.  One recently moved, or was going to.  Maybe she's still in the process and could use help later today.  The other I haven't had breakfast with in several long days.  Aight, off to do the day's bidding.  I think some tea is in order, first, though.

OH YEAH and Dale and I are going to do some pickling today!!  Not actual canning, mind, but just like a 24 hour pickling fiesta.  Yum!  That should bring down the number of cukes on the counter... (of course now they'll be in the fridge)

W00T!

~w

ps NOW I'm off to do life.

The Blob

I recently read that after bottling kombucha, it still has active yeasties and bacteriumumumumums in it.  These can multiply, continuing to ferment the drink and feed off any leftover sugars and foodstuffs.  Depending on how long the drink is left lying around, especially on countertops rather than in the fridge (which slows down the reproduction rate of the yeasts and bacterium), these new little colonies can create what kombucha makers refer to as "blobs."  They are jelly-fish-like blobs of goo, pretty much.  They are said to be a surprise to many drinkers, but that they are safe to consume.

I was rather hoping I'd stumble across one of these and so tonight, I inspected one of my bottles before consumption, hoping to see one such jelly fish blob floating around in my kombucha.  I saw nothing.

Disheartened, I drank some.  I drank some more.  I kept drinking.  All of a sudden, SURPRISE!!  Uh... slimy, weird, blobby, chewy thing.  What the... Oh wait, is this the infamous blob??  It is indeed.  Larger than expected, and very difficult to see... it was floating sideways by the time I located the half-spit-out blob in the kombucha.

My drink made a blob.

I tried to eat it but ... just couldn't, somehow.  I held it up for Dale, comparing it rather scientifically to booger snot as it hung down from my fingertips, swaying slimily as it oozed downward yet somehow held together, dripping kombucha off of itself.  Dale agreed with the booger snot comment, making a rather contorted face as if one of disgust, and said he wouldn't drink it, either.  Well, of course he wouldn't, he doesn't like kombucha.  Zheezh.  ;)

Anywho, I've got a Blob.  I suppose I can't put it in a jar of kombucha now because I spit on it and human spit contains more icky bacteria than a kombucha colony has good.  I guess I'll compost it instead.  The plants might like it.  :)

~w

Something's not right

...when you have work and personal life's calendars, cameras, email, documents, phones, tasklists, notes, diversions, tools, e-books, videos and photographs on a single device that you can pocket... and then you plug a pair of good speakers into it as if it's a hi fi system.  And it sounds good.

The world is finally starting to really scare me.

Fry bread, me style

I've probably mentioned fry bread before, but this one is so easy and chewy and yummy that I'll post it here.  I made it up on the fly last night when I was in the mood for salad and... something heavier and tastier than white bread.

Heat an oiled fry pan over medium heat while mixing the following.  Note:  I don't take long to mix this, maybe 5 minutes... and I use olive oil.  I haven't seen it smoke, but as with all oils, keep an eye on your pan for the beginnings of smoke.  No kitchen fires, okay?

Add the following to a bowl and mix thoroughly.

1/2 cup flour

2 tablespoons or so of dried thyme

1 teaspoon of curry powder

1 teaspoon or so of ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin if desired

1/8 teaspoon of salt

1/8 teaspoon of freshly ground pepper

a dash of asafoetida

Once thoroughly mixed, add about a quarter cup water, enough to get everything mixed together in a pliable glutinous blob.  "knead" it in your hands a few times until it's pretty warm and happy and then sprinkle with flour in order to press flat.  Press into the hot fry pan and keep pressing as flat as you can while it's still cool and pliable enough.  Let it fry at medium heat for about five minutes, then flip with a spatula and shut off the heat.  Let it sit there until you're ready to eat it (but within thirty minutes or so... it's best when still hot/warm).

Chewy and tasty, but it will get hard once it cools off a while.  Then you can make hard tack out of it.  Har har har.  d.

this is effed up

I'm taking a course for work.  Two colleagues took it before me and told me it's one of those things that you cannot "memorize."  It requires actual knowledge to pass the test in the end.  They both stated - and one of them is someone I consider a genius from a remembering everything sense - that the course is ... well, that it requires a good deal of study.  In other words, it's not easy.  This of course, in my mind at least, meant that if I take it I will pass the test and I will know it inside and out.  I like academic challenges like this one.  Perhaps it is my competitive nature, I don't know.  It's also been a damned long while since my brain was knowingly and actively challenged with a real curriculum of sorts.

The first half of the first mod of the first section (there are six sections) seemed super easy.  I skipped ahead and took the quiz out of boredom and then failed.  Whups.  So I went back through and found out it picks up a bit about half-way through.  I mentioned this to the super-memory colleague and he smiles.  "Wait until you get 20 hours into it."  Ut oh.  That was just the first four hours.  Fuck.  Balancing this with work is going to be tricky at best, right?

But the next couple of mods didn't seem that  bad.  In fact, I had a renewed sense of purpose and need.  My brain was starting to like this exercise.  Then I got to the one I just finished.  Let's just say that while the concepts were exciting and I was eager to do some really fun things, I realized I had forgotten some basics.  Namely, hex to decimal to binary etc conversions.  Whups.

So I spent over an hour tonight re-learning how to convert hex to decimal to binary to decimal to hex so I can decipher packets.  I was so focused on that I was only half-listening and skimming the rest of the lesson, which is all about how to do what I really wanted to do.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I'd get back to that and find a reference and pick it up as I began doing the work.  It would come.  This was unconscious at the time but I know I do this and looking back on it, that's exactly what I was thinking somewhere in my head.

Yet somehow, despite my inattention to these things, I picked up something and it was enough to pass a quiz.  It's effed up.  I don't understand how my brain went from knowing it knows stuff to thinking crap I'm gonna die no wait, I know that... how do I know that... how how HOWWWWWW do I know that... Maybe I've developed more of an audio memory than I'd thought?  Maybe I need to move faster??  GAHHHH I don't know but I'm staying home in the morning to do more of this and try to get through the first section.  If the next section is even harder and I fall further behind, I won't be seeing the light of day (or path of exile or Dale or tea or food or cats or life) for a long time.

And get this... I screwed up the first and last questions on my latest quiz but knew the answers.  Those were the only two I got WRONG.  The rest of it I sat there giving correct answers and having no idea how on earth I know them.  Many of them I was answering before I saw the choices.  This was beyond the simple "I'll guess based on the multiple choice answers I see" routine I used to be so damned good at.  (Aren't most people good at those?  I reckon so.  It sure does help people pass tests.)

They asked one question twice in a different way but I got both right.  Something about asking what a number in a header was for a UDP, the last one I think.  I'm like, "The payload."  Found the right choice, correct.  Later they're like, "What does the last field in a UDP header mean?"  I'm like, "The number of bytes in the payload.  Zheezh, I just told you that."  Found the choice, correct.  Suddenly I realized I don't remember actually learning that.

This concerns me.  I wonder how much of this is memorization (of which I used to have a more visual version of - how I am remembering this sh** is beyond me) and how much is real, solid understanding.  What the hell is a UDP payload, anyway?  I have some very vague recollection of what it is but I'll be damned if I can put it into words that mean anything coherent.  The best I can say is that if someone references this, I'll recognize it now.  But explaining it?  Ha.

Sometimes I can't help but sit back and smile maniacally.  I've always considered myself someone who can figure it out as she goes along, but, this is ridiculous.  Is there any limit to what a human can accomplish other than a self-imposed one?  Is there?  Just yesterday I was explaining to someone that I feel stupid a lot of the time.  When questioned about why I realized it's not so much that I feel stupid, it's more about feeling inadequate because of my own inner voices telling me that I should be able to answer any and all questions instantly and know everything all the time without any effort.  Isn't this rather impossible for any human?  Without this expectation of myself, I'd surely be far less stressed.  However, how far would I have come without this burning need to attain perfection in knowledge?  Whenever I hand something over to someone else to figure out or to do for me, I feel a huge section of my psyche slip into a depressive abyss as if I'm the biggest failure on earth.  Why am I a failure for delegating things I honestly and truly do not have a need to know everything about?

This brings me back to one of the systems I support - and am, in fact, the primary support for.  Again I smile and laugh maniacally.  I was sitting there with this super cool smart guy.  I saw him start writing SQL queries and asked him about it.  He seemed surprised that I didn't know SQL given that I was maintaining the system I had been maintaining for 2 or 3 years at that point.  I explained my background and how I ended up with this set of servers to support.  His eyebrows went up and he looked a bit surprised.  Apparently the amount of time between my doing tech work and running a set of servers seemed a bit short.  So he showed me some basics and got me going.  Now I love SQL.  Admittedly, I don't know as much as I'd like, but it's really not that hard.  I've often thought that having more time to just sit and mess with it would be ideal.  But, I don't have that kind of time, so I don't.  Much to my dismay.

This class is like that.  It requires some real effort to gain its full value.  But I like it just the same... now it's time for pizza and some photo stuff...

~w

--

-Whitney

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contentsofsignaturemaysettleduringshipping. -- Mike Beattie

Thoughts on love, number 3.14~

Sometimes love is hardest when you yourself know you're miserable for whatever reason and you try your damnedest not to inflict yourself on the one you love - and ultimately fail.

I think that's the most self-condemning, helpless feeling of all.

Thankfully, there are apologies.  However, they seem so frail compared to the weight of misdirected anger.

~w

tea time

I walked outside with cup in hand

And watched my guy prepare to leave

As he drove away in rain

I waved back and drank my tea

Nothing quite like a cup of tea on the porch in the morning whilst watching the rain fall on an otherwise already beautiful scene.  I used to find beauty where I lived as a child, but it is a far cry from where I live now.  Many strive for views of lakes or mountain ranges, and yes, they are beautiful... but I like the depth of facing a quiet, dead end street.  The fog isn't as dramatic as a valley view come springtime, and the sunsets are cloaked in reflected light.  Sunrises exist on the other side of the house, once they dare to peek over the trees.  But the fog amplifies the depth by making the reds and greens richer.  The sunset lights bounce around in the atmosphere and set the road a-glow.  And the sunrises, when it's not raining, have directed one's attention to various objects.  Once it alighted on a single deer, as if the deer had taken a spotlight.

There is nothing that can compare to the scene before me.

Now for my tea.

music, omg.

So last night we took a trip to make a purchase from Craig's list.  I'm always dubious about such deals because usually anything we might really want at a "steal" is really too good to be true and totally scary to even bother with.  However, Dale made a deal.

Not only was the deal solid, but the guy was very nice and he even threw a couple of extras in.  One of these extras was a set of computer speakers.  Dale looked at me and stated the obvious.  "You've been looking for some computer speakers," he says.  I felt my eyes light up.  Cool, I thought, he will part with those!

The set up has not gone without issue.  I've got a couple cell repeaters at my desk, being near the best cell-signal window in the house.  The speakers are very sensitive to the interference at my desk.  Two guesses as to what that interference might be.  So right now I'm sitting on the floor to the right of my desk in this little alcove I'd inadvertently built for myself when I moved the guinea pig under my other desk.I've got a subwoofer way off to the left, the right speaker facing toward my desk, and the left speaker facing the desk to my right.  The sound is amazing.

I have forgotten what my music sounds like.  You know, the staples:  Peter Cetera, Chicago.  The old stuff that is so ingrained in me that hearing it like this shakes my entire soul.  And it's mine.  All mine!  So, I'm playing my favourites first.. You're The Inspiration, of course... Scheherazade, no brainer... Practical Man, Remember The Feeling, Wanna Be There, Happy Man, Alive Again, Once In A  Lifetime, 25 or 6 to 4, Big Mistake, World Falling Down.  Next on my list are the Richard Marx staples:  Hazard, Take This Heart, Nothin' You Can Do About It, One Thing Left, Right Here Waiting, Should've Known Better... this "next on my list" is gonna get long today.

This warranted some Da Hong Pao so now I've got some of that in front of me.  It's gonna be very hard to shut this stuff off so I can study.

/sigh

I had no idea how much I really missed music.  It's not the same in a vehicle, and it's sure as hell not the same coming out of tinny little built-in laptop speakers.  Sorry, Apple, but even you can't manage it!

~w

Things I've done that are cool

I was just sitting here after a good lunch and my mind wandered off to a special part of my past. His name was Lancelot. He was a striking lad with beautiful brown eyes that could watch two different things at the same time. He would often gaze at me as I worked on a computer. He also loved to look out the window at bugs flying by. He'd sit in the sunshine there and occasionally tilt his head to regard me with that quiet demeanor of his.

He was enchanting. And fast. When he was so inclined, of course. His food did not stand a chance - he loved his food, I remember that.

Over the years since he died I've come to think of him less and less. When his image does fill my mind, however, it is just as vivid as it was when he was right there in front of me. I can still see the tilt of his head, the way his eyes would look through mine and into my soul. I can feel his skin on mine. I remember how bright he was when he was happy, and how dull he'd get when something wasn't right. I remember the time he ate that spider off the curtain and grinned broadly at me, a twinkle in his eye, licking his chops.

I remember when he hid in the curtains for a week, and wouldn't take any water. I remember how he also hid in my stack of papers, and behind my stereo, and how I bred crickets just for him. I felt some affinity towards an albino cricket and took it aside. I named it Jiminy. Jiminy lived in the bathroom for three months. I set food and water out for him. Lancelot did not approve of that, methinks, but he never said anything about it. He only gazed at me, as if he was just as entranced by me as I was with him.

How many people can say that they befriended a 5-inch-long green anole and let him roam all over the downstairs of their apartment, eating bugs and clinging to curtains and circuit boards?

That, I say, is something I've done that is freakin' cool.

~w

OMG

I love tea.

'nuff said.

WHEEEE!!!

An ipad painting I did the other day using an app called Doodle Buddy.  In other news, WHEEEE!!!  :)  I love mornings where I feel awesome and then realize I'm listening to a sad song and feel uplifted by it.  This one is Richard Marx's "Hazard" and I just heard the part where he sings, "I think about my life gone by and how it's done me wrong.  There's no escape for me this time, all of my rescues are gone."  And here I am thinking, "WHEEEEE!!!  MORNINNGGGGGG!!!"  lol

inheritance - parodies

I have inherited some cool things from my mom. Parodies, and an appreciation of them, are one of those things.

This morning I'm wandering around and realized that I had "My Way" stuck in my head. So I began singing it and it came out thusly:

And now, the tea is near, and so I'll drink another cupful. My friend, I'll drink it here, I'm on the porch, the ground outside is only hopeful. I'll drink a cup that's full, I'll drink on each and every highway… but more, much more than this, I'll drink it my way.

Thus starts the morning tea ritual. I sing new parodies every day and Dale used to sit there going, "How do you DO that?" but he's used to it now.

Earlier this morning he threw his socks down the stairs as usual and each time he does this I try to come up with a new and creative way to kick them on "his" side and out of "my" side of the landing. I had nothing this morning. Then as I got to them, ready to simply toss them over, inspiration struck. I turned into a robot and robotically picked them up, dropped them on my side, robotically scratched my head, picked them back up, made my way, slowly, onto the landing, then dropped them over the edge on his side. I made a robotic nod and then robotically walked to my chair and sat down.

~nv

POEM: The View From My Window v2

In high school (or was it junior high?), I wrote the following as an English assignment asking us to write about the view from our window.  I only remember parts of it, so some of it is missing, but you get the gist of its meaning, perhaps.

THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

I look out my window

And what do I see?

Papers and trash

Blowing 'round a tree.

Sometimes I wonder

If there'll ever be

A peaceful day

In this city.

[more?]

So I looked out my window

And what did I see?

Papers and trash

Blowing 'round a tree.

-- Today I was sitting here with my tea and the poem returned to my mind unbidden, as I sat there admiring the view from my window.  I have since moved on from my teenage years and found far more peace than I ever dreamed possible.  So I decided to jot down this morning's thoughts:

THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW, version 2

I look out my window

And what do I see?

A barn, trees and grass

O'er a nice cuppa tea.

Sometimes I still wonder

If there'll ever be

Just one peaceful day

In my old city.

There's crime and there's violence

At the schools, 'neath the trees

Our children are dying

But... some are finding their dreams.

So I looked out my window

O'er a nice cuppa tea

A barn, trees and grass

And a sad memory.

Cards

I just had a thought.

As I finished drawing and writing in cards for my mother-in-law recently (mother's day and birthday), I sat back and looked at my artwork happily.  Then I heard my mother's voice.  "You always put too much in cards and make them look messy," she said.

For the first time in my life, however, I didn't feel bad about it.  Instead, I said somewhat defiantly, "Mary will like it."  Then I felt happy again.

~nv

gahhh!! more tea!!!! (okay, fine!)

I've been trying (with success, mind you!) to finish up 10 teas this month. My ultimate goal is to whittle down my teas to 12 on the shelf with 4 Twinings staples stacked nearby. I.e., 16 total. I finally hit 30 teas a few days ago. I just barely set a new goal to drink up six more teas in May.

THEN… Dale gets home and hands me this bag from our Chinese friend. "Any cookies?" he enquires as I peer in. "I don't think so," I tell him ruefully, all the while knowing that my eye has alighted upon the actual contents: TEA!!! Now, this friend is known for sending Dale home with tea that has Chinese writing all over it. This time, however, there are some Chinese classics that are all labelled (yay!) and one labeled as "Taiwan." I opened the Taiwanese canister and found that it had a vacuum-packed pouch in it. Okay, I think, it's from Taiwan, and it's definitely air-deprived. Must be green or a green oolong.

I haven't opened the pouch yet, because I've got so much older tea to drink, and opening the pouch would mean accelerated aging of what is probably an awesome tea. It'll be hard, but I plan to hold onto it until I finish the sixth tea. Then I'm going to drink it up until it's gone, so it doesn't get stale and I can appreciate it fully. I'm mostly curious to know if I'll recognise it… is it an Ali Shan? Li Shan? Jin Xuan? Some green tea? I won't know for a while… :: eager eager ::

So much for 30 teas in the house. :: cackle ::

~me… the tea fiend...