I’ve nothing of worth to say, but my usual Team Fortress playing ritual includes making a pot of tea. I sip in between kills, and refill my cup when I die.
As such, here’s my favourite class drinking my favourite beverage. Also included: A friend/frienemy eating a poptart.
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I write to you today during my lunch hour at work (although I usually write these posts over the course of several days, and this one continues in the public library). As part of my job in the Exploration department, last week we hiked up (again) to the top of Roman Mountain. It’s a wonderful view, and I regret that I did not bring my camera with me on that occasion. I must next time (assuming there is one); in the meantime however, my supervisor did snap some shots, and I was able to take some yesterday when me and some colleagues went flagging up the opposite side of the mountain (not reaching the top ourselves).
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I’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks, worrying and working, preparing to leave for my summer job; I will be moving up north to a small mining town in order to work for one of the many metallurgical coal mines in the area. I’m not going to say much more on where. Northern Canada, very exciting. Everyone’s excited. I’m excited.
Is what I’ve called my latest creation.
I’m finishing off a tea from a friend. She got it from a coworker, and she wanted my opinion on it, so she gave me a healthy sample. It’s an oolong, but that’s the extent of our knowledge on it. Apparently “Soon Jy Famous Tea” is all the package says.
I baked them today–making the dough before work so that, during my shift, it could chill the required six hours in the fridge. They came out slightly flat, but it’s my fault for not cooking a test-cookie first to see how well it held its shape. More flour next time.
Here is the link to my Cooking tea gallery (I decided to make a separate gallery for it, as I do like to bake), although I will link some thumbnails below the cut.
Just art today. Which I post while listening to Close to the Edge. This first one was just a large image I did in my sketchbook. Pencil crayon. If you haven’t recognized the subject yet, they’re both just of the same large-leafed tea plant centred on the flower.
I went downtown to the Urban Tea Merchant yesterday, which is a very suave little store that deals in High Tea and exclusively sells The O Dor teas, as well as home décor and anything that “ties in to the tea culture” as one person put it. They stock tea-ware, but it is by far the most expensive I’ve ever seen. Still, they’ve got some very nice little yixings, and a gongfu tea tray. Although a French tea company.
Pictured left is my physical Tea Journal. My old one was a flowery thing, although it has a long history. As soon as I saw this one, however, I had to pick it up (it has a teapot on the front, back, AND every other page! Plus interesting quotes from the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh), even though my old notebook hadn’t been filled yet. I mostly use it to list teas from companies that I’d like to try/checklists for said companies, as well as notes on tea places I’ve been to, and teas I’ve tried while not in the presence of the computer; it also has a few pages of interesting tea quotes I thought to jot down. My old book even had a poem or two by me, although not about tea. I have my poetic moments (but I rarely share them). There’s only one in there so far that I have any like for.
Returning again to my inexperience in blogging, I think I’m going to spend a post describing in my no-doubt monotone writing style, one of my favourite books to date; Okakura Kakuzo’s The Book of Tea. It is certainly my favourite tea book, and I like to suggest it to a lot of my friends (at least the tea-savvy ones), although it’s really not a book everyone can get into. It reads as a long, sometimes rambling exposition (something I personally enjoy), and constantly goes off on seemingly unrelated tangents; it is famous for being not so much about tea, but rather using tea as an analogical lens to view culture (western versus eastern) and art. Kakuzo was, after all, (and foremost) a man of the arts.
