How I Learned to Stop Coffee and Love Green Tea

A semi-secret: I gave up coffee for Lent. Going in, it was a bit of a scary sacrifice. I didn't say much about it to friends or family because I was afraid I'd jinx myself. I knew it was going to be tough, and previous attempts to go coffee free for a time had ended in failure.

But I did it. Starting with the Ash Wednesday fast day probably helped--what are a few more symptoms on a day when you're already going through some sacrificial deprivation?

I knew there was no way I could manage without a semi substitute, so Ash Wednesday morning after church, I stopped (ashy forehead and all) and bought a box of green teabags. I knew it wouldn't be great tea, but I figured it'd do until I could pick up some loose leaf. I brewed some and sipped it resolutely, steeling myself for 40 long days in the coffee desert.

And then along the way, a funny thing happened. Instead of green tea being a major sacrifice--a pathetic coffee alternative--I found myself surprised by the beauty and subtlety and delicate nuances of the stuff: Japanese green tea, particularly, and sencha specifically, though not exclusively (I like bancha, and I also discovered genmaicha, which includes toasted rice with green tea--IT IS SO GOOD). Here's a good run-down of the basic types: Types of Japanese Green Tea.

In some ways, tea is far simpler than coffee: pour hot (but not too hot) water over the leaves, strain in some way after enough time has passed. No equipment involved, really. On the other hand, there are so many *layers* to brewing green tea. For instance, most teas can be steeped not once, but many times, and each steeping has its own character. To my taste, the first steeping can be a bit edgy and brash, a wake-up. The second (my favorite) is super fast: the leaves are awake and don't require much more than a rinse, and the flavor is full. Depending on the tea, it can be almost brothy: richly vegetable, almost a little seaweedy. For the third steeping, I let the water sit a good while, and it tends to be sweeter than the first to, sometimes startlingly so, lingering on the tongue.

I picked up an itty bitty baby Japanese teapot (called a kyusu) so I can make little cups, running quickly through three steepings (or more) and then starting again. The nicer kyusus are beautiful works of art, made of unglazed clay which requires a bit of care...I'll work up to one, perhaps, but for now, I'm very much enjoying this little guy. At work I just use a Pyrex measuring cup and pour through a tea strainer, but...there's a certain something to doing things in a fancy way, at least some of the time.

My little blue kyusu

I'm most certainly not done with coffee, but I'm actually not yet back to it. I had a cup on Easter Sunday. It seemed the thing to do. But the next day I got up, eyed the coffee and then my bag of green tea, and it was the tea that made my mouth water. So I shrugged, put the kettle on, and got down to business.

There's a lesson in all this, I suppose: when we are willing to let go, sometimes we may find ourselves unexpectedly blessed. I am grateful.

Well...that was interesting. Ice storm!

Lazy photo post today, because I'm still in recovery.  We had a beautiful snow storm on Wednesday, and I was stuck at home, but it was kinda pleasant: I had electricity and heat and all, and I baked bread and read and played music and watched the snow fall.

Pretty snow...

Wednesday night, it was supposedly going to warm up rather rapidly overnight as the snow turned to freezing rain and then plain rain.  The roads were predicted to be bad early in the day, but then everything would thaw out and be just messy and wet.  Yeah.  Right.  Instead, we got ice, and lots and lots of it.  By the time I woke up on Thursday morning, the power had been out for several hours, and the temperature in the house was beginning to drop.

Icy trees and cables

By the middle of the day, you could stand outside and hear a constant cracking, popping, thumping sound from the woods all the way around, as one tree after another lost its battle with the thickening ice.  It was eerie, really.  One of the trees in my backyard fell, one trunk at a time, about making jump out of my skin each time.  That was loud!  Fortunately the dog was in the house when it fell, and it didn't take anything out with it.  Some houses and yards weren't so lucky.

What a mess!

Between all the fallen trees and the heavy ice hanging on cables themselves, it's no wonder there were so many outages...

I played mandolin quite a bit on Thursday, before the house cooled down to the point where it was too cold to play much.  Wrote this tune, which remains untitled, more or less...or maybe I'll leave the temporary title in place in memory of this week:

Iced In

Power remained out until last night, and it got down into the low forties in the house and stayed there.  Cold enough to see your breath.  I hung out with neighbors on Friday, though slept here--with a sleeping bag and a bunch of blankets, it was OK, except I kept dreaming of power trucks coming and fixing the lines.  And yesterday, I was *finally* able to get my car out of the snow and ice and out of the drive.  The wreckage out there is humbling: trees down everywhere, and you can imagine just how many were over the roads before work started.  I spent much of yesterday hanging out at coffee houses and grocery stores, reading and just savoring warmth.  My Kindle really helped keep me sane in all this, I gotta say.

But it was soooooo awesome to get home last night and finally find the power on.  Hot showers, real coffee, the ability to do *laundry*!  I missed them so much!

The wind is really picking up out there as another smaller storm comes through.  Crossing my fingers that it won't be enough to break things all over again...

Couple more ice pictures, just because...

A Beautiful Mess of Pencils

The positive side of my NaNoWriMo transcription project (aside from the fact that I now have a digitized NaNo novel, such as it is and what there is of it) is that it reminded me of just how much fun I had playing with pencils that month--lots and lots of pencils, lots and lots of hours spent with them. I've been more or less fixated on the fountain pens lately as I'm working my way through all my pretty ink samples from Goulet Pens.

But last night, I got the pencils out and started working on a short story idea. The wonderful tactile realness of pencils combined with their optional impermanence makes them one of my most confidence inspiring writing technologies. Love 'em.

How's this for a lovely cluttered autumn palette of pencils? (Please to ignore the eraser crumbs and cat hair...)

Pencils of the evening yesterday were the General's Semi-Hex (love those: dark, *and* they hold a point forever) and the General's Layout. Unintentional theme.

No real point to this blog post. Except gratitude, I suppose! Life is good.

Ode du Spam Folder | The Kindness of Strangers | Microsoft Bob and the Gardens of Time

1. Ode du Spam


Well, I thought it was funny.  Made up of actual lines from my spam folder.  There's something particularly evocative about the second and third lines...or maybe it's just because I'm currently reading Raymond Chandler and my mind is influenced thusly.

In any case, it makes about as much sense as a lot of other modern poetry.

2. The Kindness of Strangers

On a completely different subject (abrupt switches are what I do), I would like to say thank you to MT Coalhopper.  After the recent dip pen post in which I mentioned the Esterbrook 313 Probate nib, he offered to send me some Esterbrook 312 Judges Quills, which are similar in some respects, but a much finer, more manageable point.  I received his package this week, and not only did it contain a generous quantity of the nibs in question, but also a selection of other points and this beautifully handcrafted little box with slots for each.  I'm very much enjoying trying these out.

3. Bob
Another abrupt change in direction: does anyone at all besides me remember the travesty that was Microsoft Bob?  Essentially, it was supposed to be a kinder, gentler Windows-Within-Microsoft-Windows.  You could set up a virtual "house" with various rooms and various images linked to programs.  For example, in your office, you might set it so when you clicked a pad of paper sitting on the desk, it launched your word processor, or clicking the kitchen stove might open a recipe card program.  Really, it was all rather insultingly cartoony and foolish, and it bombed in a big way. (Except that someone smuggled the various "assistants" out the back door and into Microsoft Office.  You know that irritating bouncing paperclip?  Blame Bob.)

Although I never actually used it as a user interface, I wasted I don't know how much time decorating my Microsoft Bob house.  I was incredibly drawn in by the ability to set up rooms, rearrange furniture, change decor, etc. etc. at the click of a button, likely due to my lack of any real-life housekeeping or gardening skills.

The punch line?  This weekend I stumbled into a Facebook game (Garden of Time) with two components, one of which is a rather addicting game with two subsets (find-the-hidden-objects and spot-the-differences, in various historical time periods), and the other has you set out your "garden" on a grid, Visio style.  Both components sucked me in this weekend.  I accomplished pretty much nothing, aside from endlessly shuffling white flowers and park benches (with dreamy music playing in the background) and clicking on hidden playing cards and pineapples.

Well, that, and I did type up some eight or nine thousand words of the last NaNoWriMo.  I'm somewhere past the halfway point on that project.

Oh, and I broke down and ordered some Noodler's "Black Swan in Australian Roses" ink.  For that, I blame Adwoa.

(And tonight, I did actually work in the real garden for an hour or so...though somehow, there are a lot more weeds and bugs in the real world...)

Dabbling in Dipping

(Yes, I did a certain amount of smearing.)

I'm surprised by how much fun I've been having with these.  I'd come to think of dip pen nibs as incredibly scratchy things that caught the page at every opportunity, and wondered how on earth people used them routinely back in the day...but now I'm finding that while some (particularly the very fine and flexible sort) *are* fairly scratchy (particularly if used wrong), other points are smooth, and some (which I find myself preferring, actually) are somewhere in between: they "grip" the paper a bit more than your average fountain pen, making my handwriting a bit nicer, but don't snag.  And most nibs hold enough ink for a few sentences or even a paragraph.  

I'll stick with more standard writing instruments when I'm out and about or not in the mood, but dip pens are a lot of fun to use in a journal, when I have the luxury of taking my time, pausing now and then to dip and think.

Some Randomish Linkies: Sumi ink is traditionally used for brush calligraphy styles.  It typically comes in stick form and must be ground on an inkstone and water added to make ink for each use.  I find this very interesting!  The bottled liquid forms are newer and (I believe) somewhat scorned by serious brush calligraphists...but, in my opinion, far more convenient and more practical for pointed pen writing where one submerges the pen in the ink  (you *could* load the pen with a brush, but I'm not that ambitious).  The Moon Palace works great for my purposes.

I bought mine from John Neal Bookseller.  They have all *sorts* of goodies there.  Most are aimed at true calligraphers rather than those who want to play with dip pens for general writing, but still worth a look.  Speculator also recommended Paper Ink Arts as a source for many things pen and ink, and in my dip pen wanderings I see he's by no means the only one to point them out.  Their on-line catalog leaves something to be desired.  I hear their paper catalog is much better.  I plan to request it.

And one of these days I'm going to pick up some Winsor and Newton inks.

I also came across this very nice catalog of Esterbrook nibs with writing samples.  Fascinating!  It isn't all-inclusive, but a nice reference nonetheless.  I wish I could find a similar reference for other common brands, but no such luck so far.

Oh, and finally...though it may be a bit premature of me to make sweeping recommendations of eBay sellers, I had a very positive experience with this seller.   In addition to nibs, he sells beautiful rocker blotters, ink wells, and pen holders of all sorts.  There will probably be another purchase sooner or later.

I Resolve: A Typecast Reflection

Brought to you courtesy of the SCM Galaxie Deluxe.

Typecast: A Tired Excuse

Typecast brought to you courtesy of Ray, my new Olympia SM-9.

It's the most dangerous time of the year

I'm an office supply junkie, totally, and it seems like you can't go *anywhere* these days without encountering large bins of such things at discount prices. Even the grocery store isn't safe: they've got piles o' paper and pencils even in the frozen foods aisles.

Thus far I've managed to restrict my purchases to a small stack of Wal-mart composition books (currently a quarter apiece) and a package of USA Gold wood-case pencils (last of the Made in the USA wood pencils, so far as I know!), for a grand total of about three fifty. But I somehow found myself at Staples today, wandering around with some fancy(ish) Pentel mechanical pencils in an 0.9 width, which I don't currently own, plus a packet of leads, and a couple Black Pearl erasers. I don't need them. I put them back. But it was a struggle.

I've kind of been in a graphite mood, if the above paragraph didn't convey that strongly enough. Some time back, Speculator of La Vie Graphite sent me a very generous sampler of all sorts of pencils, mostly wood-case. I played with them for a bit, and then they got shuffled aside during my move earlier this year. But in the last few weeks, they're all I've been using for journaling, and even for notes at work. The joy of pencils is a little more subtle than fancy pens, I suppose, which makes them all the more appealing. I'm really enjoying cycling through them over and over, noting the slight differences in feel (some are smoother, some have more "grit", which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and even within the same grade, some are darker or lighter than others. Some have that wonderful cedar aroma, some have cool colored wood. (Rhodia!) My current favorites are a few basic Pentel mechanical pencils (hence the near miss at Staples), Helix Oxfords, and yes, the cheap USA Golds, despite the fact that they're a little thinner than what I'm used to and do have a certain amount of that grit I just mentioned.

So...on that note, here's my first ever pencil cast, about--what else?--pencils, of course. I cheated: this is just a recent entry from my journal, scanned in (rather poorly, I might add). Yes, I yammer on about this stuff even to myself.

Happy Mother's Day!

I miss you, Mom.

And...umm...make that a grandmother five times over. I had all the faces in mind, but I miscounted them. ;-)

Exits and Horizons

It has been a week of winding down after the big move and all the accompanying chaos. It did start off with one final stressful day: Monday was the hearing for that "wheels off the roadway" traffic ticket I got back in November. I'd asked for a mitigation hearing. I did drive on the shoulder. However, the fact that everyone turning right does that at that exit unless there isn't any other traffic seemed to be mitigating circumstances to me.

So...I got my court date, and Monday I put on my best dress and my good shoes, and a good friend helped me think out what I'd like to say, and also took this picture of the exit in question.



This is pretty much how it was that night, too--a moment of lightish traffic, with a few cars backed up. Other times, the cars are backed up all the way to the interstate. In either case, traffic generally forms two lines, one driving on the left, the other on the right, mostly on the shoulder.

This was my first experience in a courtroom of any kind, and mundane though the circumstances were, I couldn't help making mental notes. Not that traffic tickets amount to much of a courtroom experience.... But now I can give a character a traffic ticket and let him or her deal with it in realistic fashion...heh.

There were maybe a few dozen of us who had the same hearing time, and we all sat in a few long rows on benches at the back of the courtroom waiting for our names to be called in reverse alphabetical order. Most of the other tickets were for speeding, running red lights or failing to stop at stop signs, no proof of insurance. The one other off-the-roadway offense was more blatant: off the pavement entirely, not just partially on the shoulder while turning.

When my turn came, I got up, gave the judge the photograph, went back to the table, and said my short piece--essentially that I've lived here four years, that traffic always divides into two lanes at that exit as a way of making the best of a bad situation (truck stops to both right and left, and no traffic light, traffic gets very backed up), and didn't know I was doing anything wrong. She looked at the photo, confirmed which exit it was, and said, "So you weren't really off the road--you were on this big wide shoulder." I said yes, and she said, "It sounds to me like you'd like to contest this ticket rather than mitigating." And she explained that to contest, I would need to wait until after the mitigation hearing was complete, and then she would review the officer's statement (in lieu of his actually being there), and swear me in, and then I could, under oath, tell my side of the story. Then she would consider both sides and either I would have to pay the fine in entirety (no mitigation), or the ticket would be dismissed entirely. Contesting seemed to be the way she was guiding me, so I went for it, albeit with trepidation. She gave me the officer's statement to review and sent me back to my seat to wait until the mitigation hearing was complete.

When I sat down, the guy sitting next to me, who had already noted the location of the photo said, "You got pulled over for driving on the right shoulder *there*? What else are you supposed to do?" Made me feel a little better about my chances, but I was still really nervous. I sat there in a fog, desperately thinking prayers to the Holy Spirit that I'd know what to say, while the rest of the people went through.

When the time came, she had me swear in, and then I more or less repeated my earlier statement--not very eloquently, I'm afraid. Her response began with stating that there are lots of exits like that around the area with a tendency to get backed up, and where people turn right on the shoulder. I was thinking, "Here it comes--she's going to say, 'But that's no excuse.'" But she didn't. She ended off by saying, more or less, "I don't believe that is what wheels off the roadway means, and I'm going to dismiss this ticket." I just sat there blinking until she said, "You're free to go."

My friend Diana, who came with me to the hearing, said she wanted to stand up and cheer. ;-) A victory for the citizens of Exit 99! Me, I just went all wobbly-kneed and practically started crying. But what a relief! This whole affair has been hanging over my head for four months now, and now it's over and done with for good, as though it never happened. Now I can relax and settle into the new house.

And I do love it. I like being out of town, though it does mean I have to think a bit about combining errands in town, and it is a longer commute. I like the fact that a number of times a day we can hear trains go by--a distant rumble and whistle, not quite enough to shake the house, but enough to stir the soul. I like the way the wind sounds in the trees that surround us, and even like waking to the sound of joyous corgi barking next door. ;-) And I like being right on the trail--the best location on the map.

This morning I got up, got mostly ready for work, and then, in the dim barely-morning light, took thedog for a three mile walk.

It was raining when we started off--not a torrent, but steadily enough that I almost didn't go. Apparently others had the same thought. I didn't see another soul out there, though generally there are a few joggers, a cyclist or two: just an intrepid handful of hardy early morning folk. Today, we had the trail entirely to ourselves. I thought I'd taken a photo to end this off with...but my real camera is still missing in action, and my phone apparently chewed up the picture and swallowed it.

I rather like being out in the rain, once I get going, at least in the spring and summer. Oh, dealing with wet clothes and wet shoes when you get home isn't any fun, but being out there in the wet isn't so bad, so long as you're warm enough. And it's a different flavor of outside: everything is at once intensified and muted. The damp brings out the scent of earth and flowers, of leaves and water--and dog. Colors are heightened by the water, reflected on every surface...but softened in the lack of light. There are no sharp edges; the horizon fades off into a sort of hopeful mistiness. There is promise in the air; the rain awakens, it cleanses, it makes things grow.

I stopped a few times to let Cisco sniff around and to stand and reflect myself. The rain had a way of isolating us, capturing us in a moment. I stood and listened to it, looked off into that misty distance.

I can't see what's beyond the next rise...but I'm looking forward to it, whatever it is.

Thanks be

I am thankful for my faith: my rock, my stronghold, my home. I am thankful for family, near and far. I am thankful that our family has grown in the past year through both marriage and births, with no corresponding diminishment. I am thankful for my cats and my dog.

I am thankful for music, and for the tools of music: for FLATPICK-L, for The Waltz Books, for all the many sites out there with tunes to grasp for. I am thankful for the Collings OM1 guitar that has been the love of my musical life for over a decade now. I am thankful for my Rigel A mandolin, which has seen me through jams and gigs across the country and never let me down, and for the little rough and ready Recording King 000 guitar that has my back when the going gets a little too tough for the Collings. I am thankful for electric tuners and for metronomes, and for Amazing Slow Downer. I am thankful for those who bring live music to the area, and for those who make music festivals work. I am thankful for jams, for open mics, for Kamps, and the multitude of musical friends and acquaintances I've made over the years.

I'm thankful for books and writing: for novels, for non-fiction, for poetry. I am thankful for words, for all the richness and nuances of the English language, for all the languages that brought it into being. I am thankful that we have written means to express and record these words. And I am thankful for writing tools: for Parker 51s and Pelikans and Lamy 2000s; for Noodler's ink; for pencils; for Clairefontaine and Rhodia notebooks and notepads; for Staples bagasse paper and cheap Walmart "Made in Brazil" composition books.

I'm thankful for typewriters; for the marvelous Olympia SG-1, for Bernard the SG-3, for the mojo Hermes 3000, for Stinky and the pretty SM-9, and for the homely but comfortable Galaxie Deluxe. I'm thankful for ink ribbons and Duffy Moon typing paper and BAROPS. I'm thankful for clickity-clack ding. I'm thankful for that nifty paper load lever on the SG-1. I am thankful for pretty Flickr typewriter pictures, and for typecasters of all stripes. I'm thankful there are still such things as typewriter repair people in this world.

I am thankful for my Alphasmart Neo--my lean green word-spewing machine. Who could have imagined when the first electric typewriters were coming out that someone would come up with a thing the size and weight of an A4/letter-sized notebook and a battery life of a couple years that could hold an entire book's worth of writing ready to print or store digitally at the touch of a button? It isn't glamorous, but it is a fine companion in these waning days of NaNoWriMo '09.

I am thankful NaNoWriMo is in fact waning. It's been a rough go of it. I've done more writing over the entire year than ever before, and I think have my routines more set than usual, on top of everything else going on this month. As someone who can't think four moves ahead, I need more breathing room to think over the next move each step of the way, and you don't get that with NaNo. A lot of what I end up writing at this excelerated (for me) pace is the thinking space between moves, and it's messy and useless writing that I'd normally try out in my head rather than recording. I don't like that. But I'm thankful for NaNoWriMo for showing me--way back in 2002--that I can write more than those heady first fifteen thousand words--I'd never made it past that point before.

I am thankful for turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy. I am thankful for tea and chocolate. I am thankful for eggnog and coffee--and may the twain meet with frequency over the next month, even though I'm not typically a sweet coffee person. I make an exception for eggnog.

I'm not thankful I have to work on Friday, but I am thankful I have a job I mostly like and am mostly pretty good at.

I am incredibly blessed.

Library haul!

Thanks for all the reading suggestions, folks! Some of the ones I looked for either weren't available at the local library (but can be requested from others in the system, which I do a lot), or were checked out...but I still came away with a decent stack today....



Oh, and for the record, they're sitting on thedoghouse, which my dog likes to climb up on and dig at, hence the busted shingles. It ain't pretty, but the light was better out there....