Tea and Work

Tea of the week.....  Winter Dream by Lets Do Tea.   I tried the chocolate mint tea from Teavana last month.  The taste is okay, the smell is.....  not pleasant.  Now, Winter Dream on the other hand is a similar tea, Chocolate mint, with a very pleasing taste and smell.  I'm hoping this is a tea that will stick around through out summer as well.  Of course, I tend to drink a little less tea in the summer.  

I have discovered in the last few months that the more stressed I am, the less tea I manage to drink.  More so because when I'm super stressed at work, it's because I am super busy with projects and don't have a minute to get away from my desk to heat a cup of water.  This realization hit me when I was brewing a cup of tea, during a slow period where I really had almost nothing to do.  As busy as I am sometimes, I still need to step away from the desk.

Luckily my husband inadvertently given me a gift that will help me with that.  For Christmas I got the Nike Fuel band.  It encourages you to get up ever hour to move around for 5 minutes.  For the most part I've been trying to do that while at work.  At times it's a bit strange to just wander around the small building I work at and not look crazy.  When the temperature gets above 30 I plan to take my walking around outside to the parking lot.  I hope I'll look a little less crazy, but who knows.  

My co-worker has been trying to move around more.  That stems from the study that recently came out talking about those that sit all day have earlier deaths.  So, he sees me get up, and he follows.  One more person following and my entire department will be walking in circles around the building for five minutes.  I suppose that will cut the crazy factor down a little.

tea and no tea

hmmmm.... tea of the week, drive thru vanilla chai from a local coffee hut.

I have been so crazy busy this week, that I haven't had time to get up and heat a cup of water!  Crazy to the point that when you take lunch, it's kinda irritating, because it's interrupting getting everything that needs to be finished, completed.  Yet, you have to take lunch because you scheduled an eye appointment months ago when you weren't busy.  So it's no wonder that I woke up with a kinked neck.  Can't move it worth anything.  Talk about frustrating.

And I want to add to it all by getting lazik eye surgery.

I have the hope that all will go wonderful, and I will be able to see without glasses.  Ah....  sounds so nice.

But also the fear that I will flinch and be rendered blind, thus unable to work, out of a job, and trying to figure out how to cook some favorite  recipes.

I'm leaning toward a more positive thinking with this, as I know a few people that had the procedure, and none are blind.

The real question is how soon will I be able to get it done.  That depends on when I can get vacation, since it is an out of town trip.

As much as I want to be glasses free next month, it's looking like next spring would make more sense.

I've been with glasses this long, what's another handful of months?

Back to the crazy week.  Today I was able to chill out, and be lazy, so of course I'm exhausted.  (of course) Next week doesn't look like it's going to ease up any.  I just hope I have a moment to brew a cup of tea or two.

But we shall see....

Tea and Yoga

This week I'm working on increasing my tea consumption, as well as my yoga practice.

That sentence is quite misleading, it sounds like I am a daily yogi that is all bendy.  No, I can barley touch my toes, and forget about any type of hip flexibility.  It's only been recently that I discovered that you don't need to be flexible to do yoga.  You do yoga to help you become flexible.

I fell in love with Yoga Booty Ballet when it first came out.  Except when they did happy cow pose.  They make it look like anybody can bend their body in that pose.  While I'm sitting there with one hip not even touching the floor, and one knee up by my ear.  I swore off serious yoga that day.  It would never be for me.

Then this summer I was on a 30 day challenge kick, and decided to try Erin Motz's 30 day yoga challenge.  In that month I completely changed how I feel about yoga.  I took an actual class at the local yoga studio. While I had gradually been introducing myself to yoga before that challenge, it wasn't yoga yoga.  I was enjoying Piyo, which is a Pilates/yoga combo, that is fast paced, and doesn't hold the stretches.  I take Pilates at the gym, on the equipment (love the reformer!) and since the yoga challenge, I have decided that yoga is a great compliment to Pilates.

All this rambling has a point.  I recently supported a kickstarter campaign, that I think will be super awesome.  If you like yoga, and want to enjoy your practice at home, you should totally check it out.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andreaszoltan/myyogapro-a-revolutionary-way-to-learn-and-practic

That's pretty much it this week.

Tea and Trick or Treating

The question in my head today is, do kids go door to door anymore to trick or treat?  When I was single, I can only remember a handful of kids that knocked on my door.  And that is over a ten year period.

Now, I do have to take into account, that in that time I spent many a Halloween working either graveyard or swing shift.  So I was either sleeping or working most Halloweens when the kids would be out.  But, in the time that I have been working an 8-5 job I only see about 2-3 kids each year.

And each year the downtown businesses do a big trick or treating thing, the malls do a trick or treating thing, and a few other businesses have special trick or treating events.  Not to mention the churches that do the "trunk or treating".

So, with this being the first year I'm taking my child out I have to decide.  Will we go door to door? or will we simply do a few events and go home?

Honestly.  Probably the events and go home.  For one, most of those are on the Saturday before Halloween, and I don't have time to get home from work, get everyone ready, get dinner on the table and get trick or treating in before bath and bedtime.  I can barely get dinner on the table before bath and bedtime. Lets not add in the Halloween sugar addiction.

So tell me, do you trick or treat door to door?

Tea and snow

Friday it was chocolate mint tea day.  I'm not sure what brand it is, but it's teabags not loose leaf.  I'm going to order teavana's chocolate mint tea soon, and see how that tastes.

Friday, I stayed home from work.  My babysitter didn't want to try traveling in the weather, and I don't blame them.  So I watched as around 16 inches of snow dumped onto my yard.  I wandered outside early in the morning to shake the snow off the trees.  The sound of tree branches cracking and breaking all around the yard and in the neighbors yards is a scary sound.  Very never ending story nothingness.....

I went out with my husband after dark, when the snow was slowing down, to shake the trees again.

Today, he's been cleaning up branches all day.  This crazy snowstorm completely snapped the top of some trees around here.  But really, we have it easy.  A good chunk of this town was plunged into darkness as the tree branches downed power lines.  Now we, the collective we, as in the entire town, is going to be spending the next week or so cleaning up tree branches, and trimming what's left of the trees so they survive the rest of the winter.

Tea and Fall

Today's tea is  Sterling Tea Caramel Nut.  Is it currently brewing as I type, but it does have a nice caramel flavor, and there are bits of almonds in it.  I think I've posted about it before.

Fall is here.  We had a bit of a snowfall Friday, and even though the weatherman predicted it, I didn't believe him and was surprised when I woke up and it was snowing Friday morning.  It followed a nice heavy rainstorm on Thursday night, so everything was heavy with snow.  Trees hung low, our canopy we have set up in the back yard is fairly demolished.  The metal rods that used to support the canopy in an arching upward fashion, are now arching down, so you have to duck under them.  Since this is the first September snowstorm we've had in four years, and the temps were in the high seventies all week prior to this, I don't think anyone was prepared.

So today I have some fall yard work to tend to.  Mostly coiling up hoses, picking up all kinds of branches that broke off the tree yesterday, and putting any leftover remnants of summer away.  While it's sad to see the warmer days go, at the same time I can look forward to having just a little more time to myself.  Since now my evenings and weekends won't be full of tending the lawn and garden.

Which means that this is the first weekend since the gardening began that I have brewed a full pot of tea!  Because while I do have yard work to do today.  I don't think it will take up that much of my time.  (why am I blogging instead of doing that?  I'm waiting for my two year old to settle down and nap.  At the moment she is in her room singing to herself.)

Today is the first day the farmers market down the street is selling pumpkins.  Since I always have put it off until the last second, I have always run around town finding out that not even Walmart has pumpkins.  This year I was prepared and a week or so ago I had cash in my car, waiting for the pumpkin sign to show its self.  Therefor, I have acquired quite the large pumpkin (as seen below)  Now I must keep it safe and chilled until Halloween, and we can carve it into a large "masterpiece"

You'll also notice the BOX of pomegranates.  I love pomegranates. In fact, that bowl of seeds pictured is already mostly gone.  This is the only box of fruit I will get from bountifulbaskets.org because at the moment, I don't can, or freeze, or any of that sort of thing.  And my husband doesn't think to eat the fruit in the house as a general rule, so I eat most of it.  So a box of peaches or apples would go bad before it could get used.  But a box of pomegranates won't.  I know because I got a box last fall and I pretty much ate the entire thing.  Which is not ever something to be ashamed about.  It's not like it's a pallet of cupcakes we're talking about.

If you have not heard of bountifulbaskets.org I urge you to look into it.  It is a very affordable way to try a wide range of fruits and vegetables.  Through them I have discovered my love for butternut squash, and Brussels spouts.    Not to mention I've finally learned not to hate bananas.  Like I said, my husband won't just snack on the fruit.  I have way too many frozen bananas in the fridge waiting to turn into cookies, or bread, or something to not just start eating them, and learning to like them.

Well, it sounds like a nap is not in the works today.  Looks like I'm going to have to bundle the little girl up and take her out there on my yard cleaning mission with me.

Until next time, enjoy that cup of tea!

(Can you tell I write so much better at three in the afternoon instead of about midnight?)

Tea and Teacups!

The tea this week has been fireside by The Old Wilmington Tea Company.  Mostly a cinnamon tea.  But it's a bit too cinnamon for my taste.  Probably thanks to some email I got a few months ago that said hot water mixed with cinnamon and honey is good for all kinds of things.  So I drank said hot water with cinnamon and honey for about a week or two.  Now, any seriously cinnamon tea makes my stomach turn a bit.  Which is sad, since I did enjoy such teas prior to that.

So this week I visited a thrift store, and found a pretty teacup to drink my tea out of!  I have been drinking it out of the prettiest coffee cup I own up until this point.  Granted, this is my cup for drinking tea at home.  I still use my silly cat mug at work.  Although, I am seriously considering going back to the thrift store to find another cup for work.

I had been looking all over town, and a few places online, for a nice teacup.  Why I never thought to look in a thrift store I don't know.  I wasn't even looking when I went to the store.  I was just there because of my job.

I don't know, there is just something about drinking your tea out of a delicate tea cup to make you feel all fancy, no matter what you are wearing.

Of course, I had to take a photo of my first cup of tea in my new teacup.