“Ah, so [Hank and his church] do have troubles.”

“But totally unrelated to ours, and I’m glad.”

Hah, it’s funny because it’s not true. What a laugh riot. People’s lives are falling apart at the seams but it’s amusing because we don’t realize it’s all the same problem.

Careful not to go too far with that, Peretti. You might start getting into a moral about how one man’s problem is everyone’s problem because we are all connected to each other in a circle, in a hoop that never ends. Next thing you  know, you’re jumping off cliffs for communism!

‘Introduction to God and Goddess Consciousness and the Craft: the divinity of man, witch, warlock, the Sacred Medicine Wheel, how do spells and rtuals work?’

That, my friends, is one of the ugliest sentences I’ve seen since Twilight. How on earth was that formatted in whatever Marshall’s reading it from?

Introduction to God and Goddess Consciousness and the Craft

The Divinity of Man, Witch, Warlock, the Sacred Medicine Wheel, how do spells and rituals work?

Ugly as sin. The first bit before the colon is long and unwieldy for a university course; compare to the following, from my undergraduate alma mater’s psychology department:

318 Belief in “Weird” Things (3:3)

GE Core: GRD. Pr. grade of at least a C- in PSY 121

Psychological research on belief in extraordinary, “weird” phenomena, including, but not limited to, the paranormal, superstition, divination, projective tests of personality, alternative healing practices, and unconscious mind control and repression.

Much snappier of a title, and a description that would be a sentence if you added “This course covers” or similar to the beginning. It covers psychological research on belief in extraordinary  “weird” phenomena. This includes, though is not limited to, the following: the paranormal, superstition, divination, projective tests of personality, alternative medicine, and mind control and repression. That makes sense.

Langstrat’s class covers the following:

• The divinity of man

okay, that makes sense.

• Witch

Is this a continuation of the prior? Is this “Langstrat’s class covers the divinity of witch”? Or is it meant to be read as “Langstrat’s class covers witch”? That makes no sense, so let’s assume for the moment that “the divinity of” is meant to apply to each term in the list.

• Warlock
• the Sacred Medicine Wheel

 The divinity of the Sacred Medicine wheel seems redundant, but carry on

• how do spells and rituals work?

Lolwut? The divinity of how do spells and rituals work? Langstrat’s class covers how do spells and rituals work? There’s just no way to make that make sense. Seriously, what the flying fuck?

Also absent from real syllabi: forcing students to accept and practice the teacher’s personal religious beliefs. That’s seriously frowned upon, unless of course it’s Christianity, in which case it’s actually a secular non-partisan celebration of patriotism and not religion at all.

Other classes taught by Langstat:

Pathways to Your Inner Light

Meet your own spiritual guides, discover the light within [...] harmonize your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual levels of being through hypnosis and meditation

How to Enjoy the Present by Experiencing Past and Future Lives

[no description given]

In the Beginning Was the Goddess

[no description given]

These are awful names for courses. They’re great names for self-help books, but no university approves titles like that. Seriously. I had a class about religious terrorism once; on the books it was

109 Religion and Contemporary Culture (3:3)

Understandings of religion as shaped by contemporary social institutions, the arts, politics, and philosophy.

Which the professor explained meant “I get to talk about whatever the hell I want, and this year we’re covering terrorism.” Langstrat is the worst at being covert, seriously.

The example I pulled earlier is the only psuedo-religious topic in the psychology department. Langstrat’s earlier classes sounded more along the lines of this:

462 Social Cognition: Perceiving and Thinking in a Social Context (3:3)

In-depth analysis of how we think about ourselves and others. Topics include impression formation, attribution, affect and cognition, social judgement, stereotyping and the self in social context.

463 Psychological Perspectives on Personal Relationships (3:3)

In-depth examination of current theories and empirical research focusing on psychological perspectives of personal relationships. Includes topics related to relationship forms and processes such as intimacy and power.

483 The Psychology of Thinking (3:3)

Research and theory on human problem-solving and reasoning. Topics include classification, categorization, decision-making, rational thought, and a discussion of awareness in thinking.

Which are all perfectly valid psychology topics. But now she’s starting to sound more like the following:

104 Religion, Ritual, and the Arts (3:3)

A study of how myths and stories are used in ritual and the arts. The specific traditions treated will vary.

111 Non-Western Religion (3:3)

Comparative study of non-Western religions and their contributions to modern religious self-understanding, focusing critically and evaluatively on such patterns of expression as myth, ritual, and social forms.

252 Ritual Studies (3:3)

Inquiry into ritual through the consideration of the relations among ritual experience, practice, and theory. The specific traditions treated will vary.

Which are all taken from the Religious Studies department. Wouldn’t she be more at home in that department?

Oh yeah, and there’s a conspiracy, and everyone denies knowing everyone else.

Exibit A: thekitchn.com

Exibit B: Serious Eats

TheKitchn’s open thread formula is as follows:

1. Introduce topic briefly

2. Ask readers for opinions

3. ???

4. Profit!

It takes absolutely no skill as a journalist to ask a question. Even worse, half the time they don’t even write up the question itself! How lazy do you have to be to run a Q&A feature that reprints a question and simply asks “Readers, do you have any ideas or recipes to share?” What, exactly, is the blogger being paid to do here? Sort the mailbag? When nobody answers, the feature is 100% worthless to readers.

By contrast, Serious Eats does their “open threads” as more of an op-ed piece; at the end of a decent-length article about the blogger’s personal opinion on the question, they ask for reader feedback in order to generate a community feeling. They almost never raise a question without offering at least one possible answer to it. Reading Serious Eats pretty much guarantees that I will come away with more information than I had before, and often far more entertained than I would have been otherwise. TheKitchn is only useful to me when they post recipes (which are often links to better sites).

When blogging, always ask yourself: what does the reader gain from this?

On Friday evening, Hank couldn’t get the upcoming business meeting off his mind, which was probably to his advantage considering the young lady sitting across from him in his little office corner of the house. He had asked Mary to stick closely around and act loving and wifely. [...] The way she dressed and carried herself, Hank made sure that it was Mary who answered her knock at the door and let her in.

I do not posses a Y-chromosome. Therefore, I can’t say I really can relate to the male condition in all its physical fineness; regardless of my gender orientation, it’s entirely possible I do not have the same hormonal reactions when I am attracted to someone that a male would undergo. Time and time again I am told that men can’t help themselves, that the mere physical presence of a reasonably-attractive female in anything less than a burqua prohibits polite interactions due to the male’s overwhelming physical response. I can’t actually speak on this topic because I have never experienced it. I’ve experienced momentary distraction by thoughts of desire, but perhaps my ease at pushing them aside has to do with the lack of a penis and Y-chromasome. On this topic, I’ve asked a real, honest-to-goodness, cisgendered male to speak:

As far as the idea that men have no self control, I think it’s a complete crock. Being a man myself, I can honestly say that I don’t find myself unable to concentrate on what a woman says because of her boobs, legs, lips, eyes, or any other attractive feature. I make note of them, but that doesn’t sway how I view their opinions. In fact, I find the entire idea to annoy the hell out of me. How exactly am I supposed to feel when it’s just assumed I’m not going to listen to what someone is saying just because they happen to be female and wearing a skirt?

Yes, I understand some men are like that, but that doesn’t mean the majority are. I’m not going to start spouting sports analogies and belching, so I shouldn’t be expected to turn into some sort of horn dog just because you happened to show a bit of skin. It’s as much of an unfair stereotype as the idea that women can’t enjoy football or that all they care about is how much money you have. It’s stupid, it’s discriminative, and I can’t wait until I won’t just be expected to act like a sexist pig because of what other people say or do.

I then informed him that the context was a pastor having a meeting with  one of his flock to discuss some problems she was having that she thought might be of a spiritual nature (specifically, hearing voices). This was his response:

 Alright, this situation is just stupid. Firstly, how the hell would you even get any sort of meaningful council if someone else is sitting there and staring at you as if waiting for you to do some sort of whore-ish thing. Because that’s what the person would obviously be thinking. Second, he’s a pastor…and he doesn’t think that he can be alone with this woman. The implication is that either A) He actually CAN’T control himself, at which point….what the hell, why are you a pastor, or B) That he doesn’t want his WIFE to think anything happened, which is even worse! So either he has no way of defending himself from her ‘feminine wiles’ or he wants to prove a point that he isn’t going to be doing anything shady with the woman to his wife…which means he’s a terrible person and doesn’t care about what the person coming to him for help is saying, even before it’s pointed out later. This is the kind of shit that makes it to where no guy who is actually decent can ever be perceived as such, and is either stupid or just trying to trick you into liking him.

I am, however, qualified to speak about mental illness and how you should approach a situation that might involve such. Carmen has been hearing voices. This little exchange rankled me:

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” [...]

“Uh…” Hank withdrew his hand to scratch at a nonexistent itch. “No, Carmen, I’m not– I mean, I don’t.”

[...]

“I knew you’d believe me.” [...]

“Uh,” he said, trying to be comforting, sincere, and nonjudgemental. “Listen, I think it’s been a fruitful hour…”

If you honestly think someone is suffering from mental illness, please, for the love of god, don’t lie to them. I had mental health professionals smile and smile and assure me that they believed what I was saying, that they understood my point of view, and then turn around and tell my parents that I was dangerous and needed to be locked away and/or heavily medicated. Not one of them bothered to look into my situation; I was the crazy person and my mother was sane, so if my mother said I was crazy, they’d happily drug the spirit right out of me. Today I have panic attacks if I’m in a therapy situation, complete with an overwhelming compulsion to lie. Dishonesty helps nobody; it just erodes doctor-patient trust.  In this situation, Hank is standing in for a doctor; what’s Carmen going to think when she finds out he does think she’s crazy but he’s too polite to say so? What are the odds she’ll ever share that bit of herself with anyone else ever again?

It’s entirely possible I misread this situation. It’s hard to tell what Hank thinks, since all he seems to think about is the way Carmen is dressed:

Hank closed the door and leaned against it.

“Whew!” was all he could say.

“Hank,” Mary said in a veyr hushed voice. “I don’t think I liked this!”

“She’s… she’s a real hot one, she is.”

“What do you thin of what she said?”

“Ehhhhh, I’ll wait and see.”

In other words, Hank is a very shitty pastor.

Sample: Passionfruit Artisan Black Tea

Description: Our Passionfruit Black tea artfully combines the pleasantly sweet tropical flavor of a fresh passionfruit with the bright, lively taste of Ceylon black tea. Rich and heavy fruit-floral aroma. Sweet and very fruity flavor, lifted by the natural citrusy quality of Ceylon tea. Balanced astringency and slightly dry finish. All qualities that make this an excellent iced tea, too. So, if you’re passionate about great flavored teas, look no further.  Ingredients: black tea, natural passionfruit flavor, apple pieces, sunflower petals. Steeping: 1 teaspoon per cup, 3 minutes @ 212

Preparation: We used our new electric kettle for the first time on this, so we were assured our water was 212F. Steeped for three minutes. We used the entire .8oz sample for our 32oz teapot.

Review: Yami took one sip and boldly announced, “I don’t know what to feel about this cup. I am going to put it down.” Not much encouraged, Chaos tried his: “…the fuck?” Kae insisted he was still ‘waiting for it to cool’, but was coaxed into trying a sip:”It doesn’t really have a lot of taste.” . Yami finally found some words: it was weak, but had a strong floral aftertaste. And by floral, she means “it tastes like I ate flowers.” She added milk and almost gagged. Kae much approved of his after adding sugar: “It’s actually not too bad, I don’t really taste too much of the passionfruit or mango or I don’t really remember which flavor this was.” After adding milk: “Oh hey, mango! Or wait, passionfruit, it is passionfruit, not mango. Why does milk bring out flavor? Tea is weird.” Chaos declared it drinkable with three sugars; Yami promptly added more sugar and voila, creamy delicious goodness.

Would Buy? Kae decided it was “nothing special, but good”, though he pointed out it’s the first one he’s wanted a second glass of. Chaos insisted it gave him a stomach ache, so no. Yami might, if she was in the mood for drinking flowers — maybe if she wanted to have a fancy tea party with a floral theme? Would go well with light, buttery scones, maybe with some dates in it, and maybe a little cake with strawberries….

While Yami goes to eat more dinner, the next tea brewed.

———-

Sample: Guanabana Black Tea

Description: Looking for something truly unexpected and exotic? Guanabana may be flavor you’re looking for. Not familiar with the flavor? Think of the candied flavor of strawberries and pineapple with a citrusy-tartness, mixed with bright, naturally citrusy Ceylon black tea. Quite a discovery! Steeping: 1 tsp per cup, 3 minutes @ 212.

Preparation: Exactly the same as above.

Review: It smells darker, somehow, noted Yami, before it was cool enough to drink. Yami tasted a sharp tang, almost bitter, on the first sip, but not much fruit. With milk, it brought out  a bouquet of… something. Sweet, vaguely fruity, with an undertone of bitter. Yami wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Chaos’ first sip: “What the fuck…? There’s some kind of flavor, but I’m not sure what it is.”

Kae: “Cannot tell if want. Seriously, I don’t.. what is this?” U[on having the description read to him: “I taste chocolate. Chaos looks like it peed on him.”

Chaos: “It tastes bitter to me.”

Would Buy? Kae:”I like this one but I have no idea why. I, it has…. *mumbled* I don’t know.” Chaos: “Nah, I wouldn’t buy it. It still tastes bad. Bitter.” Yami: “I…. need another five cups to tell. It’s nice, though. Smooth.”

There won’t be a tea review next weekend, as we’ll be out of town for Ohayoucon. After that, we have adagio’s Silk Road and Berries samplers to play with.

I’m still in pain, in fact. I had a 2-hour physical therapy session on Tuesday ($80), and was told I’ll need orthotics to correct my foot issues that are making the knee issues worse ($200). I’ve been in pain for two days from the intensity of the stretching. I’ve made another appointment ($80) for next week — they want to see me twice a week, but I’m thinking I’ll ask if I can start out with once a week for a while until I get some improvement then cut back to once a fortnight.

My credit card bill is skyrocketing despite my making $300 payments every month trying to bring it down. I can’t seem to get ahead. At least I’ll hopefully soon have better health.

Found this today: The Adult Privilege Checklist. If any of you are parents, please keep these things in mind when dealing with your children. I suffered for years rebelling against the idea that I was less of a person, less worthy of respect and consideration and politeness, because of my age; I don’t want to see that happen to others. Too often parenting is all about the parent and his/her needs: child is being loud, child must be scolded or hit until child stops being loud because parent has a headache. It ought to be about the child: child is being loud, find reason why child is being loud and address whatever need isn’t being met and/or redirect play to an appropriate area where loudness is more acceptable.

Now back to my reading pro-body blogs and trying to ignore the pain in my leg.

So let’s talk about the next bit instead.

The Friday edition of the Clarion was on the streets, and the usual post-publication lull around the office gave Bernice the chance she needed to do some hoofing.

Hang on, what?

Yami: …. what day does the Friday edition of a paper come out?

Chaos: Friday.

Having established that I’m not going crazy, it appears we skipped three days not in between chapters, but three pages into chapter 9. What? Seriously? Who does that?

Alright anyway…

But Williams

…Buck Williams!? Oh wait, misread that. Phew.

Bernice goes to lunch with someone named Ruth Williams at Whitmore College, who calls her sordid tale of being picked up for soliciting “disgusting”. Langstrat, it seems, is known for being “aloof” and “mysterious”, and Williams found it “next to impossible to start any coherent conversation.”

“Her academic interests are very esoteric and metaphysical”

Maybe I’m naive, but I suspect Professor Trelawney would be kicked out of most American universities. In any event, despite calling what Bernice is after (a story?) “unprofessional and distasteful”, he gives her a lead: Albert Darr, another Psychology faculty member.

Albert is described as

a baby-faced young professor with stylish clothes and a certain penchant for ladies

Where was he when I was an undergrad? I’d have changed my major for sure.

Or maybe not. The minute Bernice mentions Langstrat, he gets all creepy and weird:

“Ahhhh,” he said gleefully, “so you dare to infringe on sacred ground!”

Um. What? Okay, whatever. Darr denies that Brummel and Langstrat are having an affair, pointing out that they meet weekly and that Langstrat is known for giving weekly “sessions”. (Side note: does Peretti understand the difference between practicing clinical psychologists and psychology teachers? Does he realize there’s half a dozen specialties of psychology, and that there’s far more too it than self-help book slogans? And she’s giving weekly sessions to “lot of people”? How much free time does he assume professors have?)

“Everything Langstrat does is a deep, dark secret! The Inner Circle, Bernice. No one is even supposed to know about these so-called consultation, no one but the privileged, the elite, the powerful, the many special patrons that go to her.”

Stay creepy, Albert.

“Her areas of study go beyond anything the rest of us have had any desire to tamper with: the Source, the Universal Mind, the Ascended Planes…”

Creepy cult is— hang on a minute. Is Peretti actually claiming psychologists believe in this crap?! That Psychology has anything to do with…

b.r.b, dying laughing.

“as nearly as we can tell, she derives it from the Eastern religions, the old mystic cults and writings, things I know nothing about and don’t want to know anything about.”

Really? Because a little glance at Taoism and Confucianism and Shinto and Hinduism would probably alleviate most of your suspicions that she got any of this from them. Protip: neopaganism has very little to do with “Eastern religions”, and this mis-mash reeks of very badly done neopaganism.

“I may even be mocked and maligned among my peers for saying this, but I don’t see Langstrat’s advances in these areas as anything other than foolish, neo-pagan witchcraft”

Somehow I doubt your peers would be as mocking as you think, Albert. Oh wait, Peretti wrote them too. Yeah, you’re doomed. They’re all Satanists.

“Maybe she cooks slug tails and newt’s eyes and serves them with breaded spider legs to evoke some answer from the supernatural…”

Wow, way to be offensive there. But then, this is Christian Literature, you don’t expect to see anything like an accurate depiction of neopagan practices.

We end chapter 9 with a list of names of her “inner circle”: Ted Harmel, former editor of the Clarion; Mrs Pinckston, a trustee on the board of regents (also known as the Higher Education Governing Board); Dwight Brandon, the owner of the property the college is built on (don’t universities usually own the property they’re built on?); Eugene Baylor, a “general treasurer” on the board of regents; and of course, Young and Brummel.

Hey, I got through a whole chapter! Awesome!

As for Edie, the secretary/reporter.ad girl, she had resigned and walked off the job last night.

“last night”? Seriously? Who quits in the middle of the night? How would you even manage that?

Ahem, anyway:

Marshall had not known that she once was happily married, but gradually became unhappily married, and finally got a little thing going with a trucker that resulted in a very recent blow-up at home, with pieces of marriage flying everywhere and spouses fleeing in opposite directions.

Divorce is painful at the best of times; this sounds like a total nightmare. Still, you’d think she’d need her job more than ever now, wouldn’t she? Where’s she going to get money and normalcy?

Without her, nobody knows where anything is. They can’t even make coffee. Clearly there were some serious management issues in this little newspaper that runs like a big city newspaper.

“She’s leaving town for good, before her husband’s black eyes heal up and he can see to find her.”

Oh, I see why she left town. It’s somewhat refreshing to see female-on-male domestic abuse being portrayed at all, and this doesn’t seem to be playing it for laughs — still more lighthearted than should be, but not like a joke at least.

Office gossip: Brummel and Langstrat are dating. Marshall can tell from some of the pixels, and also because he has seen quite a few affairs in his time. No, seriously:

“The day after one of my reporters gets busted for taking the wrong pictures at the carnival, Langstrat kicks me out of her class. Add to that Oliver Young’s ears getting all red when he told me he didn’t know her.”

“You’re brilliant, Hogan.”

Seriously… wtf? I call hax. None of those events relate to each other at all, and even if they did, they don’t add up to “Alf and Langstrat sitting in a tree”.

The fingerprints on the film are not on file; Bernice knows the county prosecutor, and had them run. And that’s where I lose track of the narrative a little:

“The county prosecutor?”

“Sure. He does just about anything for me.”

“Hey, don’t bring them into this, not yet. . . “

“Them”? I suppose she said her uncle knows the prosecutor, so maybe he means the uncle as well, but are they not already involved? They ran the prints, after all.

“Uh. . .   this Brummel and Langstrat. . .  they’re both into the same kind of thing. I can tell.”

With your magic intuition?

“What kind of thing?”

Marshall felt cornered. “How about. . .  whammies?”

Is that word in common usage in this meaning? Was it ever? Because I had to think a minute to get it and I read a lot of fantasy. . .

Yami: Hey, babe, sanity test. When I say the word “whammy”, what do you think of?

Chaos: That old TV show where they say “no whammy, no whammy, stop?”

Yami: *blank look*

Chaos: …or a particularly hard-hitting thing?

Yami: Keep going…

Chaos: Um…… The word used to actually explain the sound of playing pogs? I don’t know what else whammy could mean.

When I explained this usage, he went “oh, there’s that too.” So my extremely small sample size of average American public indicates not so much.

Bernice looked puzzled. Oh c’mon, Krueger, don’t make me have to explain it.

…is…. is the narrator talking to a character now?

Marshall explains, and Bernice laughs at him and gets him a “good, stiff” hot chocolate. *eyeroll*

“I heard somebody just got kicked out of there for shacking up or someting. . . “

“Bernice, that’s gossip!”

AAHAHAHHAHAH oh god, someone stop me before I keel over. What do you think you’re doing, Mr Hogan? Reading Bible quotes?! I got one for you: “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)

Finally, Marshall remembers that his daughter is missing, and begs Bernice not to make any more trouble even as he orders her to check this out.

Sugar, caffeine, and protein in the form of peanuts/peanut butter. I will make it through this day.

Sample: Youthberry & Wild Orange Blossem Blend w/ German Rock Sugar

Description: Reinvigorate your skin and add vitamins and antioxidants to your diet with this delicious blend of white and herbal teas. This blend combines Youthberry white tea with Wild Orange Blossom herbal tea for an explosion of flavor. The combination is also very low in caffeine.

For some reason, the sample came with rock sugar already in it. Rock sugar is described as: These beautiful unrefined sugar crystals are the best way to enhance the natural flavor of tea without changing it. Sweet with caramel undertones

Preparation: This time, we boiled water, then stuck a thermometer and some ice cubes in it to encourage it to cool faster. We steeped the tea at 175F for 2.5 minutes, timed by the Teavana android app.

Review: The smell is deliciously fruity and sweet, very much like fruity bubble gum. It didn’t taste nearly as strong as it smelled, at least not on the first sip. Very mild, no bitterness at all; “definitely a little weak”, added Kae. He was the first to try milk and sugar in his cup, “to try to get the full range of flavor” (since white tea rarely takes milk). His final thoughts: “Good taste, but not enough taste. Not nearly as much taste as smell. Sugar’s good, but don’t put milk in it for the love of god. It did weird things. Like, I need an adult things.” Yami adds, “It tastes like flowers. But not really in a good way? I’m not sure. It reminds me of that one spring-flavored hard cider. Too mild, I prefer something with more flavor.” Chaos’ usual reticence was only breached with effort, but he managed to quote Avatar: The Last Airbender: “It tastes like water with leaves in it.” None of us could taste the German rock sugar, though Kae says his needed only one cube instead of two when he sugared it.

Would Buy? Yami and Chaos vote no, Kae votes a negative shrug.

———-

The next two samples are from Enjoyingtea.com, and came with one of my new teapots I got for Christmas.

Sample: Lemon Ginger black tea

Description: This tea is made from top grade orange pekoe Ceylon with natural lemon and ginger flavoring. The Ceylon tea is grown at the altitude of 7000 feet above sea level from the Sri Lanka region. When brewed this tea produces a bright coppery color liquid with a fruity spicy flavor and with touches of mild astringency. A fantastic fruit tea.

Preparation: Straightforward: boiled water, prepared in cast-iron teapot, steeped for 5 minutes.

Review: Another early-morning tasting session. It smelled vaguely like Lipton or Theraflu, but with a hint of spice. Kae tried it first, reporting “it’s got a nice lemon taste to it but it’s very bitter without sugar.” He subsequently added his normal two sugars, tasted it, then added two more. Apprehensive, Yami tried it herself: the first sip seemed fairly bland, mostly water-tasting, so she stirred and tried again. Sure enough, BITTER and astringent, drowning out the lemon taste. Sugar and a bit of milk were immediately added to her cup. She still found it undrinkable. Chaos agreed that it was “really bitter”, and Kae replied “This is black tea that does not mess around.”

Would Buy? A resounding no from Yami and Chaos; Kae would drink it with plenty of milk and sugar since “it probably has a lot of caffeine”.

———-

Sample: Raspberry Black Tea

Description: This tea is made from top grade orange pekoe Ceylon with natural raspberry flavoring. The Ceylon tea is grown at the altitude of 7000 feet above sea level from the Sri Lanka region. When brewed this tea produces a bright coppery color liquid with fresh raspberry flavor and with touches of mild astringency. A fantastic fruit tea.

Preparation: The same as above. We did get a little distracted, so it may have steeped a bit longer than intended.

Review: The following account was recovered from Yami’s notes:

Kae took one sip and exclaimed, “OH MY GOD.” I blinked. He urged me, “Take a sip of this.”  I glanced at Chaos. He took a sip. “Jesus tapdancing christ!” Knowing what lay ahead of me, I steeled my nerves, took a deep breath, and….

Yami was unfortunately unable to complete this review due to the extreme bitterness of the tea overwhelming her feeble taste buds. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Kae and Chaos bravely continued on, trying to add milk and sugar — LOTS of milk and sugar — in the hopes something could be salvaged of this. With six lumps of sugar and a healthy dollop of vanilla soymilk, Kae declared it drinkable, but he could still feel the bitter astringency coating his tongue and teeth. Quoth he, “My TEETH are bitter!” Chaos proceeded to go about burning everything that had ever touched that tea.

Would Buy? No fucking way.

Moral of the story: we do not enjoy Ceylon tea. Kae points out we’ve so far struck out each week; it’s just bad luck, as before we started typing up the reviews we found several teas we liked.

Snow

Snow snow snow snow snow! Lots of snow. I slid about six times in my car, not to mention the faceplant I did trying to clear my car off. So much for my plans to spraypaint on the deck this weekend.

Tea

I don’t know what to think about my new morning brew. It’s… an adventure. There are so many flavors happening all at once I don’t know how I feel yet. I’ll have to drink more of it to find out.

The caffeine is nice, though

The Hunt

I’m finding more and more loose ends the more I go through it. I kept throwing out ideas early in the Nano process, trying to decide what it was going to become, and now I have to trim out many of them. One thing that surprises me is how gosh-darn adorable John can be! I meant to write him like Dresden or Taylor, one of those tough private-eye types, but he keeps being surprisingly childish and cute when I least expect it. I’m leaving all that in, though. I like when characters surprise me.

Religion and Spirituality

I never really felt like a Christian. Even as a little child, I couldn’t reconcile the ten commandments with my thoughts and feelings. I was sure Jesus and God were staring down at me, scowling angrily, anticipating my trip to hell, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to “repent” of my failure to honor my mother. Respect, I felt, was something you earned, not something given to you because of your situation. (I felt the same way about people raising my mother onto a pedestal for being a single mom – it’s not the circumstance of being alone in raising children that is worthy of respect, it’s how you cope with the situation you’re in, and nobody ever noticed how badly she treated us behind closed doors). I couldn’t agree with a commandment that insisted that my parents were worthy of respect no matter what they said or did just by giving birth to me. Anyone (or almost anyone) can create life, it’s how you treat that life that determines who you are.

As a teenager, I officially came out as a pagan. I felt like I had a very close relationship with the supernatural, but… honestly I can’t really discuss much of what happened here in a little musing and I don’t feel ready to go into a longer post. It helped me at the time, it was what I thought I needed, but ultimately it became too difficult to separate the chaos and instability in my life from my religious beliefs. Unable to trust how much of what I experienced was externally verifiable versus how much was occurring in my own mind, I abandoned my religious practices.

I suppose I’m an atheist now. I don’t really believe in deities as we normally define them, but I can’t stop myself from believing in a supernatural even when I know my reasons for believing are probably just brain malfunctions rather than truly real. So I ignore anything that doesn’t affect my daily life in a directly observable way and focus on the more pressing issues. It’s not healthy but it’s better than I was, which is basically becoming a mantra for me lately.

Music

I think I’m going to start vlogging again periodically, mostly because it’s hard to talk about music without involving youtube somehow. I’ll link them here if I do manage to get any made.