Happy New Year

 The last week of December/first days of January have been quite eventful. In a way, it forced me to get out of the house... all the way into a hotel room. 

People romanticize a snowy scene. Do not be fooled, this stuff is to be hated if you are old enough to have to shovel it, or drive in it. It doesn't look like much from the 11th floor of a hotel, but this area got about 9 or 10 inches of snow. While you can see the streets, I can assure you that one would not want to drive on them. We got a glaze of ice after the snow, and the block long walk from work to the hotel was quite slow. I was glad I was wearing sturdy boots so I could comfortably walk on the piles of snow rather than the snow cleared yet icy sidewalks. The next morning I realized that I could see the lot where I parked my car from my window. 


Do you see that car half covered in snow in the unplowed square of snow? Yep, that's my ride. I had to whack the icy shell to break it before I could get the snow off. Then I used my little plastic snow shovel (yes I keep a snow shovel in my car, now you know why) to chop up the ice glazed snow in front of my car so I could kick it down short enough for me to drive over. Every winter I wonder why I live somewhere that has winter.

The happy news for the end of 2020 is that I ordered more tea with my 10% off discount. It's like getting one free bag of tea!


The original delivery date estimated by USPS was sometime around January 4, but when I got up and checked my tracking number on December 31, it said that the package was out for delivery! Happy new year! While I know most people ring in the new year with other beverages, I'm not other people. Truthfully, I was driving home from work when the new year began. I did see some fireworks being set off at midnight, so I guess that is as close as I got to celebrating. My box of tea was in the mailbox when I got home, which meant new tea for the new year. When faced with the question of which tea pet I should drink with first, I couldn't make up my mind. In general, tea pets are creatures that symbolize good luck, protection, and wealth. Given the fact that 2020 turned into a dumpster fire on top of a tire fire on top of a coal seam fire, I decided 2021 needed all the help it could get. 

Yes, that is every tea pet I own crowded on my large tea box. At first I thought I was going to use 2 tea boxes, one for the tea, one for the pets. However, when I started getting everything out, I realized that I could get them all on one. I hope that my tea pets all like each other. In my box of tea, I got a bag of Kenyan green tea, and decided that would be my first tea of the year. I needed something that would brew fairly quickly because there was another snow storm closing in, and I had to work again. Do you notice a theme?

I ended up at work an hour early because the roads in town were so bad, I didn't feel like trying to run any errands. Thankfully the snow stopped hours before the end of my shift, and the road conditions website showed that the roads were "seasonal driving". Just when I thought I would be driving home for the night, I discovered that I had not been scheduled for my regular second shift hours on the Saturday shift that I was required to pick up, rather that I had to be back at work seven and a half hours after I got off work. Given the fact that I can't afford to live in the city where I work, and I have to park in a remote lot and have additional commute time to get to and from my office, I realized that I would get maybe 4 hours of sleep if I tried to go home. Back to the internet for hotel room prices.


 The 7th floor view of the hotel next to the one I stayed in earlier this week was not nearly as picturesque. Oh well. I wasn't there to gaze out the window, I was there to sleep. While the front desk was willing to match the lower price I found on the internet, they actually knocked of a few more dollars when they realized that I was only staying in the room for 6 hours. It also helps that I had no reservations, and I was talking to another worker who deals with a world that does not understand working anything other than first shift. I figure that since I have not been able to go anywhere or do anything fun this year, random hotel stays are my vacation. Here's hoping that things improve in 2021 (even though my first couple of days were pretty rough).

Comments

  1. Poppy CrockerJanuary 3, 2021 at 2:36 PM

    Here's hoping this year gets better, and I'm glad you got a good discount on your room.

    I've been nervous because we've been getting upper 30s/ lower 40s days with lots of rain, and that weather tends to be most conducive to me getting chilblains. So far, so good (knock on wood!). Hopefully the heated mouse and hand warmer are enough to make a difference this year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lace makerJanuary 3, 2021 at 3:51 PM

      I hope that the heated items work for you too. My annoyance for this winter is a skin crack on my finger tip that is refusing to fully heal this winter.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Equatorial Guinea

Image
Equatorial Guinea Today we go to Equatorial Guinea , which consists of "Rio Muni" - Continental Equatorial Guinea, and 5 small islands known collectively as Insular Equatorial Guinea. When researching this country, I found "osang" tea. I found the name only, no instructions on how to make it. Mystery tea Upon doing some research, osang is a generic name for African milk tea. I couldn't pin down any specific flavors used for this region, just a general description of how people all over Africa make this tea. The base is black tea with milk. The suggested add ins are shown below. Tea Masala (thank you Indian food store), ginger, cardamom, or lemongrass. No, don't use them all together. Today I'm in the mood for cardamom, so that's what I used. The one blog I found about making this suggested a 1:1 ratio of milk and tea. I used 3/4 cup (about 200 ml) of each, with 3 cardamom pods. As usual, you can add sugar to taste. I decided to add the c...
Read more

Have a cup of Christmas

Image
I'm skipping ahead just a little bit because of a Central American holiday tradition. The hibiscus flowers are in bloom, and it's tea season. In this part of the world, hibiscus tea is known as "sorrel" instead of " bissap ". While my research on the tea of North America is not complete, I found that several countries make sorrel for Christmas. Trinidad and Tobago , the southern most Caribbean islands. They gained their independence from the UK in 1962. They are a continuation of the Andes mountains from Venezuela. They have a tropical climate, and temperatures vary widely between day and night. They used to grow a lot of sugarcane, but the last of the sugarcane estates was closed. Cocoa and coffee are also export crops. Most of the population is rural, and is made up of people from Africa, East Indian, and mixed race.  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines , are part of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea. These islands gained their independen...
Read more

Ataya/Waraga/Tuareg Tea

Image
"Berber Whiskey" What do you make on a Saturday afternoon when you're tired? I mean really tired. Like you just woke up from a 3 hour nap, and all you want to do is go back to sleep. I will admit I was a bit leery of this one when I found out how it was made, but this is wildly popular so I had to try it. This version of tea has many names, and some sources say that this is used like alcohol in cultures that forbid drinking and using drugs.  Ataya (or attaya - I've seen it spelled both ways), also known as Tuareg tea (so named for the Tuareg tribe), is a very social tea ceremony in West Africa. Most reviews say to expect to take at least 3 hours and have several rounds of tea. Over time, each round of tea is supposed to get milder and sweeter. Sometimes instructions say that mint is added. It is popular in many countries: The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau , Senegal (The Gambia is actually inside Senegal with a small border on the Atlantic), Sierra Leone , Mali , Mau...
Read more