Global Tea Time

 A couple of weeks ago, I ordered some tea from my second favorite tea shop. Yes, I have more than one tea shop that I patronize. So far, I have 3 small business tea shops that I buy from. While the internet claims that my second favorite tea shop still has a brick and mortar store, the company website does not mention anything about having a physical location any more. I'm even more skeptical about there being a physical store any more given that my package shipped from Idaho. Oh well, I still like the tea that they sell - they are the vendors of my beloved Swiss chocolate black tea, and raspberry sencha. They also sell a wonderful blueberry rooibos blend. I've been enjoying those teas since I got my package 2 Fridays ago. I also purchased a new tea to try. A premium Japanese tea: gyokuro. Blue and silver packaging, I feel like I'm finished decorating for Christmas - oh yeah, I never decorate for Christmas, so perfect! Gyokuro is also referred to as "precious dew...

 Its been another crappy week. My department has been woefully short staffed, and hospitals are getting full. While more ICU beds were opened up, we could easily use more. More medical floors are changing over to COVID units. I had to get the oil changed in my car this week. As usual, the employees at the desk were not wearing masks, and the waiting area was a few chairs crammed together in a corner. Thankfully it was a warm day, and I ended up sitting on the concrete outside the building waiting for my car. So today's picture is very simple. I have a curious cat and a butterfly. Why not evoke the carefree days of spring and summer when we continue our slide into a winter that seems to be more bleak than most?

 While I still have several more countries to visit, I'm tired. Like really tired. Not necessarily of drinking tea, or writing about tea. Rather, I work for a hospital, and if you haven't noticed, there's a pandemic on. Thankfully my job doesn't involve patient care, or face to face contact with the public. I drive in to the office every day, and listen to my coworkers fight with each other. Actually now that we have moved to the new office, we're all in separate cubes, and it's harder to fight or hear people fight when they are more spread out with walls of any sort between them. Everyone in my department is wearing PPE that we have either made or boughten ourselves. The single, disposable face shield I was given at the beginning of all this is completely useless, and while they did eventually offer to buy hard shell face shields for employees in my department, the people who did get them discovered they really don't work with our headsets. So, to Amazon to...

 Yesterday the US election was called in favor of Joe Biden. I didn't feel like I could believe it. I know that there will be challenges, and more hateful rhetoric surrounding the election. I decided that this is the perfect chance to talk about the government of New Zealand. Since they were a British colony, they have a parliamentary form of government based on the British model. Their parliament members are elected every 3 years. The leader of the majority party is prime minister, and  the parliament is responsible for voting on, and passing decisions made by the cabinet. The British monarch is the formal head of state, and they are represented by an appointee of the monarch.  The thing that really jumped out at me is that New Zealand has one of the oldest social security systems in the world! They started theirs in 1898 starting with pensions for widows and miners. That sounds nice. I keep paying into social security knowing that I will not see any of that money when I...

 So we gained an extra hour last night just to throw everyone's sleep schedule off (and to annoy all the people who work night shift). The time shift is especially inconvenient for hospitals to try to document. As far as I can tell, the goal is to have as little as possible happen during the second 2 AM hour. I wonder how death certificates work during that time. You could potentially die (on paper) before you received a procedure. Cath lab procedure started at 02:45, and patient died at 02:15. That would be a reimbursement nightmare (and in all reality, the hospital would probably have to eat the cost). As you may have guessed from my ramblings, I don't have any posts written today, and I don't feel like throwing one together this morning. I took pictures for my next blog post on Wednesday, but I haven't gotten to writing it yet. Somehow between working a mixed-up schedule (today is Sunday 2 of 3 that I will be working in a row), and having a 90 minute commute when it ...

Since next Saturday is Halloween I thought that I would explore some holidays in New Zealand. According to Google, Halloween not celebrated all that much in the past, but has been gaining popularity in the last few years. I found a  calendar  of holidays observed in New Zealand for 2020 online. Halloween is listed there, under the category of "observance". Their labor day is October 26th. I find it interesting that Good Friday, and Easter Monday are national holidays, while holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are observances. They also have a lot of regional holidays.    New Zealand was a British colony from 1841 to 1907. The culture there is described as being a mixture of European and Maori. Immigrants tended to assimilate to European culture, and Maori culture is said to have suffered greatly during colonization. The Maori were torn between preserving their traditional culture, and the pressure to assimilate to European colonist ways. Hmm, I heard the same thing in...

We've all survived another week of the zombie apocalypse that is 2020. Yet again, I find myself writing something to post on Sunday morning because, well, life. This morning I had an extra reason to not want to get out of bed. I checked my phone, and the weather said rain/snow. SNOW? It's the middle of friggin October!  NO NO NO NO! The news said that this was going to be an exceptionally bad winter as far as cold and snow (don't they say that every year?). I guess mother nature isn't messing around. Maybe this year is mother nature's revenge for the election 4 years ago.  It's not supposed to snow until Halloween night when all the kids are out trick or treating. Of course that's being discouraged this year, so maybe the weather is just as confused as we all are. What day is it? Does it matter what day it is? Which of the 3 outfits I rotate wearing to work should I wear today? Now that we're in the new office, the dress code is even more relaxed. Maybe ...