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Huh! 
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Apr 23, 2021 22:33
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I would imagine it has to do somewhat with the leaves themselves. Like grapes, some varieties are lighter than others or will have lighter or darker hues based on when they were harvested. |
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Apr 23, 2021 22:39
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I too live in a place with hard water and cup staining is real Fortunately we have Cascade Platinum. /commercial
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything   Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 24, 2021 01:17
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Sometimes leaf particulate is higher in my Irish breakfast tea I've found. The "dustier" it is, the worse it clings to the pot and cup. My teapot just shipped. 
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Apr 24, 2021 16:31
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 whacha gonna name it?
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 24, 2021 16:36
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Thinkin bout Noam Chonky because it's a fat teapot and I'm gonna drink tea while I write. |
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Apr 24, 2021 16:46
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The lads have come by to pick up ol' faithful: https://youtu.be/M_Bsx53viMc https://youtu.be/l_DUuYYhqOU https://youtu.be/grnAbZm_c80 https://youtu.be/4LiDx5NmTKU https://www.instagram.com/p/CODaxxOlm04/ After 6 years of reliable service in North and South Austin and 10+ years over in San Francisco, now it will have a (temporary) new home at the teahouse and serve in its adolescence as a front of house tea table as its original intention. Eventually, the teahouse will want to make their own, and this one is honestly a pretty solid template for doing so. Lots of care and attention was made into making it, though it may not be the top of the line, it made its voyage from China to the States and has touched, seen, heard, and tasted much. I don't think that tea tables can smell! |
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Apr 24, 2021 16:53
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I usually brew my loose tea in a strainer thing inside my mug but i have realized that when I want 2 cups of tea it might be better to use a teapot. do you just dump the leaves in the pot and strain them when you pour it? how do you keep it from oversteeping for the second cup? I am not smart enough to figure out how to use a teapot, apparently.
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Apr 24, 2021 17:21
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I usually brew my loose tea in a strainer thing inside my mug but i have realized that when I want 2 cups of tea it might be better to use a teapot. do you just dump the leaves in the pot and strain them when you pour it? how do you keep it from oversteeping for the second cup? I am not smart enough to figure out how to use a teapot, apparently. I have taken to a hybrid of western and Chinese approaches to brewing by using the Chinese ratios of water and tea and steeping times but steeping it in my mug with a basket instead of one of those lidded jar things (gaiwan? I\'m still under caffeinated) or a tea pot and can get many mugs from one batch of tea. IOW, just add more water to your mug and put the strainer back in and see how it goes!
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 24, 2021 18:04
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I usually brew my loose tea in a strainer thing inside my mug but i have realized that when I want 2 cups of tea it might be better to use a teapot. do you just dump the leaves in the pot and strain them when you pour it? how do you keep it from oversteeping for the second cup? I am not smart enough to figure out how to use a teapot, apparently. what kind of teapot do you have? If you have a big western style teapot, usually using a basket filter or bags are appropriate because you can lift them out of the pot to stop the steeping process. Alternately, you can just pour everything out of the pot and that will also do the same thing. Most teapots have capacity for a basket filter - I like using the one by Finum with the gold micromesh since it cleans out the easiest, but maybe you don't like the plastic so an all-metal one is likely out there - or, you can also purchase open-fill loose leaf teabags. They also make a reusable thing called a tea sock, which is more or less just some cheesecloth that has been sewn together into a bag. It is washable after you're doing using it so you can have that as your go-to (coffee also has a similar thing with a Nel or a coffee sock). Please do not use an actual sock as those tend to taste bad, even when brewing tea. |
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Apr 24, 2021 18:08
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Mmmm sock tea. Cheesy
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 24, 2021 18:16
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Bilirubin posted:I have taken to a hybrid of western and Chinese approaches to brewing by using the Chinese ratios of water and tea and steeping times but steeping it in my mug with a basket instead of one of those lidded jar things (gaiwan? I\'m still under caffeinated) or a tea pot and can get many mugs from one batch of tea. IOW, just add more water to your mug and put the strainer back in and see how it goes! aldantefax posted:what kind of teapot do you have? It looks like someone already thought of this: https://www.uptontea.com/teapots/upton-tea-imports-chatsford-teapot-20-ounce/p/V00514/ Would something like that work okay for making oolong and stuff too?
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Apr 24, 2021 18:17
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Sure. Just pay attention to the water temperature and time. You will be okay! |
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Apr 24, 2021 18:53
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another byob success story!
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 24, 2021 19:43
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thinkin about gettin a cute lil teapot and one of those fancy cuisinart electric kettles and getting into oooooooolongs etc.
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Apr 24, 2021 23:33
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Go for it! |
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Apr 24, 2021 23:39
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Can anyone recommend me an oolong to start with and how I make it
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Apr 25, 2021 00:27
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Oooolong is just too fun to say to not drink. Like orange pekoe and fannings and tippy. I’m just making my tea drinking choices based on having fun names from now on. I have no idea what BOP stand for in tea jargon but saying ‘East Frisian bop!’ Is half the reason I like that stuff so much (and it’s really good)
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Apr 25, 2021 00:29
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all of the letters are western tea designations, the more letter, the fancier it is. OP is just "Orange Pekoe", B is (choose your own word it doesn't really matter that much) Oolongs are a wide world but the most commonly found one is Tie Guan Yin, also referred to Iron Goddess, Goddess of Mercy, Tie Kuan Yin, etc. "Guan Yin" is the varietal, and it is usually found on the greener side of oolong rolled into small pearls. This tends to cause it to have more freshness-related things to it, but it can be high fired to have a more roasty quality. Idk where in the States you might be but if you're looking for a good entry-level oolong, TGY is pretty good but only one of a countless variety. Oolong refers to the oxidization category of the leaf and it starts at around 35% up to 70 or 80%, after which you get into black/red tea category. |
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Apr 25, 2021 01:15
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some paleolithic tribespeople sitting around a cooking fire sipping boiled water, one says to the other "gah, this water is so boring. Here, put some of that bush in it, maybe that'll liven it up." or maybe it was more like "drat, this water tastes terrible. Maybe if I put some of that fragrant bush in it, people won't notice the taste of feces." Finger Prince fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Apr 25, 2021 |
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Apr 25, 2021 02:09
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Oooolong is just too fun to say to not drink. Like orange pekoe and fannings and tippy. I’m just making my tea drinking choices based on having fun names from now on. I like OG Kush OP Also I'm pretty giddy on my Organic Shui Hsien Oolong I'm driving tea discord nuts about it but I'm also pretty out of my head on caffeine
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 25, 2021 03:15
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Time for tea!
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 25, 2021 18:10
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A trip report from the tea house! The tea table which I had loaned to them was immediately put to good use as the front of house community tea table for people to join at. I chose to take a nap and just be very sleepy yesterday, but today I had company and met up with a friend I had not seen since she had moved to Austin in 2019 or so. We go a bit back all the way to 2012, so it’s been a minute and it was good to catch up. We enjoyed the company of folks at the tea table, and as the day wore on, the owner of the place came by and invited his old high school friends to come join the table. We had more chance encounters - a couple was looking at an open house run by a friend of the teahouse specializing in real estate, who then came by to have tea, and her boyfriend was a native Austinite who plans to run for office. Other folks came by who are part of the local AAPI (Asian-American Pacific Islander) activist groups and sold some donation shirts, which I ended up picking up one of. The teahouse is interested in hosting events and conversations about identity and belonging as a minority in Austin, and since most of the US considers all of Asia to be lumped into a singular category, part of that is to invite people to come and be together and celebrate cultural differences and learn how to coexist with others and find ways to just stop needless violence and hate that’s out there. On a lighter note, I ended up pouring (again), this time both a sheng puerh (Doom Roy again!) and a dancong in their respective teapots (Golden Thread Honey Orchid). We spoke of linguistics, cultural immersion, and other different philosophical pursuits and approaches. Politics has a way of working its way in, but we agreed that those present were chill and there to have a good time. We also spoke of games and the craft of running and playing tabletop RPGs. It looks like we might be headed to eventually getting a regular crew rolling including the owner as part of a D&D group or similar type of game. One of the guys sung his praises for the Cypher rules system, which I am only kind of familiar with, but I’d give it a go on either side of the screen once we figure out a time that works for people. As everybody began to peel one of the more bubbly members of the staff showed up from finishing his sessions and offered to pour, after which he decided to do a fan dance set to “Jungle - The Heat”. He had never heard the song before, but he literally picked up a fan he had and just flowed with the song, which was a real treat as the sun began to set. I learned also that the guy who came to talk about games and one of the other staff members plus the owner had known each other since high school days, and he had come back after completing his PhD in Germany! Supposedly, there is a second tea house that will be opening up in North Carolina (or maybe South Carolina) that will be under the same name run by one of the tea students that attended here in Austin for a little while. Theoretically, as a member I could go over and have tea there just the same without worrying about fees or the like. The hope is one day to go to any number of places in the world like this tea house and with a membership stop by, connect with an extended family, and pour tea for one another, connecting with people through tea — except Mormons, who will have herbal tisanes instead (they’re cool to join though)! https://www.instagram.com/p/COGVp28g56D/ Here is my tea table at the teahouse already getting use by the staff. It’s been with me for 6 years, but easily has an extra 10 aside from that from the previous owner, who runs Aroma Tea Shop in San Francisco. |
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Apr 26, 2021 06:46
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Is there a copy of that posted non Insta? I don't have an account so I cannot see it. Meanwhile, time for tea! Having the sampler of the Yunnan black today
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Apr 27, 2021 17:01
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Bilirubin posted:Is there a copy of that posted non Insta? I don't have an account so I cannot see it. Not that I'm aware of, sadly, since it's the owner's account posting that stuff. The tea table though is still the same tea table I posted Youtube stuff for earlier! |
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Apr 27, 2021 19:14
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Another successful adventure to the tea house. There will be an event this Saturday evening. In the meantime, I ended up being inaugurated into the teahouse group of "people who play the game Samurai Gunn", by playing Samurai Gunn. I did not win except for once, and it's clear that there is some stuff going on with that game I'll want to explore in the future. I also bought three tea bricks and one tea cake that I will age for the next presidential term or two. They're all from 2013, so if I let it ride until 2023 to 2028 then they will turn out to be quite special. |
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Apr 29, 2021 03:18
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I am drinking chamomile tea and i enjoy reading about all the tea house adventures. I had no idea tea could be aged like that.
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Apr 29, 2021 03:47
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Yeah, it's pretty wild. All tea is the same plant but the age of the plans, soil, picking time, processing, aging, etc. All have these her he effects on it. It's sorta like wine in that way. |
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Apr 29, 2021 03:55
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2015 raw puerh today. Very chill. Be kind to yourselves, tea friends. |
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Apr 29, 2021 07:07
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In an attempt to try bottled tea, I got some PURE LEAF Black Tea with a hint of sicilian lemon and honeysuckle. Ehhhhh. Tastes like they dumped a cup of sugar into it. |
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Apr 29, 2021 18:32
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It's pure leaf in the sense that it's all the tea dust they scraped out of the processing machines and brewed, then dumped a bunch of sugar into to cover up the fact Bottled teas are lies |
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Apr 29, 2021 18:49
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Bottled barley tea is good but just make your own |
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Apr 29, 2021 18:56
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Apr 29, 2021 23:03
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Heath posted:It's pure leaf in the sense that it's all the tea dust they scraped out of the processing machines and brewed, then dumped a bunch of sugar into to cover up the fact Bottled japanese green and oolong teas are legit tasty though. Iced oolong is a good mixer for shochu. |
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Apr 29, 2021 23:53
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that fukken teapot the spout could go "BYOB!" if it wanted to |
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Apr 30, 2021 01:44
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Post script: I had some pretty bomb vegan bacon and vegan brie today with the folks hangin' at the tea house. It was pretty dead due to traffic and rain but towards the end of the evening as people began to stream in for hapkido lessons I ended up buying those plates you see which are not-quite-celadon from Guangzhou. They have a nice cloud motif and will complement the lil' pear pot. The bigger saucer is closer to a tea boat for the teapot to rest on, and the smaller saucer will be used either as a rest for the lid, or as a coaster for the cup. Rather than using a cha he or gong dao bei (both are more or less the same thing to serve as a decanter) I just did it what I like to call "Old Style" which is, dispense directly into the cup and mix and drink as it goes. I did Wild Purple Sheng puerh from 2014, which I have had before, and it is a fine brew, harvested and fermented from wild tea bushes of a special varietal (hence, Wild Purple). The friends at the shop managed to thread match a bolt for each of the shelves on the tea table on the service side - previously, they were freestanding on a pair of lazy susans, but that that made them rather wobbly. As a result, now they are un-wobbly, AND there are now two lazy susans out there for use in the tea house somewhere. I also met an old dude named Morpheus, but only briefly. Prior to the tea house being called West China Tea, it was owned by some people and called Guan Yin. The name change came about when the owners took over, originally a play off of the East India company; it was originally a shell organization that was just "one of the owners who wanted to get more tea than he could bring back from China as just himself". Morpheus, apparently, used to pour tea at Guan Yin, so he's definitely an OG. He headed out before I spoke with him in detail, but I realized that he had a Mercedes Benz SUV with a flaming phoenix painted on the hood. All in all, pretty good day! I have been honing my mind on this special work project and part of that is recentering my energy by mentally rehearsing this 14 page script I have written for work (seen in part in the above picture) so hopefully I will be able to deliver it in front of a video camera tomorrow night and through the weekend so I can get everything squared away and ready for next week. |
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Apr 30, 2021 02:16
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Finger Prince posted:Bottled japanese green and oolong teas are legit tasty though. Iced oolong is a good mixer for shochu. Also bottled tea in Taiwan. The bottled oolong tea there was really nice |
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May 1, 2021 02:32
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I got some Moroccan mint from Taylor's and this stuff is freaking good. It's green tea with about 15% spearmint. I know the traditional preparation is with a generous amount of sugar but even without sweetener it's really easy to drink a whole pot.
Vivian Darkbloom fucked around with this message at 15:31 on May 1, 2021 |
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May 1, 2021 15:28
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Another successful jaunt to the tea house! It is basically raining the entire weekend here in Austin and I finished most of my video production work today so I decided to pack up and head over to the teahouse earlier than expected. It was raining hard, nothing that I wasn't used to, but apparently while I was on the freeway having fun (actual fun, I enjoy rain driving) with hydroplaning and the jamming to power metal there were multiple flash flood warnings that didn't ping my phone until after I got to the teahouse. Oops? As soon as I got to the teahouse like half the staff was more or less exhausted and I ended up taking up pouring services for the rest of the afternoon. I met up with some folks who were also interested in doing a D&D game that wanted to get started like as soon as possible - very excited players - and so we got to talk shop and my brain is back into designing new games to run for folks, though perhaps that may cut into my tea and free socializing time a bit. Today was the first time I saw the teahouse fully packed, but really since there are only two self-service tables and one front of house tea bar to sling at there wasn't exactly a whole lot of space occupied (there are other rooms and usually they are booked for lessons and virtual sessions). I ended up accidentally selling a membership for someone who was interested in attending the event in the evening that was for members, staff, and guests of either at the teahouse. Said event was quite fun! There are some members who dialed in, and I got to say hello to the owner's babby, as well as occupy a small amount of camera space. I got the chance to have others pour for me for a change (a novel idea) - I had the chance to try from the owner's special shou puerh pot a new "Unturned Tarp-fermented Tea", which was suitably very funky and very delicious. There's a great (quality and size) hall that got a new barn door fabricated and installed today complete with shou-sugi-ban wood burning that the builders that run back of house are fans of. It looks and works fantastic, and was quite striking when you first see it, but blends in as the night wore on. Massive paper lanterns with color changing LEDs hung from the ceiling while one of the other members that exchanges music licensing and beatmaking for membership did some casual DJ'ing from his phone. People began to slowly trickle in for the members event and I got to meet a handful more people as we began to take tea together. Instead of dinner I ended up grazing on hummus, crackers, tea, and one of the friends of the teahouse that hangs out often to cook brought a banana tapioca pudding which was real good! I ended up taking the entire thing home. Conversation spilled into the side yard where a fire got going and the owner brought out his hulusi, a Chinese drone flute made from a gourd. It's kinda like bagpipes, and also extremely dope sounding. Closing your eyes and soaking it in takes you to a place walking through an ancient forest after the rains. Pretty neat! Also, I got to participate for a few rounds in playing Samurai Gunn 2 - which is not released or in open beta, but since the guy who made the sliding barn door also beat the developers in a tournament at their own game and bested their secret characters, got exclusive access to play it. It's quite fun and a bit different from the original Samurai Gunn, but it will have single player, network play, and STUFF. I'm very excited to see how it polishes up! I also enjoyed at the very end of the night since I was one of the last ones out (I helped with cleanup and teardown) a five hour long steep of 2014 Wild Purple Sheng Puerh in the lil pearl pot. Since this was the first social in-person actual event I had been into in probably more than a year and a half, I went home feeling well and satisfied and drove in silence in an easy and clear night just as the clock turned midnight, completing the Cinderella pumpkin cycle. Also, there is a brand new Corvette with a paper tag parked next to me. Someone treated themselves real well today, not just me! |
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May 2, 2021 06:25
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nice! Its time for tea so into the oolong again, then off to pick up my remote ordered booze and groceries. Our covid numbers are at an all time high and our hospitals might collapse in days/weeks so I'm minimizing human contact to the greatest extent possible (love online grocery shopping though, will probably never go back in person because gently caress that noise), so its nice to hear about what life might eventually be like again
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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May 2, 2021 17:39
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