More Tea and Fun With Wacom

Well, I got a new shipment of tea in today. I got quite the haul this time, lots and lots of samplers!!! I'll let you know how they all are over the next few weeks, but for now here is what I got:

Herbal Sampler:
Rooibos Jasmin
Lemon Grass
Mango Melange
Berry Blues
Peppermint
Sour Apple

Black Tea Sampler:
Golden Monkey
Keemun Concerto
Pu Erh Dante
Ceylon Sonata
Assam Melody
Darjeeling #22

Green Tea Sampler:
Gunpowder
White Monkey
Li Zi Nutcracker
Sencha Overture
Spiced Green
Kukicha

All those were "prebuilt" samples, no thinking involved! I also bought an 8 oz tin of blood orange (the little sample I had before got me hooked!), and they were nice enough to throw in a sample tin of the Valentines tea for free. According to their site, it is a combination of Ceylon black and chocolate-covered strawberries... Well, we'll just wait and see about that.

So, my first tea review of the new batch: gunpowder. First off, I should admit my prejudice. I love green tea. It could be the nastiest tasting tea in the world, and I'd still like it. I don't know why, don't ask. Maybe it's because I remember drinking it at fake-Chinese restaurants when I was a kid... So with that in mind, I should tell you about gunpowder green tea. It's not bad. Definitely not the best green tea I've ever tasted, and the price reflects it: it's the cheapest of all green teas on Adagio. However, it really is not unpleasant, maybe a bit astringent, and it's much better than nothing!

It does a cool little trick in the teapot too! When you first see it, it kinda looks like a bunch of pebbles, but after sitting in water for 7 minutes it gets all fluffy! I love it when my food/beverages do tricks like this!

Ok, enough tea chat for tonight. I'm brewing a cup of Darjeeling right now, but you'll have to wait for my review. See? I can build suspense too!!!

I finally broke down this weekend and bought my geeky wet dream: a Wacom tablet. If you've never seen one, they are kinda hard to explain/describe. It is a drawing surface that translates your pen strokes into computer code. That's not the best explanation, but just go with it... It makes my digital image editing (bet you didn't know I did THAT, didja?) a lot easier than trying to use a mouse. On the other hand, it's fun to use as a REPLACEMENT to my mouse as well, since moving the pen moves my pointer onscreen. So cool!

Well, I have to go draw horns on the foreheads of some super models... Have a good night!

Dr S