Archive for December, 2008

Top Five Teas of 2008

I thought I would celebrate the end of year by naming my five favorite teas of 2008. Note that I mean teas that I have tasted in the past year, not necessarily the 2008 harvest. In the spirit of diversity, I have picked one green, one oolong, one Indian black, one Chinese black, and a pu-erh.
Continue Reading »

Two Dickens Christmas Tales

With the resounding success of A Christmas Carol, Dickens apparently thought he had a good thing going and started writing annual Christmas stories. There are five stories total, written from 1843 (A Christmas Carol) to 1848 (The Haunted Man). He skipped 1847 for some reason.
Continue Reading »

Firefox Favorites

It’s been a while since I did a tech post, so I thought I’d write about a few of the fun tech toys I’ve been playing with lately. Then I realized that most of these are Firefox add-ons, so I’ll make this a Firefox post. Continue Reading »

A Christmas Carol

I know that Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol to cheer the hearts of mankind and to infuse us all with the spirit of the season. (Well, he also wrote it to try to jump start his flagging career—more on that later.) But my earliest memories of this festive classic involve being scared out of my mind by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Thank you, Hollywood. I’d make it through the Marley part with only mild whimpering, then get lulled into a false sense of complacency by the benign Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, only to be accosted by that terrifying bony hand emerging from its black shroud to point at Scrooge’s grave.
Continue Reading »

A Few Oolongs

For the most part, I really like oolong tea, but I don’t drink a lot of it. Lately I’ve been very focused on pu-erh, but I have made some recent interesting excursions into “the other gong-fu tea.” So here are a few recent oolongs of interest:
Continue Reading »