The Art Of Tea, In A Brand New Year...

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Peggy and I are enjoying a quiet peaceful first day of 2007.

Our second pot of green tea, 'China Tips', is steeping in the pot.

We're listening to music from an entire century as the iPod shuffles through random play, selecting tunes from our own ROBINHOOD RADIO© collection of 12,000+ carefully chosen songs*, while Peggy and I work on our new TOP SECRET project.

We can't tell you about it, or show pictures yet, because it's a surprise for loved ones who visit the blog, but as soon as it's finished and delivered I'll post the photos.

But I did post a picture of Peggy's new teapot. The lid on her other one was broken just before Christmas, which spurred me on to find her another one. So now she has two, because I managed to glue the top to the old one back together.

Much of my morning was spent cleaning the above tea kettle, which only had a light sheen of splattered grease on it, before I seriously burned it on the other day after boiling all the water away, while I was blogging. Maybe now the pot will stop callin' the kettle black!

Last night was mellow too, highlighted by Peggy's way delicious home-made Turkey soup. We burned a Bayberry Candle throughout the evening, shared a great bottle of 2002 Pinot Noir (a timely gift from our friends, Mark & Deb**), and then I practiced on the guitar while Peggy read.

We were asleep by 9 o'clock but Dallas jumped up on the bed just before midnight, frightened, as the revelers started cutting loose, so we were awake for the big moment.

Home Sweet Home...

WISHING YOU ALL A GOOD NEW YEAR...

*I'm unrepentant in my lifetime addiction to recorded music, having been a collector of records, tapes, and CDs since I was 11 years old, so our iPod is programmed with 50 years worth of my favorite tunes, a good percentage of them recorded well before my time, and from many diverse cultures. For me, music is the sweetest of all languages, and, although I can fully feel the emotion in it, I'm not very fluent in my practice of music (unless I'm dancing to it with the insrument that is my body). Too much listening and not enough playing is my diagnosis.

**Mark brought over the bottle of wine on Sunday afternoon (New Years Eve) when I was still in the midst of a 2-day battle with leaking faucets in our bathtub/shower. I spent an aggravating Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday trying to stop a stubborn leak that was trickling down the inside wall of the tub enclosure and soaking the floor. Finally, after not being able to find new valves locally to replace our well worn 37 year-old plumber's antiques, and after replacing all the washers twice, then all the packing and the brass seats (one of those twice because of bad threads), I got the leak stopped, and the water turned back on. Just in time to enjoy our New Years Eve.

Why does this stuff always seem to happen on week-ends or during the holidays when hardware stores have short hours?

Thanks Mark & Deb, we both found the Pinot Noir to be exceptional!