Hmm mugs. I have more than a few, each with it's purpose and generally some sort of history to it.

My coffee one was made specially and holds the volume of my moka pot or turkish pot nicely, or alternativly leaves enough coffee from the filter machine to fill a litre flask. Nice thick brown glaze on it hides the stains perfectly too.

My soup one was a chistmas present, also made speically. Perfect volume to make up a soup sachet and thick so it keeps it hot (if preheated). I also use that one for cider sometimes.

For tea I have a giant one. It's still not big enough of course, if it hasn't got a ladder to get in it's not enough tea, but it's a start. And two bags (yorkshire blend) for five minutes with milk in after they're removed for me please.

Glad you enjoyed your birthday Treydog. It's always nice to recieve the perfect gift. How does banana paper differ from normal paper - does it smell at all? And writing all that longhand... that's some effort.

Cold? Mint?



Boiling water, tea bag in for a few mins, then a splash of milk.



I tend to use Yorkshire Gold Appropriate I guess, having spent my entire life in Yorkshire. 2 bags would be a bit strong for me though

Aah, tea. Could talk about it for hours...

T'is the difference between the English and the American.

We could get into a nice debate over who drives on the wrong side of the road, as well.

Maybe it's because I'm a veterinarian, but for some reason, when both of you spoke of yorkshire blend, I had this mental image.

No odor that I can detect. It is made from the waste fibers from the leaves after harvesting- plus some recycled waste paper. I like the "tooth"it has- a slightly rough texture that takes the ink quite well. Also the non-glare color. The company is in Costa Rica and is called Ecopapers. I will not add a link because I get annoyed by advertising spammers hitting the forum... so I do not want to be one.

The act of printing by hand is one surefire way for me to get past writer's block or any other sort of "stuck place." I do compose at the keyboard as well, but really like to have the manuscript pages. That is especially true when I am writing parts that "have not happened yet" such as the ending.

And a hot cup of Earl Grey or Red Zinger can be a treat on a winter morning- or when I am suffering from a cold.

Oh, don't get me started on tea! I loooove tea, and I also have a special cup for my tea, when I don't use one of our regular ones. (I do sometimes use a different coffee cup, too, but only if I didn't get the dishes done before going to bed and I'm too lazy to wash it in the morning....) Anywho, my tea cup is also very big, and it's white with a band of dancing cats around the top (or running, idk...I prefer to imagine in my head that they are dancing and singing....lalalalalala.....lol).

My favorite tea is definitely earl grey with a drop of lemon, and I like herbal teas a lot. Pretty much any kind of tea--ooh, and chai! Oh, and I'm not fond of cold tea--I prefer mine hot 99% of the time...

Lol, sorry if I seem kind of crazier than normal ....I'm just super giddy for some reason... I'm in an unusually good mood tonight, and it feels great, but at the same time it's almost frightening! The Duchess of Dementia is acting... *cue doomed music*... like a Maniac!!!!!!!

(and NO, I promise you I am NOT on drugs. I am just having a super good day with my family! )

Me thinks Thauron may have been spiking our dear Duchess's tea with Skooma today.

*yelling off-screen* Hey! get away from my chocolates!

I just noticed that I called a coffee mug’s handle its “grip.” D’oh!! Time for sleep.

Someone I know puts some milk, two teabags and boiling water in a flask at breakfast and drinks the result for lunch. That is tea, it also stinks.


There certainly is a time and a place for earl grey with lemon (never milk though).

If we're really going to go into tea I'll throw a controversial one out there. Lapsang souchong anyone? A smoked tea from china, now generally I can't be bothered with chinese teas but that one is rather tasty and a little unusual, though I must say I tend to use an outrageous amount of it to get the flavour strength I like.

The tea bags left in? You mean...leaving it brewing for about 4 hours?!?

Ye gads, that would be like paint stripper!

I'm like that with coffee, I can drink a 24 oz expresso, lol. If the spoon doesn't stand up in the cup by itself, the coffee is NOT strong enough !!

Or Delphine's tea!

I liked the spiced teas (chai spice) best, though I've been a long time fan of Earl Grey tea as well.

I hear in Mongolia, Afghanistan and Pakistan they make tea with butter. Huh. I'm not sure I have the courage to try that one!

I drink mine black - no cream, sugar, or lemon. Just as straight as my coffee (which I like as black as a January night).

For mugs I alternate. Today I'm drinking out of my black mug which has in simple fonts "got wind?" on it. I got it at the John Hancock SkyDeck in Chicago. The other one is the requisite cat mug, this one with a Laurel Burch "Fantastic Cats" design on it.

At church and in restaurants, I drink black coffee - none of that wimpy decaf stuff. And sometimes I'll have it with a shot of Jameson's Irish or sambuca on the side.

Sometimes I drink my tea black, and I rarely use sugar. But for coffee I can't stand drinking it without milk and sugar. My husband is the exact opposite--he'll only drink it black.

I never drink decaf, either. Not for me--I need my caffeine!

I haven't been on in a couple of days but in the read-over I do have to point out the clarification that Treydog made about "printing"....Just be thankful that he does that because if anyone found anything he had "written" instead of "printed" they would think they had found a new language that needed to be translated.....

Just sayin"

JK Treydog, well, not really but...well you know

A

I actually drink very little coffee or tea. Orange juice, yes, and spiked with a Swarm caffeine pill if I need it. Usually, though, I drink a ton of water at night (helps put me to sleep), and in the morning it's get up and hit the white porcelain receptacle. Easy way to get myself up in the morning. Second best way to wake up.

I do enjoy coffee with Bailey's, or occasionally a half-shot o' whiskey. Obviously not a usual "Wake up and greet the morning with your cup of coffee before heading out for the day" drink. Might interfere with that morning commute.

Hope everyone enjoyed their Memorial Day weekend!

Not sure about Pakistan, certainly in the cities they make it the same way as the Indians - boil milk, tea and lots of sugar together - though I don't know about in the hills. Salt tea is a Tibetan/Mongolian thing mainly (though it might well have spread to other high lying areas), I drank a lot of it while I was living in that bit of the world. It's pretty horrid until you clear the 2000m mark but then you start to dehydrate quickly and need salty liquid to replace water. Another aspect is most poeple tend to prefer fattier things when they go high.

The way the Tibetans make it is boil milk water and tea (ideally chinese brick tea (good luck getting that in the west)) together with salt to taste (around a third of a teaspoon per cup) and a bit of butter about half the size of a die per cup. Boil it and whisk until it's the right colour (a couple of minutes if I recall correctly). The result is savoury, best described as chicken soup without the chicken flavour.

Best tea I ever had was in Rajhistan, it was very heavily spiced and made with condensed milk. More than a little sweet but delicious, and nothing like tea as it's drank here.

As far as de-caf goes, I wouldn't mind if taking the caffeine didn't kill he flavour, but it does. I have been known to mix half and half caf and de-caf if I want to drink lots of coffee and not get too jittery. As far as booze goes it has to be an Irish coffee for me.

Memorial Day was a fine day. After hoisting my flag, as I do every day the weather allows, I went for a long run and enjoyed a beautiful morning.

Upon returning home, the house smelled of something burning. An agitated Mrs Acadian informed me she had attempted cooking breakfast. The result was a pair of charcoal brickettes in the sink that she informed me had only recently been bagels.

She proudly chirped, "I was able to get several windows open before the smoke alarm could go off."

"Were you trying to cook with a Flare spell?"

"No, silly," she replied with a frown. "I just stuck them in the toastmaking altar. And no blonde jokes, if you please."

"How about I take you out to breakfast?"

"Oh that would be a great idea," she said. "Where shall we go?"

"How about Bravil for some strawberries, sweet rolls and tea?"

"I'm not drinking Delphine's tea."

Well....If you put two teabags into boiling water, I suspect what will come out is not milk but a man-scream...

lol. You and Mrs. Acadian sound charming! But I'm afraid I'm unaware of what's wrong with Delphine's tea...?

Lapsang Souchong is exactly how I imagine Delphine’s tea tasting. Sign me up! I agree about the decaf. I have to double the amount of leaves/grounds to water just to consider it.

I had a great weekend. Summer has definitely arrived around here. You can break a sweat before dawn just walking out to get the paper.

It sounds like Mrs. Acadian has found the perfect recipe for breakfast. How funny!

Foxy!!




ETA: Lady Syl, in SubRosa’s Teresa of the Faint Smile page 44 post 862.

Thank you!
Between the stories of Teresa and Buffy, you will come across several references to Delphine's rather stout tea. Here is just one from Episode 104 of Buffy's Journal:

*

"I saw her earlier in the basement recharging some weapons," chimed in Ardaline. After briefly sticking her tongue out at the Breton in blue velvet, she added, "Ita said she's not coming anywhere near Delphine's tea."

"Hmmph!" retored the bubbly Breton. "If she'd drink it instead of spill it on herself, it wouldn't eat holes in her blouse."

*

Mrs Acadian graciously suffers through a verbal rendition of each episode before it is posted, so she is well-familiar with life in Tamriel. We have Mrs Treydog to thank for that policy.

Ah, I see. Thank you for explaining that to me.

Yes, my very own "Thadon" also suffers through verbal renditions of my stories, as well. He likes the stories, but he does grow tired of hearing it over and over again because of changes, lol! He's lucky we've been too busy to read through it in the last few months, though.

As for all the talk of tea, I prefer grean tea with mint. I used to work for a janitorial company at the University of Arkansas and one of the female professors from Morocco always used to stop me when I was around her office and practically force me to sit and have some of the mint tea that she'd brought from Morocco. I gotta admit it was probably twice as good as the stuff we have here but after experiencing it I started drinking it all the time.

I also use two single serve bags of it in a single cup because I like the taste of my tea to be strong.

Argh, these baby birds are wrecking my head! They sit in the hollies right outside and screech all day long. And the baby hawks do the same from up in the pines. I love the Wild Kingdom atmosphere most of the time. But right now I’m thinking, grow up already!!

And now there’s a squirrel trying to jump up into a hanging basket. What does it think is in there?! I need to move to a different window.

Maybe it's mALX looking for Alix? Or perhaps that Golden Saint Armor?

If the squirrels could think, we would not have foreign outsourcing.

But back to tea and coffee. I either drink my coffee with cream and (brown) sugar, or make espresso and use white sugar, but tea is always unsweetened. I have about twenty different varieties of tea and some get milk, and some don't. Rarely add lemon, even when I make iced tea (which is usually Jasmine).

Oh, I love Jasmine tea! But I always drink mine hot and without anything added to it. The flavor is perfect alone--it doesn't need anything added.

As for Grits's squirrel and bird problem...lol. Moving to a different window was probably a good choice.

But I must say, I wish I had more like that to see. I live in a small city, and there's a fair amount of nature here, but I badly miss living out in the country, surrounded by trees and crazy animals getting into everything.

That actually reminds me of a near-miss I had when living on a farm just out of high school. I was coming home one night from a date with my boyfriend at the time (who is now my husband ), and I was on my cell phone talking to him as I walked up the sidewalk toward the house, and I saw a "kitty" and started to greet it--but then I stopped dead in my tracks when I realized it was not a kitty, but a skunk! I saw that same skunk around the house at night on a couple of occasions, and thankfully it never sprayed me! It was attracted to our house because of the big dish of catfood we always left outside for all the farm cats....

ARGH !!! "KABOOOM !!!!!"


[mALX grew to enormous proportions and ripped shirt off in a fit of squirrely wrath just before exploding]


*

Oh noes!!! Not mALX!!! Take it back, ghastley, take it back! Maybe we can paste the pieces back together... Will it require necromancy to reanimate her, though? I hope not, because I've never been good with magic!



For the record, it is my firm belief that animals are highly intelligent, much more so than we human beings give them credit for. Sometimes, (now please don't go getting offended now, anyone), I think that animals are smarter than humans. We humans have a way of convincing ourselves that anyone or anything that does not think and act the exact same way we do is somehow dumber or less than us. The Native Americans, Africans, and anyone else who wasn't "civilized" according to the Europeans is a classic and very tragic example of this attitude at its worse...

Animals are incredibly advanced, and they can survive in this world without greed and destructive tendencies, which, in my opinion, shows they are of higher intelligence, or at least a higher understanding that human beings are barely in tune to....

mALX, if that’s you in the hanging basket, come on in!! The remote is on the table, coffee’s in the pot, and we have cake!!

Did someone say ... cake ... and coffee? [mALX pulls herself back together quickly]

And the first person to say "the cake is a lie" shall need rabies shots in ten different places before the day is out.

You have been warned.

SPEW !!! ROFL !!!!







Thank you, Lady Syl !!! Er ... Not good with magic?

[mALX looks in mirror and sees her tail sticking out between her ears] ... GAAAAH !!!


*

wow, I leave for a few days and come back to a mutated mALX and promises of cake. I thought this was a CIVILISED forum!

anyways, I take a small amount of milk and no sugar in my tea. I dont drink plain coffee, but I do like Latte and Mocha.

Im with you syl with the "smart animals" idea!

ROFL !!!

In the words of our dear mALX: SPEW! lol.

Oops...sorry, mALX.... I'll talk to the Madgod...maybe He'll put you back into your proper form. Although, it will likely cost you some form of service to Him, so I don't know if you want to do that... Perhaps you should go pray at an altar of the Nine...?



Woot!! *high fives grif11*

A civilized forum? What planet are you from? We are far from civilized. However, we are friendly--as long as you keep us fed on cake and coffee, we won't bite...much...

GAAAAAH !!! My son got accepted at the University of Tennessee !!!! They were only accepting 3,000 and he applied late - so that means he beat out a lot of candidates for acceptance !!! As soon as I'm done doing my victory dance I have to start shopping scholarships, lol.



WOOOOOOOOOOOOT !!!!!!!!

Congrats to you and your son!

CONGRATULATIONS TO YOUR SON AND HIS MOTHER!!!!

Oh my gosh, congratulations!!! That is fantastic!! WOOO HOOOO!!!

Fantastic mALX!!!

WOOT!! Congrats to you and your son, mALX!!! That is awesome!

CONGRATS TO YOUR SON!!

You've got to be so damn proud of yourself and him!

SECONDED! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

YAAAAAAY!

(to be honest, I dont know much about American education, but everyone else is cheering so, YAAAAY!)

First you got grade school (ages 5 to 10 - not counting grade skipping for smartypants)

Then you got junior high school (ages 11 to 13)

Then you got high school (ages 14 to 17). This is when most American students learn to drive a car and start drinkin' and whorin'. Well, not really, but

Then you got college (where mALX's son is going in the fall). Now here is where it gets interesting. You can start right after high school graduation, which means you start college as an 18 year old (depending on when your birthday falls). If you do, then you can (ideally, but rarely these days) get a bachelor's degree in your major of choice in four years. I got my BA in Biology in four years. But it's more common these days for students to take five years to obtain that lowly bachelor's. Why? I'm not sure.

Then depending on your career choice, you can go on to graduate school for another two to four years. It took me four years to obtain my doctor's degree. It probably will take me between 1 1/2 to two years for me to get my MBA (currently enrolled).

At any point after high school (actually, the age of 16) you can enter the workforce and forget about higher education, or enter the work force to pay for higher education.

Probably clear as mud, but the reason we're so excited about mALX's son (who doesn't resemble a hyperactive squirrel at all) is that he is another step closer to independence and adulthood.

First- I, for one, welcome our new squirrel overlords. All hail the bushy-tailed tree-rats. Ahem.

Second- YAY to you and your son, mALX! If he needs any words of wisdom on surviving the good old Orange Screw- sorry-- The University of Tennessee-- please let me know.

Congrat's mALX (and son). From what I hear uni over there is rather different but still a bundle of fun.

And even better that's one less teenager under your feet