Category: Tea Musings
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My 40th Un-Birthday Mad Hatter Tea Party
Back in June, my friend Aaron asked me, “Why haven’t you ever thrown a tea party?” To which I responded with, “Huh . . . why haven’t I thrown a tea party?!” Then the ol’ mental gears started a-turnin’. In a few short months, my 40th birthday was coming up. I didn’t drink alcohol anymore,…
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A Totem Tea Story
The definition of the word “totem” is thus: “A natural object or animal believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and adopted by it as an emblem.” It is derived from the Native American language, Ojibwe; the word, dodaem. The concept, however, is not limited to just Native American cultures and religious practices.…
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Summer Time Tea Montage
It’s officially the first day of September. The outside temperature has dropped twenty degrees. Skies are gray, and big-ass raindrops are falling. Yep, summer time is just about over. And I couldn’t be happier. Not that I bear summer any ill will in general, and not that this summer was bad, but—y’see?—I’m a fall kid…
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On the Back Roads of Vegas with Bootleg Botanicals
In mid-June, I made a trip to Las Vegas for World Tea Expo, 2016. (As you, fair reader, already know.) It fueled at least six blogs that took me all summer to write about. (They can all be found on my tea blog.) But there was one tale I forgot to tell. It only .…
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Cups, Crossroads, and the Way of World Tea Expo
It was the last day of World Tea Expo, and I seemed to have lost my “Way”. That’s how I felt that morning—kinda lost. Rousting out of bed was difficult, as per usual. But today was particularly hard. Last days of anything usually are. To kick the tiredness to the curb, I went from zero-to-“wake-the-hell-up”…
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A Tea Pairing in the Sky
Let me tell you a little about my “Tea Uncle”, Austin Hodge. Why is he wearing a Zhong Shan Zhuang, and how did someone convince me to wear a suit? I’ll get to that.
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Niu-Gu, FaceTubes, and Matcha Wrestling
A month ago, during a tea-‘n-matcha-fueled dinner pairing, a university educator asked me this: “What do you do?” “I’m just a tea blogger,” I replied. She sort of tilted her head, confusedly—like a Saint Bernard. Then asked, “Why?” The follow-up question caught me off-guard. I was both hurt and offended by it. Not because she…
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The Return of the Fellowship to World Tea Expo
Returning to World Tea Expo this year felt like a scene right out of Return of the King. You know the one—where all four battle-weary Hobbits came back. Everything was the same . . . but they weren’t. That’s how the first day of Expo felt to me. This was the first one to be…
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A Fly on Tea Journey’s Wall
The idea for Tea Journey Magazine came about the way most great ideas do . . . at a party. I wasn’t at this party, but I wish I’d been a fly on that wall.