Maui! (or 'The benefits of being a trophy husband')

Back in Feb Meg went to Maui to present her research at 2 conferences, so in the week between them i flew out to have some fun. It is an amazing place. i wasn't all keen to see hawaii, there are far more interesting places on earth, but having gone, i would definitely go back. what we can't show you is the amazing snorkeling we did, so many fish. like swimming in the aquarium-which is the name of the spot we went to.

Here's some of the excitement.

MAUI IS COLD AT SUNRISE!
catching a lizard
Charles Lindberg is buried there
hunting for bugs

spelunking- maui underground
And Maui from the skies- meg goes zip lining

The passing of a good man.

My grandfather, Clayton Bruce, just passed from this world. He was a kind, funny, and worrisome man, who was never satisfied that i was driving slow enough. I am forever in his debt. I love you, Grandpa.

All the best stuff comes from china...

i have been meaning to post this for some time (like after christmas), but well i have been alternatingly busy and lazy. But now as i wait for the laundry to finish, with my wife back to being on call in the hospital, and little homework this weekend, i am finally going to do it.

Here's some new teas that i have accumulated in recent months:

Starting chronologically, the two holiday blends from Peete's were vastly different, Holiday Blend which incorporated orange rind, cloves, cinnamon and smelled like a potpourri sachet-to be fair it didn't taste as strongly as it smelled-was not my cup, 3 tries and i gave up.

But Holiday Breakfast Blend was very nice, a slightly malty and smokier version of Scottish Breakfast which finished cleanly, if a bit acidic. it was slightly too smokey for meg, but a far cry from straight lapsang souchong (which provided the piney-christmasy flavor of this tea)all told slightly better and more interesting, but not as smooth as scottish breakfast. I remember taking cups of it down to sit and chat with meg at the outdoor fireplace in our pajamas on mild december evenings-you wouldn't do that in new york.

Then as we went in to christmas there was a trip to san francisco and china town that provided everything a tea totaler dreams of. I went into a tea shop in the morning and asked for yunnan tea, but was given pu-erh, that was unsatisfactory. the woman was not particularly adept at english, which ensures her knowledge of tea, but increases the challenge of finding what you want. it was a tasting store anyway, so you were expected to pick several types and try them. I also had come prepared and researched the chinese name, and pronunciation, of my favorite variety. "d/tee-ann-hong". "Oh...tianhong cha, yes just a minute" then the woman briskly walked to a shelf and brought back a golden painted tea container roughly the size of a sparkletts water bottle, with a sign that said "golden monkey". She took it to a tasting table, and prepared it, inquiring when we had been to china. apparently this tea is not a common request of westerners, but I assured her we hadn't been, yet, and that it was my favorite.

a word about tea tastings in chinatown. i assume they are similar to wine tastings, but for two main points, 1. the tea is prepared for you right at the table, so unlike wine it is subject to the preparers skill, and the water's qualities. 2. you drink it plain, the same as wine, or coffee tasings, but really, who drinks their tea and coffee without "additives"? wine you drink plain, straight from the bottle, maybe decanted, but you don't put cream or sugar analogs in it. so a tea tasting really is less specific to how a tea will taste in your own home with all the fixins, its really just a ballpark.
it came in a bag, the bag ripped-its in a metal tin now.

The store was called Ten ren teas and unbeknownst to me at the time they are the taiwan based company that owns "cha for tea" the tea bar that meg and i frequent. and furthermore, they have a store a few miles away in anaheim-which i have yet to visit, but i'll let you know. Golden monkey is the best tea i have ever had. it tastes like warm honey, it is so mild and smooth. i prepare it in a french press, and resteep the leaves 3-4 times over the course of a couple days, and it gets milder and milder.

also on this trip we stopped in another tea store, and tasted quite a few teas with a big spender/regular at the store. he didn't like the type of teas i enjoy, he favored oolong and ti kwan yin, which aren't hearty enough for me. but it was interesting to taste the differences in a half dozen types of the same variety. one in particular was interesting, called "milk oolong" it tasted like butter. and that was fascinating. also pricey, but meg liked it so we bought an ounce for $12. when you sweeten it the taste is like buttered popcorn jelly bellies.

Then for christmas my brother and sister-in-law, in new york, sent 3 teas from a store called mcnulty's, which is supposed to be one of the largest tea stores in the us, and has a diversity that is shocking when you look on their website. they used my blog against me, and cobbled together a few types that they thought i would enjoy.
gunpowder on the left, normal whole leaf on the right

First up, was "golden gunpowder", it was the same type of tea as golden monkey, but "gunpowder" refers to a preparation where the leaves are rolled into loose clumps prior to oxidization. "pearls" refers to tightly rolled balls, and is common in green and occasional in black and oolong. "gunpowder"is also common among greens. the purpose of this preparation is that the tea brews stronger than regular whole leaf because of the damage done to the leaf tissues in the rolling process, it releases more tannins into the hot water faster. i like this tea a great deal, it has the same flavor as golden monkey, but at a strength that is almost that of a very smooth coffee. its a strong brew, but only good for 2 steepings as they tend to empty the leaves of flavor very quickly. it was an excellent choice for my christmas gift.

The other two were assams, which i have mentioned are probably my second favorite variety of straight black teas. and i am lumping them together because they give an interesting (at least to me, possibly you-if you made it this far) lesson in leaf quality/grading. I am sorry for any hurt feelings this may cause, and i assure you i enjoyed the adventure and anticipation of trying every new tea i have ever tasted, but one of the teas was not good.

Golden assam, is a whole leaf assam, malty and smooth not the best assam i have ever had, but certainly among the better, the counterpoint to this was Assam B.O.P. the difference was the grade.

There are many grading systems for teas, but the simplest is leaf condition. whole leaf is the highest, it brews smoother due to the relatively undisturbed nature of the leaf, less surface area is available to let out the tannins.
BOP on the left, whole leaf on the right

broken or parts is the middle grade and it is what it sounds like, broken leaves. more surface area, allows more and larger molecules out of the leaf and that makes it much less smooth but more flavorful.

dust or "fannings" again is what it sounds like, really tiny pieces of tea leaf. huge amounts of surface area, super bitter, and not much more flavorful than broken leaf. this is what most bagged teas are made of (filterbags, not sachets-more on that later) think Lipton.

Assam BOP, was rough! bitter as lipton, but better flavored. the kind of tea that makes you pucker. maybe it is better with milk to smooth it out, the british-and my wife and her kin seem to think so. but i tried understeeping this and it was almost as bad as drinking coffee.

(not) a baby pelican

meg called me from santa barbara to tell me that she had found a baby pelican in the middle of the road after the weekend of hard rain, and furthermore that she was bringing it with her. when she showed up i informed her that the above pictured bird was not a "baby"! it was a first year, or in people terms, a 16 yr old-not quite adult, not really helpless. we then drove it to her father (a veterinarian) in san diego. the bird seemed healthy but oddly calm. it was very relaxed on its first car ride. we fed it a little that night-as evidenced by the second photo-and after giving it a once over Dr. Kaiser took it to sea world where they rescue marine animals.

apparently after large storms with lots of run off entering the wetlands and coastal areas the fish behave differently and the adolescent birds have a hard time coping. it is likely the bird was starving and disoriented. so as crazy as it seemed at the time meg actually did the best thing possible and probably saved the bird. she is an odd, and good hearted woman, my wife. so that's the story of henrietta the pelican from santa barbara.

p.s. i finally got rid of the mites that came with the bird so you can once again hug me when you see me.

something silly for grandpa

as the southland braces for what is sure to be wet weather rivaling biblical disaster, i decided to finally keep my promise to my grandfather and send a picture of me swimming in the pool on the roof. so here it is.


p.s. my ark is ready, and the animals are all aboard, see you on ararat.

The ghost of christmas past...

I suppose it all began 2 weeks before school ended, when i said to myself, "self," I said, "its gonna get ugly." and so it did. I had two mostly aweful last weeks of school, punctuated by an undesirable trip to las vegas, and then finals. but i made it through. and had a week to work before i took 5days of vacation christmas week. That's when the new manager arrived at my lovely little starbucks store. she was abrasive and overzealous in changing everything about our store in a matter of a week. i seriously began to consider my options for alternative employment. but then came vacation.
monday, we drove from anaheim to san francisco, got in around 330pm, and proceded to take a nap until 8pm. went into chinatown in search of dinner, found some. did a bit of reconnaissance to determine where we should stop the next day. and went back to the hotel to bed. The plan for the next day was the zoo, the asian art museum, more chinatown and pier 39/ghirardelli square. the zoo was nice, right on the beach, which was odd, but nice, it was cold and windy. we took the train back to downtown to go to the museum which had a special exhibit on southeast asian art of the 14-18th centuries, it was amazing, but small. then shopping in chinatown. we went into a couple of tea shops, and tasted many different types of tea. i could go on at length, but that's another blog. it was a long, fun day, and we were beat when we got back to the hotel.
the next day (wed) we drove south to visit my family in hanford for a couple days of christmas. we were surprised to find that christmas eve (when the bruces traditionally open presents) had come a day early. it was very cool that cory and annie got to be there via webcam, and it was a lot of fun having them to interact with. They got a nice selection of teas from a shop in new york which i will discuss at length in another post. my parents got me some nice sweaters and an original penguin shirt-that i saw (just this monday night) on an actor on tv, so you know its cool. my grandmother got me a set of small remote control helicopters, which were hard to learn, but so much fun to practice with. Due to a miscommunication my parents were under the impression that we would be leaving early on christmas eve to spend the night with my inlaws. we were spending the night, but we were planning on arriving after midnight. so my parents made other plans that afternoon. we spent some time with grandma after they left, and then headed south to home for a brief stopover.
it worked out well, as we got a chance to empty the car and our suitcases before heading to meg's folks. we spent the night with them and opened presents with them on christmas morning. I got a really nice remote control helicopter that i destroyed after one flight (it was a really hard landing) and a sewing machine.
(a moment to defend the sewing machine) yes, a sewing machine. I cannot count the times i have thought, "it would be really handy to have a sewing machine right now." I always end up taking things home to have my mother repair or hem. or in a pinch i hand stitch them, which is fine, but it ain't always pretty. don't get me wrong, i didn't rush out and buy a bunch of patterns so i could start making my own clothes. its just something i think every household should have.
christmas night, we had to return home because we both had to work early on boxing day. it was a good christmas and we enjoyed seeing everyone, and i enjoyed all the driving-because i'm crazy like that. after christmas, we spent some money on feathering our nest, new bed and bath linens, and stuff like that. we also went clothes shopping, it was a magical time.
Our friends Joy and Jeff moved into a new(old) house right before christmas and i promised to help them between the holidays, so i went down to do that on newyear's eve day (i didn't realize that was the day i picked until the night before), traffic from san diego wasn't bad, and i was home plenty early to do nothing to celebrate the new year. it was pretty boring. nice, but boring. we both had to work the next day, again.

sorry it's been so long...

Before we hit the road i wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and share our photo for this year.