(no subject)

[niankhsekhmet]

I stayed till about ten o'clock PM last night painting at Wild Thyme. Ahh!! Green paint and painting herbal murals, wooHOO! What fun! Robyn and I will be finishing out another frontier order, hopefully we can get a new essential oil display. I want to not only carry Aura Cacia and Frontier, but Osadhi, which has some VERY nice blends. One in particular, "Devotion", has frankincense, cardamom, and Himalayan cedar. It's wonderful! Friday Robyn, Betty our chef, Jenny one of the other laborers and I will be going to Wicker Garden tea room in Cedar Rapids to "check out the competition". Frankly, with the way that Robin is doing this, with all antique china, rosewater scented linens, fresh pastries, the whole experience, I doubt that there will be much in the way of competition. We are already getting constant calls and inquiries as to when we will at last be open. We have folks wanting to book corporate and wedding parties, and right now we are doing two seatings per day on the tea room side. The retail side, of course is open for everyone.

Which reminds me, Republic of Tea needs to be called, they have some incredible white teas. It is a damned shame they don't sell in bulk, and $50+ for a case of six tea tins. That is just completely absurd! I think Robyn should develop her own line of teas. Hell, Zhena's did it, as did Frontier and many others. It isn't that hard. Tea blends is part of what we do. It really about having the time to experiment. We of course don't have the facility to mass produce. Next on the list is coffees. I want to go as high end as I can and still be salable. I personally do NOT want to bring in Starbucks. Robin rather agrees. I don't think that Anamosa, even with the tourist contingency is ready to be so commercialized. It's bad enough we have a local Wal-Mart let alone a Starbucks coffee! Seattle can stay in Seattle as far as I am concerned! They are not a fair-trade or environmentally friendly coffee company, and I want to avoid that if at all possible.

More capsulating herbs today. With the flu season coming, and half the vaccines being out, I am going to go through my own herbal stock pretty quickly at this rate. I have had at least one order for various things per day. This is great and I am pleased. The good news is that it will give me my clinical hours and hands on experience for the American Herbalist's Guild professional recognition requirements, but trying to do all this and run a household, raise a kid and rennovate a store - it's a wonder that I get six hours sleep per night. Altough, happily last night, I did get that. However, I still feel like I was run over by a combine! ;-)



I didn't get to watch the VP debates last night. Oh, well. I will be home, I am hoping to watch the next round of John Kerry kicking Emperor George's broad backside. I heard that John Edwards did little better than a Jack Russell Terrier on crack last night, while the evil Vice President sat there holding a rubber squeak toy just out of Edwards' reach. Is this true? Could someone please fill me in? Even NPR isn't doing that great of a job of it this morning.

I need to find frames for my Sekhmet and my Durga Devi prints. I have a really wonderful one of Durga that I got from Vortex in Iowa City, and two Sekhmet prints that I got off of eBay a little over a year ago. I hate to have them sit and gather dust.

Another thing I need to find frames for are three posters that were used on the set of the movie, Cutthroat Island. These were part of the prop inventor and actually used on the Port Royal set. I only ordered one, but the particular charity that I bought them from said they screwed up and didn't have the one I wanted so they sent me three of ones I didn't want. Actually, they DID have the one I had wanted and then sent me two extras of the others. Weird, but I am grateful. I guess that is ok, since I missed out on some of the fantastic costumes from the extras on the movie for those in the Port Royal scenes and on both the pirate ships and those of the British crown. These costumes were selling at rock bottom prices ($20 - $30) for some very nice complete ensembles! I think when I was bidding on them, I had to go to Chicago or old Tawy and didn't have access to a PC in order to bid again when I was outbid. Oh well. :)

Comments

[vireoibis.livejournal.com]

Regarding Starbucks coffee-- ick! They RUIN coffees!

[maai.livejournal.com]

One in particular, "Devotion", has frankincense, cardamom, and Himalayan cedar.

Ah! It sounds DIVINE! One of these days I am going to have to come visit your place of work!

Since I've been @Gano I have really come to un-appreciate Starsucks. I much prefer "healthy coffee" full of delicious red mushroom goodness, or if 'hanging out' and drinking something tasty is desired, I go for Tapioca Express! *G*

[aboxofeyes.livejournal.com]

Starbucks: evil; Republic of Tea: Good! I'm not just trashing Starbucks for anti-corporate reasons, I really don't like their product. I've been a coffee drinker for nearly 29 years and their over-roasted coffee is just not worth the money or effort. I don't know the science, but you can tell the beans have been roasted in some diabolical manner. I once opened a bag of French Roast and thought someone had switched the coffee with cat food. I know what dark roast is, I like some dark roasts, and Starbuck's version is just terrible. I am presently in love with Intellegensia and Raven's Brews. Not too high class, but they make me happy.

I'm a huge fan of white teas, as well as the green and black ones. I volunteer for tea guinea pig if you need one! :-D Just don't add any pear flavoring to the white tea. I found some Celestial Seaonings stuff like that and it ruined my day.

[fannyfae]

Celestial Seasonings permanently went off my happy-list when they started adding spearmint (I bloody HATE spearmint!) to a bunch of their herbal teas. Raven's coffees are great, and one of my favorites, which I think is from that line is "Three Peckered Billy Goat".

[aboxofeyes.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Three Peckered Billy Goat is great! I took some up to Vireo's last November, I think it was, and we all loved it. And it's way more fun than any other coffee names.

[fannyfae]

Then there is a hot sauce from Mo Hotta Mo Betta, called "Smack my ass and call me Sally!" I think they are both sort of appropriate names for Hallows festivities don't ya think? ;-)

Political question

[kiya]

Cheney was very smooth and in control; he was also highly dubious about his facts, but produced them smoothly enough that he didn't inspire immediate "I need to check on that" responses. (I just spent a half hour going through people's studies of his claim to be in the Senate most every Tuesday and never having met Edwards before; not only are there several bits of photographic evidence of them meeting both in the Senate and elsewhere, but Edwards has presided over the Senate on Tuesdays exactly as often as Cheney: twice. And been present every time Cheney cast a tiebreaker vote on a bill.) Don't get me started on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts -- I'm to the point that any time someone starts speaking about it I brace myself for the urge to stomp them because nobody can tell the truth on the subject.

Edwards was a bit twitchy and not as facile; he didn't come off as well. His concluding little speech was pretty good, I thought, but that was probably because it was prepared in advance. He occasionally got snarled up in questions and missed a lot of opportunities to score points.

Both candidates were evasive, tended to avoid questions more than they answered them, and drove my husband insane by not actually addressing the questions.

I think Cheney won the debate, but the aftermath may have gotten it to a tie. I don't know how many people will follow the debunkings, though; I suspect Cheney's still ahead on points.

[nemtetsemnewty.livejournal.com]

I didn't get to watch the VP debates last night. Oh, well. I will be home, I am hoping to watch the next round of John Kerry kicking Emperor George's broad backside. I heard that John Edwards did little better than a Jack Russell Terrier on crack last night, while the evil Vice President sat there holding a rubber squeak toy just out of Edwards' reach. Is this true? Could someone please fill me in? Even NPR isn't doing that great of a job of it this morning.

I don't know. Did not listen to it. Was involved in a medical emergency. I had to listen to someone's lungs every 15 minutes or so using a stethoscope. I had to have total silence in
order to listen for specific sounds. This went on to midnight. The debate was over by that time. I have some very good dear friends who I consider to be sibblings. They are very actively political.....something that is rapidly dying within my psyche. No longer can I say I am. For them hope springs eternal. More than a few hope its a passing phase with me.

It's not. I said in 2000 that what happened after the 2000 election destroyed my faith in our
electorial process...and in the way we run elections in general. I no longer believe that this
country is capable of holding honest, far and harmonious elections.

It's more like a battlefield within a warzone. There are enemy camps everywhere and respect
for opposing points of view no-where.

I digress however, because the point of this last section was not my disappointment in the behaviour of the electorate or how it behaves during elections, but rather that friends and
sibblings are convinced I will revert back to who I was pre 2000. They keep me abreast of
the latest and greatest.

This is the low down as I know it.

Opinions are sharply divided. Depending on which poll you hold as valid, either Edwards won my a 10% margin (MSNBC internet opinion poll and CBS post debate opinion poll) or
else Cheney did by a respectible margin though it was smaller than expected (CNN, ABC, and
FOX News). All polls show there are a significant # of undecided as well as those who think
the candidated tied.

What is interesting is that most people who are "news analysts" and whose job is guiding us
in how to think about issues of the day - do - believe that there was a degree of misrepresentation and slanting of facts done by both candidates.

I learned from Listening to a lot of commentary that if you are partitian, chances are you will
believe the candidate of your chose won the election and if your an independent with your
own mind, you more likely than not think they both did a credible job in some things and a lousy job in others.

That is my spin on the debate just from listening to what has been said since it ended.

AUS
Nemtetsemnewty

Postscript.

I heard the C-Span has a website, though what the url is, I don't know. Supposedly they are
archiving the debates on their site for people who missed viewing them when they were telecast. They are best downloaded with a dsl as the amount of bytes is large. I want to see it
but I cannot afford a new dsl modem right now so it has to wait until I do.