What I'm drinking now

Irish breakfast, Casablanca twist, Fujian Baroque & Dragonwell

Alright. Time to take a break from the anger and vitriol and take a deep breath. In other words - its tea time!

I'm currently enjoying a cup of Fujian Baroque, a pretty full flavor tea. Malty with a chocolatey aftertaste that is just great. I have this, or Irish breakfast, in the morning.

It's Dragonwell in the afternoon. It's definitely a green, but its more subtle, less grassy than some. Has a bit of a smokiness that, for its price, I'm not sure I'm wild about. Still, the leaves are as flat as those of Sencha, but much, much wider. Its interesting, and it makes scooping up the tea something of an adventure. Casablanca twist is pretty minty, and I rely on that pretty much solely as an after dinner drink. Not pictured is Sencha Overture. A grassy green that is my everyday tea at work.

Tea is a perfect time filler, like today when I'm waiting for my appointment to have my stitches taken out. I did a limited workout Wednesday - nothing that required gripping, just some push ups and leg work. Thursday the tingling was really down and I had a lot more movement in my thumb. Today its even better. I'm starting to be able to grip things. That's a nice change after a week and a half of walking around - as Renee likes to say - like Bob Dole.

I finished Curious Minds. After the last essay, as Pink Floyd said, "I'd thought I'd something more to say." Turns out that after going back to it, I really didn't. I'm currently zooming through David Sedaris' book "Me talk pretty one day."

And I've written 25 "parts" - they aren't really chapters, I'm not writing a 50 chapter book - in my book. Two this week alone. I'm guessing that's about 28,000 words, give or take - half way. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the chunnel. Instead of 50 different things to write about and directions to go, the plot is narrowing. Threads are wrapping up. Conclusions are being reached. The path ahead is clearer. The pinpoint of light that I can see is inspiring me to write more, but some of the parts left are the harder pieces: Fill in stuff - the stuff that binds the "big" pieces I could see to each other. The minutea that makes it all flow and connect.

July. It took me Dec/Jan/Feb. to get here, plus parts of Nov./Mar, so I'm guessing July is when I finish the draft. I'm shooting for earlier. Not sure how long it will take to make it a manuscript - I will need to read through it, edit it, & then find some poor sap to read through it and provide thoughts. Then its a manuscript and I can start on Project II, already in progress (though on a 10-year commercial break).

BONUS - an interesting post from reason.com on the world after newspapers & an interesting piece on how newspapers are still profitable, just at a more "normal" 10% rate, rather than the 20% to 30% rate they have been. Oh, and 85% of their costs are tied up in paper, ink, trucks etc. In other words, all the "hard copy" stuff. In other words, even on greatly reduced advertising income an online-only paper could pay relatively healthy staff.