Poem for Tuesday

Tea
By Carol Ann Duffy

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day,

as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.

--------

Other than a lovely lunch with Perkypaduan at Tara Thai on this windy day where we lost most of the remaining leaves in my neighborhood and saw our first snowflakes of the season, I spent most of the day working on configuring our new laptop. *g* We've needed a new one since the old Gateway died, though we've been making do sneaking turns on Paul's work laptop, but I'm always worried someone will leave something on there they shouldn't in a chat transcript or that the company can somehow trace the browser history...we got another Dell because we've owned four now, three new, one inherited from my parents, and we've been very, very happy with all of them, plus we could get the new one loaded with XP instead of Vista which was a big consideration!

So I spent most of the afternoon and evening downloading and installing Firefox, CoreFTP, Free Download Manager, etc., importing bookmarks, digging out the ancient Photoshop installation CDs, trying to figure out whether that Foxmarks program will be more trouble than it's worth and all that. This computer is widescreen and has a built-in 8-in-1 card reader and a DVD burner and lots of nifty features I have not had time to play with yet, and it weighs less than the old laptop and is thinner and cost less...I love how technology is developing in that regard!


Dancing Pig Pottery's pagan holiday collection: goblets, bowls, plates and chargers with triple moons, pentacles, and the names of the sabbats engraved into the glaze.


They're available in different colors, and these lighter green pieces also have some with cats chasing mice on them.


There are also gorgeous iridescent pieces.


Outside, the banners of Dancing Pig and Tuatha...


...while the watchdog of Art of Fire sniffs around outside the barn that houses the gallery.


Here are my kids with the aforementioned dog.

Am refusing to stress out any further about LiveJournal until we actually see signs of further change...I've already backed up all the entries elsewhere, I just don't want the service to go under altogether because I have so many photos here. I am assuming that they will not retroactively take away privileges from paid and permanent account holders if they expect to have any hope of retaining customers. Six Apart already made me lock or remove everything...how much worse can the new management be, whether they use US or Russian standards of "decency" as the latest arbitrary reason for restricting our freedom of speech?

Watched Heroes. I'm sort of relieved this season is over. I find it ironic that I dislike nearly everyone more than I did at the end of last season with a single exception: Nathan, the character everyone seemed to love but me, but I feel like all his backbone this season came at the expense of his mother and in the absence of his wife. The sexual politics of the show have been retro all season and tonight's finale was no exception: Elle being benched by Daddy because she's working well below what she can do, trying to borrow Claire's Daddy for her very own and then rushing off on a mission to get back into Daddy's graces is just the latest in an endless series of icky Elle tricks. Angela can't even seem to make her groping control work on her sons these days. If they kill Niki, the one really good mother on the show, I'm going to be very annoyed, but I don't really think she's dead (you don't kill off your hottest blonde). And Nathan has Adam's blood from when he was healed...I figure they could both be back, just like Sylar and Noah. It's worse than Star Trek on the Miraculously Undead count!

Have just watched the most frustrating Monday Night Football ever, where it looked for a long time like the Ravens would end the Patriots' perfect streak but then blew it at the very end of the game and New England won! Sigh! And I'm seeing my in-laws Tuesday at Adam's winter concert! Ah well, Happy Chanukah!