Good Afternoon, Mr. Spielberg

Another of our lunch-time regulars is Stephen Spielberg. OK, not THE Stephen Spielberg, but that really is his name. He started coming in about a year ago, and chats with Carolyn or Suzanne (since he's gotten to know them) if they happen to be there at the same time. He's a lovely older gentleman, and it's been nice to have a bit of the Y chromosome in the shop now and then for lunch. While we have lots of regular male tea drinkers who come in to resupply their stashes, we get lots more ladies than men in for the lunch bunch.

He informed us last week that he would be moving out of town to a retirement community in a city where some friends of his live. We will sure miss being able to say, "Good afternoon, Mr. Spielberg." and watching all the heads turn to see if it's the real Stephen Spielberg! Life moves on, and we wish him well in his new surroundings.

All I Want for Christmas...

Being the owner of a tea shop has its advantages. For example, all day long I get to drink the best teas from all around the world. And, of course, the tea pantry in my home is as full and varied as it gets. But at home, it's important to have favorite place or two to enjoy all that wonderful tea. One of mine was in front of the fire in our cozy living room on a nippy winter's night. That's all I really want for Christmas this year. That sounds easy enough, but with a major remodeling project that has taken the better part of the last 6 months, and is still not complete, it may or may not happen.

The project began with the intention to enlarge our 2nd bedroom/study/office into a master bedroom, add a master bath, and enlarge and finish the basement area into a 3rd bedroom/family room. Several other rooms were affected as well with a new closet being built into our old bedroom so that its closet could be opened to the hallway, making it into a first floor laundry room. And our breezeway was completely overhauled with new windows and doors. That left only the kitchen and living room in tact.

That is, until, because of one delay after another, the builder left the back part of our house (behind the living room wall) open without a roof for 7 weeks! ...only covered by tarps through torrential rains! Consequently, we ended up with mold--the nasty, toxic kind--growing in that living room wall. Our house is small to begin with, but now we are down to the kitchen, which is so full of drywall dust that it's practically unlivable, and we can barely get around the bedroom, which stores more than its usual share of stuff including our two cats, their food and litter box. It will all be worth it in the end, but we never imagined we'd have the living room torn up on top of all the rest. And we never imagined that it would take until Christmas!

So, Dear Santa, please do your magic and make it so that I can at least move my counch back into the living room by Christmas Eve. All I really want is that Christmas cup of tea with my hubby in front of a nice cozy fire.