Christmas Eve

It's silly, I know, but I'm very happy to be home. We went hiking this afternoon (pictures to follow) and now that we're back, we plan to be here for the rest of the night and all of tomorrow. I feel like we're preparing for a siege or a blizzard with all of our plans and preparations. We have movies (Home Alone, Millions), TV shows (30 Rock, Battlestar Galactica, Colbert's Christmas Special) and video games to keep us occupied. We also have pizza for tonight, pancakes, potatoes and sausages (vegetarian, of course) for tomorrow morning and a Tofurky Feast for tomorrow night. We have desserts like crazy - cake, pastries, cookies - and plenty of alcohol - red wine, white wine, beer and scotch, not to mention hot cocoa (with marshmallows!), coffee and tea. Presents are under the tree (technically they're on the window sill so Lux doesn't mess with them) and presents for the dogs (squeaky toys and treats). We will try to take plenty of pictures and post them tomorrow.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas!

I like tea

Recently we have become obsessed with tea. Maybe not obsessed, exactly, but we are far bigger fans of it than we were before. I am a drinker - I like to drink things. I like to drink alcohol in pretty much all of its forms, and I like to be buzzed, but I don't like being drunk. I wish I could drink more alcohol before I got to the uncomfortable and unsafe stage. I like coffee too, and I appreciate the stimulating effects of the caffeine, but, as with alcohol, if I drink too much of it I start to feel... unsafe. My heartbeat speeds up and becomes irregular, I get jittery and paranoid and am more susceptible to wild moodswings.

So tea is the perfect drink for me. I can drink far more of it before I start to feel the effects of the caffeine, and when it does hit me, it is far smoother than coffee can provide. The problem is that tea isn't very good unless it's really good. So I can't drink just any old Celestial Seasonings or Liptons tea. In fact, I really prefer loose-leaf tea (we've tried as much high-end bagged tea as I feel is necessary). So here is another thing that we've lost before we knew what we had when we moved to North Carolina. By comparison, Orlando was crawling with tea shops. Our favorite was Infusion Tea on Edgewater. We went occasionally, but now, as tea-drinking vegetarians, we realize what a fantastic restaurant we can no longer visit. Honestly, all we have been able to find here is Teavana, which is okay, but not fantastic. I appreciate their apparent intention to bring loose-leaf tea to a mass audience, but the store feels like a Best Buy version of a tea shop. The salespeople have to hustle you for commissions and I feel like I'm being grifted.

If you live in a place with a local tea shop, I recommend that you go soon. Go and order a cup of oolong tea and a bowl of vegan chili. It's the perfect day for it.

A spiritual awakening

I have discovered, to my dismay, that North Carolina has turned the sale of liquor (spirituous liquor, specifically) into a government agency. The North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission (ABC) is the only place that sells liquor.

There was a retail chain in Orlando called Total Wine and More, which was a phenomenal store. It was like a grocery store - a large grocery store - dedicated entirely to beer, wine and liquor. We were initially very sad to leave this store, as it had become a regular shop for us. Looking into it, however, we saw that there were many such stores here in North Carolina, and quite a few in the Raleigh area. But, sadly, these stores are beer and wine only.

A bigger surprise still is that the NCABC stores - which look, understandably, like government offices - are not affiliated with the ABC Fine Wine and Spirits that I knew from Orlando. Turns out that that is a Florida chain. I guess there is a lot that I do not know about liquor.

I have not yet gone to an ABC store, so I don't know how it will be. I have no idea - it may be the absolute best store I have ever shopped in.