91st Entry on Blog (I WILL continue referring to it as an independent entity, Nick)

It's down to a matter of a couple of days before I have to return to Chicago, and I'm in a really weird rut I hope I'll launch myself out of somehow, right now primarily by barfing out some dismembered thoughts onto here.

First things first: tea. The last time I talked about a specific cup of tea (not Celestial Seasonings), it was merely a segue (<--WEIRDEST spelling for a word I've ever seen) into a Greater and Deeper Meaning of Something More Important. This post has no such hopes.

I've started trying to drink tea without sugar, because I'm now 100% positive I've got a grand old cavity on the left side of my mouth even though I floss every damn day, brush 3 times, and use Listerine twice a day, and so I'm trying to cut back on sugar consumption to see if I can inflict less pain onto myself.

Now that everyone knows my teeth are pretty much rotting before my eyes...

Anyhow, usually I put so much stuff in my tea it doesn't know what hit it: in Chicago, there's the Splenda packets, milk, and lemon juice. My cup of tea isn't even remotely related to the real thing by the time I'm through with it, and lately I can't tell the difference between all the fancy names. Winter Blend? Black Vanilla Tea? Rosebud or something? THEY ALL TASTE THE SAME. BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL GROSS WITHOUT SWEETENER, MILK, AND LEMON JUICE. Plus, I do not have a really refined palette, I'm guessing.

When I still volunteered at the Field Museum (that is when I did not take Egyptian. That is when I still had a life, which wasn't much of a life at all at that), there was this old man who'd drink tea during our break. I'd sit across from him transfixed as he prepared his tea. It was always the same.

1. He'd microwave his water
2. Take it out of the microwave
3. Sit down
4. Take his satchet of tea, give it three swift lethal dunks into the water
5. Put the tea satchet to the side, and savor the, what I assumed to be, gloriously tasteless concoction he had just mixed up

I was primarily arrested by the thought that he was drinking something that resembled pee after drinking a gallon of water in 3 hours and probably tasted just like that, too, but also confused by, why even bother dunking in the tea packet for 0.0003 seconds like he did? Why not just drink the hot water? It would probably taste less foul.

However, now I am greatly tempted to let my tea packet steep for no more than 10 seconds because of the rancid taste it leaves in my hot water after 2 minutes.

This is clearly something I am going to have to get used to, until at least all of my teeth decay and fall out of my jaw.

I really have no second thing I want to talk about. I really want to complain about how frustrated I feel now for no apparent reason, but since there's no reason, I can't complain. I've already started worrying about school next quarter, about Egyptian, about The Great Study Abroad question, and what I'm going to do over the summer, but I'm guessing there's going to be plenty of time for that in the new year.

I got new glass frames. They have not yet arrived. The guy who helped me choose them out was critical, talkative, and way too full of himself. The almost compliment I received from him when he was measuring the distance between my eyeballs:

Eyeglass man (completely serious): Oh! Your eyes are almost as pretty as mine.

And that about sums up winter break: It was almost nice, but not quite.

This post did not help one bit.