Thing 1:
Proof of that arrives every month again when I see a little purple package in my postbox, with my tea club inside. It's absolutely gorgeous: a feast for the eye, and the teas smell divine and taste great! It's like a little parcel of zen-moments, because these teas deserve to be sipped with care and attention.
A year-long subscription was my little reward to myself for surviving Quarter 1 of 2021 (including making it halfway through another semester from hell, and single-handedly at that!)
My first tea club - we need smellovision for this! 
Each shipment has your tea, a card with some background info, and a fun or motivational quote 
Growing tea collection (boxes sold separately)
Although I know of purists who don't like their tea "adulterated" with flavours, I was a bit bored with the selection on offer in the local supermarket and I also suffer from decision fatigue because I already need to decide so many other things in my life/job. Outsourcing what goes in my (nearly) daily cup was a great decision I haven't regretted yet: every month I get two different flavours (other formats of the club available) and after three shipments I yet have to encounter a flavour to give away because I don't like it.
I first encountered Plum Deluxe years ago as a sponsor on the Knitmore Girls podcast. Give them a listen! (Another good thing that comes at regular intervals!)
Thing 2:
It turns out cats are like buses: you don't see one up close for 15 months, then suddenly you get to spend time with 4 in one weekend! I have missed the furry friends in NYC, because we don't visit due to Covid-precautions. And visiting other people's cats wasn't really an option until I was vaccinated. Right as I got to that point, my friends asked if I could look after their cat for 2 and a half days. And then their neighbours asked if I could look after their three cats as well, for two meals. Ooooh! I didn't realize how low I was on Vitamin C in cat-form until I had some quality time with these kitties. I even levelled up in cat-sitting skills, and can now add "feeding three cats at once" and "insulin injections" to my cat-sitting resumé. [I didn't ask permission to post pics of said cats, just imagine cute furry friends here 🐈 ]
Thing 3:
Flute lessons resumed two weeks ago! Close to five months after surgery I finally had enough muscle power to hold up a flute long enough make it through a 45 min. session. (I have a heavy flute, but it does sound great). And you know what's even better? Because my teacher and I are both vaccinated, we can meet in person.
We managed to do pretty well with Jamkazam, which like its open-source counterpart Jamulus cuts back on latency and allow for much higher sound-quality than your average video-chat app. (Flute on Zoom is a tragedy/travesty). But Jamkazam became a paying app, and we couldn't get Jamulus to work, and ... in person is much better. We're back to our regular flute-"disputes" about sound quality, such as "No, I didn't hear that." - "Well, it's what I tried to do." or "Which note was the weaker one in that run?" - "Beats me, I was just trying to get them all in the right order!", rather than chalking it up to the computer messing with the sound.
Good things to come:
- swimming: not until a year after surgery
- a visit to Belgium: no idea when because I'm stuck in a cross-over of pandemic travel-ban mess and green-card application waiting room hell that's too boring to explain here.
So please don't ask me about either of these two. I'll just keep waiting. They'll come, like the other good things, won't they?
