Violin in C Sharp

 I will take a moment to acknowledge that this review is a good 1/2 year late.  I have been emptying my camera of old photos to make room for the pictures I'm bound to take on my trip to Europe next week.  In doing so, I came across the photos I took to complete my 2023 tea advent reviews.  Thankfully, I had taken copious tasting notes on the teas, so even though the review is late, it gets to remain an accurate picture of my thoughts on the tea. So then, where were we? Oh yes - day 17! I have to admit, when I opened the little tree and found Green Mango Peach.... I was NOT excited.  Mango is not my favorite flavour, and Peach is even lower on my preference list.  In point of fact, for my palate, peach ruins tea as badly as chocolate.  Needless to say, I had VERY low expectations for this blend. The write up did however inspire more hope!  "The sweetness of ripe fruit, sharpened by peppermint and ginger" sounded delicious!  I was hopeful that...

This is my third year of doing this sort of music list countdown - and like my previous two years, I'm pretty damn sure that the 23 songs with the highest listening count for me are going to be all from the k-pop genre... but I haven't checked yet.  We'll learn if my prediction is true together. For stats, I use volt.fm which is linked to my spotify account.  Yes, I know it doesn't log my listens from TikTok, CDs, concerts, YouTube or any other formats, but I would say that 85 - 90% of all my full song listen throughs are from streaming on Spotify these days. So then, without further ado, let's get into it! #23 - I Don't Understand But I Luv You Artist : Seventeen  Album : FML Release Date: April 24, 2023 Language : Korean / English Key : F Minor  Time Signature : 4/4 BPM : 114 This was a Performance Team unit song based on a comment Hoshi had gotten from a fan interaction.  The comment reminded him how Jun, one of their Chinese members, had been in the early ...

 The title of this blog post is slightly misleading. There was a TikTok I saw where the woman challenged viewers to create a list of their top 25 k-pop of 2023 - with a few restrictions on the choices.  1) The songs must have been released in 2023 2) Only 1 song on the list per group (solo songs from members of a group do not count against their group and may be their own entries) I LOVE making lists.   The creation of this list devoured a good 4 hours of my day when I came across the challenge.  I made the TikTok in answer to the challenge, but I feel that 4 hours of work deserves more than a simple list with no reasoning behind the choices of the songs or their placement on the list. So - blog post it is! A reminder, this list is not meant to be my opinion on which were the most successful, most popular, or most critically acclaimed.  This list is meant to be which were MY favorite new releases of the year.  Many thanks to  volt.fm  for the...

 It's been a few days, but I finally had a morning where I had time to enjoy a cup of tea.  Only 7 days behind on getting to this one - oh well! White Ginger Pear.... actually sounds intriguing. Pear usually hits my palate with a nice level of natural sweetness, and I live how ginger spices up a tea, but I'm worried about the white tea.  Of all the varietals, I'm least familiar with white tea.  Mum says it's her favorite, but I've yet to drink a white tea blend that grabs me enough to want to explore it more.  All the white tea blends I've tried in the past have all hit my palate with an odd sweetness that almost reminds me of the aftertastes I get from splenda or stevia - but on the mid note instead of the aftertaste.  So, we'll see if the ginger spice manages to cut through the sweetness from both the white tea and the pear. Color wise, I don't know what I was expecting - as I've said, my experience with white tea is limited.  The lighter liquor wa...

  FINALLY!  A break from all those herbals! And to top it off - a chai!  My favorite!  Of course... a good chai is FABULOUS, but a bad chai is.... beyond heartbreaking. Ok... warming spices... the write up sounds promising... Ohhh... good dark color.... and I can smell the spices in the aroma.... this bodes well! First sip is mainly the taste of the black tea with a bit of cardamom and ginger on the end note.  The ginger, as usual, builds with each sip and made its way to the mid note on the second sip.  The cardamom stayed on the end note but the star anise and pepper showed up to the party in the end note as well.  Sip three had the ginger on the top note, the cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon dominating the mid note with the pepper and clove starting in the mid note and carrying into the end note.  The aftertaste was mostly on the back of the tongue and was weak tannin, pepper and ginger with clove hints traveling up the back of the throat to ...

Boy did I drag my feet in trying this blend Belgian Mint - the name sounds just fine, and I like mint Oh.... oh dear - dark chocolate?  The worst of all chocolates in my world.  I opened the tea bag box and it smelled like a Thin Mint cookie.  I realize for some people that this would be a GOOD thing.... but I happen to HATE Thin Mint cookies with a violent passion. I brewed it and for a mint based tinsane, it got pretty dark.... which made me worry that the dark chocolate flavor was going to be pretty strong. I got through the first sip - it wasn't pleasant.  It was like mint coated in semi-sweet chocolate chips.  The 2nd sip was worse as the chocolate got stronger.  The third sip made me physically gag from the combination of the heavy chocolate mint scent and the dark chocolate flavor swirling heavy in the mint water. I handed the mug to Jodie who finished happily while I took the salted caramel shortbread as solace to cleanse my palate and sooth my upse...