Nestle

Not a lot of tea taste, more of a sweet fruity drink.

This could end up being a weird tasting note…

So Pizza 73, which is my and Tre’s go to pizza restaurant started carrying funnel cake and it’s fucking delicious so we’ve been ordering A LOT from them this week. Last night’s order was funnel cake and pineapple and banana pepper pizza, which as always comes with Nestea! And that’s kind of perfect because it gives me the perfect non-tea (well pretty non-tea) note to use to go off about a sort of non-tea related experience I had today which got me SUPER excited!

I had to stop at the bank today to take out rent, and so I went to the branch that’s in the same mall as Tea Desire to pick up something for the bus ride home. I noticed that the associate was someone I’d never met before – and I’m familiar with most of the employees at not only Tea Desire but both DAVIDsTEA locations in town. She seemed nice; backed down when I said I was just looking, and kind of let me do my own thing.

This older woman came into the store, marched up to the counter and asked if they carried “Green tea from Kelowna”. In my head I asked myself if she meant British Columbia. Seemed like the sales associate had the same thought because she patiently explained that Tea Desire gets its tea from a manufacturer in Germany, but the teas themselves were from China and Japan – and that she’d never heard of tea grown in Kelowna because the environment here in Canada doesn’t really support the growth of the Camellia Sinensis plant. The woman looked and sounded so offended; “Tea from China!? No there is 100% green tea in British Columbia and it’s the best tea in the world!”. “Alright,” she agreed, “I just haven’t heard about it”. I know I was making an ‘are you fucking kidding me’ face, I didn’t hide it well. The associate must have saw, because she kind of looked at me like “Yeah, I know”.

But after she left, I went and picked up 50g of a blend to restock, and something to go, which I’ll write about later in a more focused and less lengthy note. It definitely took me a long time to pick something because of how many Tea Desire blends I’ve tried off their wall, and while trying to figure something out I ended up talking to the associate who turned out to be a fucking amazing person!

Seriously, without a word of exaggeration, we talked for a solid three hours! I kept worrying I was keeping her from her job, but thankfully it was pretty slow in the mall. To try and summarize the conversation would be futile – SO MUCH ground was covered. It was honestly the most profound and immediate connection I’ve ever had with a stranger, and the best in person tea related conversation I’ve ever had. I honestly feel like I got to know her better in three hours than some of the people I’ve been following here on Steepster for over a year or the coworkers I see pretty much every day.

Plus she is such a hard core tea drinker and hoarder like the majority of us here; it wasn’t like having a ‘tea conversation’ with someone who’s interested in tea but has limited exposure to it (like some DT employees; you know the ones) – nah, she knew tea companies that really only people who drink tea the way most Steepster uses do would know about: Kusmi, Mariage Freres, Dammann Freres, Nina’s Paris, Red Leaf Tea, Butiki, etc.

And some cool things were brought up; before working at Tea Desire she worked at DAVIDsTEA; and probably left her job there just months before I moved to Saskatoon! We know the same employees really well too! Also, as I sheepishly brought up Steepster early on in the conversation, I found out that she was active on Steepster briefly (based on her reviews I’m guessing in between working at DT and Tea Desire) but sadly fell out of it. Not only that, but when I mentioned my user name she knew who I was! Freaky, well sorta. I’m really, really hoping after our conversation she looks up the site again (and if you do I’m sorry I’m basically waxing poetic about you; but it was an AWESOME conversation), because the community here is awesome and I know she’d fit right in so damn well. Besides, you should really try swapping; at the very least I’d love the opportunity to share some of the blends we talked about today: Lupicia’s Golden Honeydew or anything from Butiki!

Also, I nearly pissed myself reading her old reviews: she’s got one for Red Leaf Tea’s Eggnog matcha that mentions finding a sample packet of it and I’m 99.9% sure she’s referring to the sample packets that I brought in to the DT store she used to work at. So we even have a sort of indirect connection from over a year ago! It’s also funny because we totally talked about Red Leaf Tea and matcha at some length today – and I think I’m probably a big part in what got her interested in it in the first place…

Tl;dr I had the best trip to the bank ever and met the wonderful loveaduck whom I really hope finds herself back on Steepster, and isn’t weirded out by this tasting note.

Oh, and I totally looked up “Kelowna Green Tea” when I got home. Couldn’t find anything for Kelowna Green tea but I DID find a website for “Wild Tea” from the Okanagan. Further exploration of the site reveals all of their tea is herbal tea. Sorry woman, but you’re crazy.

Had a few cans of this one Saturday night; I went drinking with my friend Billi, her fiance, and a few of their friends – yes, the same Billi I got SUPER hammered with last time.

Things were pretty chill this time around; it was fun but not crazy. You know how I know it wasn’t crazy? I can actually remember the whole night. Billi actually wanted to get blackout drunk but (and maybe I was being a bit of a buzzkill – I did have the next day off afterall) I kept thinking of last time’s wicked hangover so I kept myself in check. Just a few beers and a shot of vodka chased by my Nestea.

We ordered pizza, played Mario Kart and, strangely enough, got into this half sober religious debate/conversation about the subtle differences between each type of Christianity and how Christianity in general relates to other religions.

Just a fun time, overall!

Tre ordered pizza tonight, and was thoughtful enough to add in a tiny Spinach/Feta for me and a can of Nestea. Sometimes, as a roommate, he’s a bit of a butt and I know a complain a lot about him – but sometimes he’s really thoughtful too.

I always forget that part of having people over is not just providing them with copious amounts of food, but also feeding them – especially when they’re at your house for like nine hours…

We had a few snacky things during the day in between tea while Robyn was here today; some Ardagh Wine Cheese from my fancy cheese stash and some Chicago Mix which is the best popcorn ever; it’s sharp cheddar coated popcorn mixed in with caramel corn – a great mix of sweet and savory! And then eventually we ordered pizza for the three of us.

We had the brilliant idea of each picking out an ingredient for the pizza; Spinach was mine, Robyn picked Feta, and Tre went with Banana peppers. It actually tasted really good. I’m happy we’re not practically living on pizza anymore; but it’s nice to still order it as a treat for ourselves. Of course, the Nestea came with the pizza like it always does, though between the three of us it’s all gone now.

Had this at the movies on… You know I what, I don’t remember what the date was. Oh well.

I had a relatively spontaneous date with a guy who, thankfully, doesn’t appear to be an absolute creep this time. He very sweetly picked me up from work, and then we grabbed some food and saw a show.

Side Thought: Dear lord; going from work attire/make up to date clothing/make up in the tiny staff bathroom in under five minutes should be an Olympic Sport. Someone start a petition to make than an Olympic sport!

Overall I had a really good time; he’s a totally nerdy person which is cool ‘cause I’m a totally nerdy person too. We had a, somewhat one sided, conversation of Spiderman comicbook arcs (I went off about how I love the Stacy Twins arc but how IMO it’s never going to make it into a movie), and talked about TV shows we both watch among other things. For supper, we went and had Asian food and he was so cool about me being a total slob with my noodles because I can’t gracefully eat noodles to save my life. I kinda got Teriyaki sauce everywhere.

The movie was Mockingjay. Honestly, the were other things I definitely wanted to see more; but I don’t think he was as interested in seeing Annie or Into The Woods and I would have wanted to see Mockingjay eventually anyway; I just would have been cool with waiting to watch it at home though. It was good though; and for DAYS AFTERWARDS I couldn’t get the damn “Hanging Tree” song out of my head.

Driving home was a challenge; I don’t drive, and I’m terrible at directions (especially because I still don’t know the city super well) so I got us really lost and we had to take several detours. But eventually we made it back to my place. And this, Steepster, is where I sort of start to overshare?

There was a goodnight kiss; which I was pretty into at this point. But, I was anticipating more of a short, brief kiss right? ‘Cause that’s been my experience with basically all first date kisses. But instead he went in to kiss me and there was this sort of… “Oh!” moment where he like slipped his tongue in my mouth that I wasn’t expecting at all. And it was really awkward, and long…

Like, it was the worst kiss I’ve ever had. I think “ate my face” feels like an apt description. So I’m very conflicted because I was having a very nice night and happy about the date and all, but the real lack of chemistry there has me a little upset. I could go into a long winded spiel on sexuality and how I’ve always struggled finding an apt way of describing mine, but I’ll try and sum as saying recently I’ve been self defining as asexual or grey-asexual; the sexuality part of relationships has never come naturally to me at all, not that I’m opposed to “sex stuff”; I’ve just always had a fair disinterest or relatively low sex drive (hoping I’m describing this in a way that isn’t horribly ignorant).

So all that considered (that I usually don’t “get much” from the goodnight kiss), it was especially bad. I’ve been relatively lucky that in the past people I’ve date have primarily taken things at the same pace as I’ve wanted to take them. And it’s not that I think this guy isn’t going to be accepting of that; I just don’t think that desire was effectively communicated. It’s not like I blurted out the whole “Asexual!” thing immediately because, at this point, it’s not a conversation I feel like we need to have. I mean, it’s the first date…

But, I am seeing him again. We have a tea date planned for Saturday and I guess, depending on how much tongue is shoved down my throat at the end of the night, it’s a conversation that I might have to get around to having.

So yeah; that’s my somewhat weird and all over the place date tasting note that has some serious over sharing in it. Yeah…

Last night Tre and I went and saw the most recent Night At The Museum movie. It certainly wasn’t a cinematographic masterpiece by any stretch, but it was really good and had some very funny moments – and not gonna lie I teared up every time Robin Williams was on screen because I am a mushy, sappy baby.

The entire evening was free; a combination of Scene Points (yay scene program!) and gift cards from Christmas paid for the whole evening. Which was awesome. So awesome. I used to watch five or more movies a week in theatres when I worked for Cineplex, and now I’m lucky if I see one every three months. Movies are EXPENSIVE.

I indulged; theatre food for the night included a bag of Sweet/Sour Lifesaver gummy candies, large popcorn, large Nestea, large Cherry Sorbet (from Yogen; man I miss Yogen), and my favourite “conncoction”; a Sweet Potato poutine which ketchup popcorn shaker dissolved into the gravy. Btdubbs guys; Cineplex is fucking awesome for using a soy based gravy because then it’s safe for vegetarians like me to use, and I LOVE poutine.

So definitely a fun night overall.

I ordered pizza; it came with this. I drank this. It was ok. So that.

Side Topic: Anyone on Steepster watching Utopia? Tre and I have added it into the growing list of TV shows we’re watching together and we’re really liking it! Although, we’re strongly opinionated and watching it definitely means lots and lots of yelling at the computer screen. Bella makes me so angry/pisses me off so much.

Anyone watching Gotham? Should I be watching it? Tre is and he likes it a lot, but I’m not a huge DC fan. Still, if it’s well done…

Personal Story Time…

So as some of you know, I don’t have a great relationship with the vast majority of my family. Until moving out around a year ago, I would have said my relationship with my mom was better than the one I have with my Dad, even though both are fairly strained, however now that I’m living on my own I think I actually get along with my Dad significantly more than my Mom – though again, everything is pretty strained. I definitely don’t go out of my way to see either of them, and I’m never the first one to make contact. I haven’t been back in Regina, where I moved from, since January and I have no intention of going back until probably Christmas.

January also happens to be the last time I saw my Mom; though I’ve talked to her via text since then. Well, earlier this week she came up to the city to go to the Bruno Mars concert with her boyfriend, his daughter, and my little sister. We had, reluctantly on my part, made plans to go out for breakfast before I started work for the day. This was a bit of a hassle for me because when we were supposed to go out was during hours I would normally be sound asleep.

And to top things off she showed up an hour early and then was clearly upset and distressed that I wasn’t ready to go out. She then spent the entire time I was getting ready snooping through stuff in my house and asking super invasive questions, all in between complaining about about her relationship problems (I do not get along with her boyfriend; I think the relationship they have is very text book abusive; not in a physical sense but they’re just very unhealthy together. She has ridiculous mood swings and is obsessive and clingy and they frequently break up and get back together – on top of other stuff). Ugh.

The whole ordeal was insanely awkward and uncomfortable, and I just sort of had to vent somewhere about it. On the plus side; she bought me a deep friend Mars Bar from the food court? I guess that’s something; although it was really undercooked so the Mars Bar was still hard and unmelted and there was raw batter. But I guess it was thoughtful? I do love fried foods…

As Tyrell would say, all day my place has been “hotter than a nutsack”. I have no idea what he means by it, but he says said it all the time – and today it felt true, I guess.

Seriously though I’ve been sweating buckets (Tre and I are both hanging out in the house in our underwear right now; I guess you could call it a bonding moment) and that’s actually the main reason I didn’t do much tea drinking today; not that I had such an immense amount of backlog to get through. One can only CB tea so fast, there’s no ice in the house to flash chill stuff. We don’t even have an ice tray (something I plan to fix).

Thankfully I had a few cans of this in the fridge to sip on! Hooray!

Ordering more pizza = more cans of Nestea.

This one I drank on my way to work, nothing special about it. So I’m just gonna share a sorta interesting and sorta work related story.

For those who don’t know, I work in a mall – and malls typically have mall security or “mall cops”. Our mall has (or should I say had?) four whom we’ve come to recognize and form impressions of. There are two woman; one very sweet woman who never says anything but always smiles at store employees and who overall just seems like a nice person who keeps to herself. Then there’s the other woman who’s a middle aged First Nations woman who is just generally really rude and bitchy. She constantly locks the doors early (the mall closes at nine, but doors are supposed to stay open until ten because there’s a grocery store connected to the mall – I happen to get off at ten every night, an hour after the store has “closed”). It’s very frustrating because we get off work and then either have to wait around in the mall for her to unlock the doors to let us out OR we have to unlock them ourselves (took us a while, but we figured out how), and she gets very pissed when we do that. If you don’t want us opening the doors, how about you don’t lock us in!? She’s also called and reported us for being in the store after hours; of course we were in the store after hours, we work there and were doing the cleaning required for closing!. It’s not like we were being sneaky about it; and who breaks into a Dollarama to mop the place?

Then there are the two male guards; there’s one with a beard who’s sorta a dick – you can tell he profiles First Nations teenagers/young adults because he follows them around. On several occasions he’s followed around Bobbi’s fiance Wes (they are both First Nations) – in the parking lot. The other male guard is pretty young looking, and doesn’t work as much as the others. He comes in the store sometimes to buy snack food, but mostly keeps to himself.

Well, the mall just hired a 5th guard! And this guy is great.

So far he’s only worked three shifts when Bobbi and I have been working, but everyone he’s come and stopped at the store to talk to us. He’s friendly and nice, and SO VERY JUMPY/CAFFEINATED. All three days he’s come and bought a surplus of energy drinks; like seven each day. No exaggeration. And he definitely looks caffeinated; the guy never stops moving. We found out why though; the dude is hella crazy and works four jobs. Mall security shifts are ten hour shifts, so three more jobs on top of that? Christ.

But he says he gets so many energy drinks because he literally, aside from working, goes home to sleep for four hours a night, and then goes right back to working. Damn.

But yeah, new mall security guard has become a source of great entertainment for us.

This was the last of the Nestea that came with my pizza order, but it’s not really a sipdown because I never entered it into my Steepster cupboard despite getting a six pack of it (God, Tre and I burned through that so quickly too)…

Speaking of Tre, he left early this morning for Regina for a ten week trip to visit family and such. So now I get to do my favourite thing for the next week or so; lounge around the house butt naked! Woot! Also, he said he wouldn’t promise anything but that he’d try to make it to Cuppa’T for me (and VariaTEA) and to the Vintage Tea Room! So pray he delivers!

But yeah; I made the mistake of brushing my teeth and then drinking this on my way to the bus stop and it tasted so bad. Weird minty metallic taste…

I woke up really early this morning so I actually had breakfast at home for once; normally I grab something to eat during the middle of my shift from either the store or the food court if it’s open. But eating before leaving definitely gave me some extra energy, and I think really helped push the day along quicker! My shift was over before I knew it!

Breakfast, of course, was left over pizza and Nestea though – so there’s that…

I really, really need to go grocery shopping sooner rather than later! I should have taken advantage of my extra hours this morning to cram in a trip to DT to pick up the new blends (I’m dying to try ALL of them and restock on my beloved Root Beer Float blend) and maybe some new teaware. I’m kinda really feeling the Soda Shop perfect mug but I want to see it in person to see if the glow in the dark stickers seem like they’d peel or if they have a weird texture to ’em…

Now I have to wait until Sunday…

Hey, last of the backlog! Only took like three hours(?) to get through…

Tre and I ordered pizza tonight. Our regular pizza place has a new special so we figured we’d try it out. So for $25 we got two 9" pizzas, a 9" Apple/Cinnamon dessert pie, and a 9" chocolate chip cookie – oh, and four cans of Nestea. What we didn’t expect was that everything was going to come in one MASSIVE 20" X 20" box. It’s SO FREAKING BIG. Like, there are obviously leftovers and there’s no humanely way to make this box fit in the fridge…

How was a box this big a good idea!? Pizza 73 what were you thinking!? Why couldn’t this come in two of the regular boxes which are 12" X 12" and are deep enough to hold two pizzas? That’d fit in the fridge at least.

Went to the movies with my father and brother; we saw How To Train Your Dragon 2 and it was AMAZING. Seriously, it more than keeps up with how great the first one was. It was a good time! And the animation. Just beautiful. Like, the amount of detail put into all the dragons, among other things, is astonishing and so breathtaking.

My Dad made a deal: he’d pay for either our movie ticket or our food. I took the food option and then, because I’m sneaky and manipulative and totally take advantage of my father, I used my free movie voucher from my date with Tyrell (Spiderman, when the 3D glitched out and they gave us all coupons and stuff) to pay for my ticket and then ordered a poutine, pizza, large kiwi Yogen, bag of mini Snickers bites, regular Nestea, and a regular popcorn. I’m a brat. So sue me.

After the movie they dropped me off at work (I needed to check my schedule) and went home and because I’m totally cool and had nothing better to do I stayed and helped Bobbi and Nina close the store, do their closing paperwork, and balance the cash. I’m like 90% sure that breaks some kind of rule but not sure what that rule would be. I mean, I didn’t get paid and it made things easier for them – but I probably shouldn’t have been cash handling while not on shift. Oh well.

Also, Tyrell is a butt. While I had to spend “quality time” with my father he went to see Queen (and Adam Lambert on lead vocals) and then I had to hear about how awesome the concert was from him this morning. Bleck.

I’m so backlogged; I need to push out a few tasting notes this morning before work or I’m going to feel crazy guilty for putting it off when I have time and am not doing anything better. Bleck. Here we go (I’m even less excited because Steepster just ate my first attempt at writing this long ass note)…

This isn’t really on the tea, because I’ve written a ton about it. More so this is a breakdown of how my date on Tuesday was! Because I said I’d spill about that, so I am…

I had a very fun time: we started the evening by having some fast food at this amazing sit down fast food-y type restaurant called Fuddruckers. It’s really hard to explain Fudds – but it’s one of those places that is just special. When I lived in Regina, it was always a really big deal when we got to go there. Now I live ten minutes away, heh…

So I had a milkshake because they’re the best. It was awesome because he’s pretty well just as nerdy as I am so we had an awesome conversation on Dystopian Fiction, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and our frustrations about the casting for the new movie), various Marvel comics, and the insane anger of having an online emulator fail and losing your save file.

Then was the movie: Spider Man 2. I loved the movie! And he totally didn’t mind when I started getting really critical of the employees (having worked for the same company as a trainer for a year). We were supposed to be seeing it in 3D but the 3D failed (the first twenty minutes of the show looked like we were at a rave: the 3D was flickering that wildly) so they reset it in 2D and gave us all free passes to see another movie.

And then the night came to a close… With a kiss.

I have to admit though, his height really throws me off. I’ve never really dated anyone significantly taller that me (in fact, I once dated someone with dwarfism who was more than a foot shorter than me) and it freaks me out a little bit. Like, I’m 5’3’’ but he’s at least 6’4’’ and I definitely had to look up when I wanted to talk to him. So, urigdipugpdiugEWBT. Mixed feels about that…

I think it’s sad that I’ve practically worked this into a part of my “daily” work ritual solely for the convenience of it when I really think it only tastes “ok”.

Whatever. It’s better than Pepsi or the other carbonated drinks we sell…

I wanted to get greasy food court stuff for supper on my break today, but alas I was the only keyholder working which meant that, yet again, I was stuck in the store and couldn’t leave for fear there’d be some kind of “emergency” the minute I left. Bleck.

So I was limited to in store options which, for supper prepared with only an electric kettle and microwave (in under half an hour) are limited. So supper became two of these guys and a bag of original chips. Yup – glamorous eating on my part.

Boo.

I really wanted a sub and some froyo.

Cold Brewed Lemon Chiffon wasn’t enough: after my strenuous day of breaking down pallets I needed something else cold so I pounded back one of these as well. Again, I drank it so fast I really couldn’t even taste it…

But hey, at least I felt less light headed afterwards!

I was so thirsty today and once I was done my work teas for the day I had no other options than what was sold in store since I couldn’t leave during my shift (even when I was on break) so this became the default, again…

I really think I need to nudge up my rating (though only slightly) because this is growing on me a fair bit and it really can’t be that bad if I keep coming back to it over the other cold drinks we sell in the store.

Oh! And in other tea/work related news we got a shipment of bagged Green tea in a few days ago, so we’re selling that now. Some of my coworkers were thrilled to have green tea available to them on break now and I’ve now made it my mission to bring in some better green tea (although my selection is limited) so they don’t have to drink that tea dust garbage.

The green tea we sell is worse than bagged Lipton because it’s a “No Name” brand…

Ew.

I had this at work today on break because I needed a cold drink to go alongside my hot supper. It was nothing special but not awful either. Really I’ve said most of what can be said about this one.

I’m not looking forward to work at all tomorrow: I work 9AM to 7PM and there is only one other person coming in for the day besides myself. She has the same shift as me but is just a cashier so I’m going to have to do a metric butt fuck of extra work to keep the store looking nice (we have an inspection on Monday from Head Office) while balancing the demands of cash/till (so the line up doesn’t get too big). I’ll also be doing all the opening and closing paperwork/coin counts by myself which is normally a two person job. And on top of that I don’t get a break at all because I’m the only keyholder working tomorrow.

Fuck Carole. Fuck the lay offs. Fuck Everything.

I swear to God 80% of the time the overtime pay isn’t worth the extra work/stress.

Tre ordered in pizza and cheesecake for his birthday yesterday, and what always comes with the pizza we order in? Nestea. So of course it’s in the house again – although this is the last one for now.

Drank it just now while watching this amazing documentary on Netflix called Mortified Nation. If you have Netflix I 100% recommend watching it – I literally laughed out loud and I cried and it was just super fun to watch. Basically it’s just adults reading their real life diary entries out loud to a crowd of people. If that sounds awesome to you; watch it. If it doesn’t – I promise it’s better than I made it sound!

Here – just watch the trailer and make up your own mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3DmdV9XByY

Had one of these suckers at work today while I was on break: I needed something cold to contrast the super sweet cinnamon bun I was having for breakfast/supper. At this point my Cantaloupe and Cream cold brew was long gone, so this was the least offensive option out of what we have stocked in the Pop Coolers.

Wasn’t so bad: though it did feel like I was pairing sweet with sweet and there were a few bites/sips where it felt like too much.