Tom & Alissa

Jenni, who has recently become one of my favorite internet-friends, is swapping tea with me, and hers made it here today from Adagio Tea, of which I am now wildly, rabidly a fan. Five cute little sampler-sized tins of tea are now stacked on my desk next to my monitor - almond black tea, green ginseng, blood orange herbal tea, rooibos caramel, and the “Bolero” signature blend made by one of Adagio’s customers.

This is one of the apparently multiple very cool things about Adagio - not only do they have an amazing selection of tea, and $2-4 sampler tins, not only do they have a points-earning frequent shopper program (1 point per dollar, and 100 points gets you a $10 gift certificate, which is many kinds of awesome), but they also let you make your own blend of tea (virtually, sort of) and order it, but you earn 10 points when someone else buys that blend. Seriously? This is tea for the artist.

Also, they have blooming display teas, which actually unfold into flowers when you put them in the water. That’s pretty much a grown-up edible version of those sponge things we used to have as a kid, which started out as brightly-colored pill-like things and turned into cats or elephants or other such creatures.

And to top it all off, a box of tea filters, which turn loose tea into teabags and is ABSOLUTELY BRILLANT for the office, because now I have no implements to wash but I can still brew loose tea. OH WOW. It’s a little weird how happy this makes me.

Righto. I’m going to go brew me a cup of something now.