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Two of my good friends are shacking up together. It’s a weird feeling, but I’m happy for them [truly]. One of them, I’ve known since kindergarten. The other I’ve known for a few years now.

About a year ago, when my kindergarten BFF was coming to visit from Fargo, ND where she currently resides, a light went off in my head. She was feeling a little bummed about being single, and I had this friend who was single, and I had this gut feeling that some magic would happen if I introduced them.

My BFF is back in town this week for a couple of days. Tomorrow, she’s taking my friend to Penn State with her family to go to the football game and then they are embarking on the 20 hour drive to the land of ice and snow. [It has already snowed in Fargo.]

They’re both sports freaks [she works in sports journalism and he’s…well, he’s a guy] so last night we all went to the World Cup Qualifier game between the U.S. and Costa Rica. [The U.S. had already qualified, but that didn’t keep 20-odd thousand people from attending]. Me, I’m not that much of a sports fan, but soccer [football, futbal, whatever] is one of the ones I can stand. And soccer players are hot. Not to mention soccer fans, as a general rule, are cuter than fans of other sports in my limited experience. Plus, I don’t get to see her often and he’s leaving shortly, so…you know.

It was cold and raining, and we were playing pretty badly during the first half of the game, so spirits were down. I had on three layers, and then BOTH of my friends gave me their jackets because I was dancing around trying to keep warm. All I could think about was how much I wanted a hot cup of tea. And how the guy a couple rows ahead of us looked freakishly like Jon Gosselin. [I wish I’d snapped a picture. I couldn’t stop staring, the resemblance was so striking.]

Luckily, it stopped raining, and the second half of the game picked up. We tied it up at the VERY end and the stadium erupted. It was all slightly exhilarating, but I still wanted tea.

We ended up picking up some Korean BBQ on the way back, sitting in front of the fireplace in my friend’s parents’ kitchen, and drinking hot chocolate. All in all, it was a good night and a nice way to remember one of the last nights my buddy’s gonna be in Virginia.

The first thing I did when I went home was to make a cup of tea, though. I was tired, exhausted even [too exhausted to log this last night], and in the mood for something specific while I mentally unpacked the day.

I’ve had this tea for a while, but I like to save it when I want something subtle and I know I’m not really going to be doing anything else. It’s different from most other oolongs I’ve had because the leaves are loosely twisted instead of tightly furled. Opening the tin, I smell raisins mixed with dried autumn leaves.

The flavors of the tea are a bit different from oolong’s I’ve had as well. They are definitely complex, but delicate. You want to make sure of two things when drinking this tea: one, that you’ll have time to appreciate it, and two that it’s cool enough to let it sit in your mouth a bit because if you gulp it down you’ll miss all the nuances.

It’s not a heavy tea, by any means, but it’s got a thickness to it. The flavors are what I consider to be darker ones. There are kind of a sweet, grassy, vegetal tones, and a taste that’s almost woodsy. At times I taste honey, among other things that I can’t place.

It’s a tea for thinking, and one that I enjoy at the end of the day – be they good, bad, happy, sad, or all of the above.