its december

Tea leaves
tea loves
loves tea
Lives tea
leaves tea?
never.
-UNIEK SWAIN

I'm excited just sent out invite to my fab0O-ulous birthday tea party.
this is the year of 29 - no comments on that LOL....so I know yall she just gonna flow into blog without apologizing for the 4 month lay off.. I think my thirst for twitter slows my passion for blogging. I plan to work on that ratio in the 2011

One of my good college friends "j9musiclife" started her own blog and I served as a guest poster when I reviewed the Rhianna concert in Sept. Horrible I know :( neglecting my own blog for someone else. Here's the story

So in July - I was a disheveled mess preparing for the CISSP exam.. the great new me passed! woooot I'm a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) feels good I def worked hard for it.

I've been peeking back into the world of academia. Sat in for a GRE course- went WAY like Stratosphere over my head. I felt like ok did I even get a college degree the math was okay but that GRE verbal no good son! I also enrolled in pre-req (Networking 101) for the grad program I'm feeling GWU High Tech Crime Investigation. The program is excellent the tuition OC & the GRE is required unlike most other grad programs in the area, but I know its worth the struggle to get accept so I'm still 50/50.

as always attending the 2010 Logan Circle House tour this year with one of my coworkers. Upset I went on a slight work trip to Hampton last month and left my digi cam in the rental major FML.. so no pics this year though Ill get my friend to take some. Just a sidebar but I'm def moving into the city next year possibly a house staytuned #stillscared ...but there are deals so lets just claim it early for the 2011 #noshopping I've given my CC, Neimans, & Macys cards to my best girlfriends so and I'm about to start leaving my debit cards and home I really need to focus and not be a "single black female/addicted to retail" such a capricorn/woman issue LOL...

let see back to tea.. I've tried many of the last few months .. thanks to my new fav forum
tea chat I found new vendors:

Golden Teahouse
First-Grade Tie Guan Yin- basically an oolong best tea i ever. It had like sweet rose tasting tea and what I've learned good tea can be re stepped a good 4-5x and the flavor gets better each time.. yum a 5star tea LOL

Jing Tea
Lychee Red Black Tea- naturally sweet black tea no sugar/honey needed
Li Che Hong Cha- chinese green tea..i like normally the 2nd steeping and beyond is when the flavor really takes off
Traditional Iron Buddha Oolong (Monkey Picked*)- I ordered this bc local shop pearlfinetea had this last yr 2nd best tea I ever had.. this was good but not like the one I tried in the past
Tie Guan Yin Wu Long- umm was not as good as Golden Teahouse version but I enjoyed

Zhi Tea
Darjeeling Green- Green tea from Indian i loved it- quietly need to re-order some more
Dong Ding Oolong - Bought off of a recommendation it was OK
GABA Oolong- Gaba is a chemical that reduces stress.. but makes tea taste Nasty-- i hated this

ok me out.. hopefully catch yall before year end mi loves :)

Tea Fiend

my name is caplady1225 and I Love tea...

I can't get into a lengthy blog because I'm about to take a nap. My entire life is disheveled.
Work = insanity and I'm signed up for the CISSP exam again next month (more on those topics in a future post)



No its not a cookie (lmao) its a PUERH (pooh-air) tea cake (circa 2005) from Teaism (DC).
Here's how it looks unwrapped:


Scary yes! its literary tea leaves pounded together and aged. Puerh tea cakes from way back in the day can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars..
Its prepared by being chopped apart into teaspoon sizes from there you can put into a tea bag or brew via loose leaf brewer. It can be re-stepped 4-5 times and has aged earthy flavor.

Puerh tea is close in family to black tea which is the strongest compared to White (lightest), Green, Oolong (cross btw Green & Black) & Black (strongest).

But if you are following me on twitter like u should!! You'll see my daily ramblings different teas I try and more..

ok loves off the nappy land

whats going on with me right now

hey yall
been a couple months no bloggin :(

let me say #1 .. (ironically) lol WIZARDSSS John Wall!
OMG I was so geeked on lottery nite.. tweeting with my folks making jokes.. yall know the Wizards luck horrible so when we went past the top 5 woo Nervous wreck out here lol. Next thing I know boom we in the top 3 with NJ & Philly yo! when NJ fell to #3 kirk out mode! mann they called the 76ers I was done! As a hardcore Wizards fan such a glorious day and with the new owner Ted I think we can truly belive we are official rebuilding hopefully the right way much thanks to RIP Abe Polling I'm sure this pick is a gift from him above

oh yall know my #2 team- LAKERS yes a fan since 2002 we back in the finals.. yes yes yall on the way to a repeat bet that! My fav player is Fischer he such a man of high character and really steps it up on the court & leadership wise during the playoffs- respect!

Work-
Still happy at my job lol the consultant life is so weird like but I' m getting used to it and I do like feeling more connected to my company like this firm has alot of resources and constantly holding events to keep us informed its good to be able to leave work and hit events without being penalized so that's the big + of the consultant lifestyle oh and I got a cool phone LOL was so on the edge of getting an Iphone as work phone just to be "cool" but I can't stand all touch devices so I went with a wack HTC Pro 2 its just OK I didn't want to have 2 Blackberries :(

Music
Excited in Aug ill be going to see Rhianna in VA at the old Nissan Pavilion it was renamed recently forgot the new name lol.

other than that nothing new going on..ill check back in lata

back 2 back blogs... FTW!

as promised...let me jump right in because its Sunday night need to start getting mentally prepared for the M-F 9-5 grind. My new job...lets just say its with one of the "big 4" Audit firms in the US. I was hired as a Sr. Info Security Consultant lol sooo different from my normal title of Defense Contractor. I'm learning everything at the Big4 is different one all these audit/financial things mixed into EVERYTHING its weird in a we aren't in Kansas anymore way lol. I have so many compliance courses to take. At my old gig I barely had any corporate side taskers outside of annual evaluation. My job is still with the DoD family working in support of Military Healthcare which is such a blessing like in this time of a 'recession' I'm working in 3 fields heavily supported by government funds: Defense, Cybersecurity & Healthcare. I need to milk it for all its worth things can change so quickly. I'm still learning the ropes but being a 'consultant' is funny I do work but mainly I instruct others on what to do and I make sure they do it not in a managerial way but I''m 'overseeing' the end to end processes... blah.. lol
One thing about these Big4 is they are heavy players in the commercial world and good way for me to get on that side of the house (away from DoD) and maybe do so more traveling.
I'm only into month one so there will be more to report as I continue to get acclimated but IM HAPPY and do not miss my old project, agency or coworkers (minus a few folks).

my Kindle DX...SWOOOON



trust I had been eying ebooks readers for a minutes as talked about in several posts here. Since I'm older & wiser now LOL I don't like buying 1st generation or even 2nd electronics because new ones come out so fast example: Apple Ipods. However yes I sure did want to treat myself since one I def worked hard for this new job but with the Ipad release on the horizon I was scared Amazon would drop the price of the DX and I'd be short over paying. That's the risk you have to take but technically the KDX is the 3rd gen of Kindles and Im sure they are working on a K3 prototype you just can't win with technology.
I bought this device so that I wouldn't have to carry around 500pg+ technical books and let me say the reader does a great job of taking my tech pdf and displaying them on the screen. When I unboxed the Kindle it was even scary for me I kept touching the screen staring at the e-ink like eww weird lol. I love my device on the low low Amazon.com is my favorite website so the integration btw the site and the device is beautiful. The FREE 3g network built into the device is cool I don't play the net heavy on the KDX but its good to know I can wiki or tweet even check my gmail just incase my blackberry, comcast or whatever network is offline. I have been reading alot and slowly trying to get back into CISSP study mode...

Last topic I stopped into wholefoods (WF) in DC last week off the random.. yall know I do not mess with that expensive store. I stick to shopping at my main market which I fully endorse MOMs organic Market. I can't deny that WF selection of goods is impressive. I'm always on the search for a good rawfood/vegan bar so I went a lil crazy in there picked up 6 bars lol for reviewing.


LOL they are all Spirulina (basically algae) based.. don't get weirded out.. any green food mixed with the right amount of fruit & sweetness cancels out the seaweed taste you think the bars would have. Give me some time to digest and access but I'll have some comments soon..