snow, tea, and insomnia

I was going to wait and update my blog when I had some more pictures to share. But I'm kind of lazy when it comes to capturing my life on film - or shall I say, memory card. I always seem to forget my camera when I go out, and then I see something I want to take a picture of and can't. Today I was good, and remembered to bring my camera with me. Alas, when I went to take a picture, I found the battery was dead.

But I'm going to update this anyway, because I can't sleep. In the past 30 hours I've slept about 3 of them. I just now lay in bed for 50 minutes, utterly exhausted and wide awake. And my feet were cold. And I was hungry. I'm always hungry these days. Maybe eating all the time is my body's compensation for sleep deprivation. Unfortunately, I'm running low on groceries. I was going to go grocery shopping in the morning, when I'd had enough sleep to think straight. So here I am with icy toes and an empty stomach. They roll up the sidewalks around here by 8 or 9, and I'm really too tired to drive, so going out to get food is out of the question. Guess I'll have to settle for instant oatmeal. Better than nothing.

I got up early this afternoon to go out to lunch with some ladies from work. We went toBoulder Dushanbe Teahouse. It was scrumptious. That's when I wanted to take pictures. Apparently the teahouse was a gift to Boulder from Tajikistan. It's absolutely beautiful, with mosaics on the ceiling and carved wooden pillars and beautiful statues and a fish pond in the middle. Oh, and in the corners, they had short tables where you could take off your shoes and sit cross-legged on cushions while drinking your tea. We sat at a regular table though. We all got different kinds of tea, and they brought it out in individual teapots, and gave us a little hourglass timer so we'd know how long to steep our tea leaves for. One of them got a blossoming tea, which I'd never heard of, but was very entertaining. Before putting it in hot water, it looks like a dried blob of mushroom or something. Then you add hot water, and it expands to look like a blossoming flower. We sat and watched it for at least 5 minutes. Here's a picture of one I found on the internet.

I guess I don't have much to write. Work is going well, and I think I'm getting the hang of computer charting. It's snowed a couple of times, but right now the roads are clear, thankfully. I desperately need snow tires. Driving home Sunday morning was scary. I'll hopefully get my tires changed tomorrow or Wednesday. I also need to get over my hatred of shopping long enough to buy some decent winter clothes. I've been layering a lot.