We have a lovely new first flush darjeeling on the shelves from Rohini Estates and I’ve been drinking it for about a week now. I’ve been brewing it in a 16 oz pot with about two level teaspoons of tea with water at about 185 F for 5 minutes on the first steep and 4 minutes on the second steep.

The tea leaves are in pieces about the length of a staple and vary widely in color from whitish green to black and are lightly twisted.

Rohini is at an elevation of between 2500 and 5000 feet and is a relatively newly restored plantation with most of the plantings done since 1996.

The tew brews up a light golden brown color with a lightly fruity/floral aroma and a light clean taste with very low tannins and a nice lingering soft flavor.

Elph came across dry-erase paint and magnetic primer from Rust-Oleum. Coating a wall in these products creates a giant magnetic whiteboard that can be written on and erased like any other whiteboard. Of course IT had to try it.

I chose a wall in our front office roughtly 9ft x 12ft. A can of primer is allegedly enough to put three coats on a 7ft x 7ft space, and a can of paint is enough to do two coats. I disagree. Of course the space I painted was larger than that, so I used two cans of primer for three coats and three cans of paint for four coats. Four coats were neccessary since the paint is white and the primer is jet black (that’s the kicker). Using a foam roller instead of nap gave a nice smooth finish, and as the paint dries it becomes very glossy just like a normal whiteboard. It takes two days to fully dry; our wall should be ready to write on tomorrow.

FreeMacWare posted RDC Menu the other day. It’s an application stashed in the status bar that holds MS Remote Desktop Connection bookmarks. The interface is very similar to the acutal RDC cleint, and you can choose to use either RDC 1.3 for OS X, or the new 2.0 Beta. RDC Menu lets you quickly launch multiple connections to your favorite Windows computers.

Of course, if you’re using Quicksilver, you can make bookmarks with the actual RDC client, save them somewhere, and then open them and launch RDC with QS.

UPDATE

Quicksilver dominates RDC Menu. RDC Menu is a handy little app and great for any geek, but it’s just not fast enough for my QS trigger fingers. Different (key)strokes for different folks.

This is a photo from our good friend Kristie at Mail Order. If you’re a discerning Zingernaut you can tell by the chairs, plates, and reflected rafters that this was taken on the Roadhouse patio. I really like the shot because of the reflection, but also because it conveys the feeling a having just enjoyed a really good meal and trying to savor that last bite (or gulp, in this case) for as long as possible. (Having just read Heat, I’m feeling rather poetic about food.)