By Golly, Ollie!

A dense fog has sunk into mid-Michigan this week. It’s made my new, 30-mile commute dreadful and the woods across the street from my house particularly spooky. Perhaps the ominous atmosphere is what drove me to pluck Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris from the library shelf on Saturday. Or, perhaps it was the glitter on the book cover. Regardless the reason, now that I’ve sat down to read the novel, I find myself nervous to open the book. This is what I know about the Sookie Stackhouse series:

1. It’s wildly popular. They even turned it into a TV show.
2. It’s a pretty steamy series.
3. There is a vampire in it (multiple vampires?), which immediately increases the probability that I will loathe the book.

So, here I am procrastinating by blogging and drinking tea that tastes more like the sweet clovers I tasted in late Springtime in Ohio when I was a child than something that should accompany a novel about vampires. Even if said novel has glitter on the front cover.

Today I drink Doomni Summer Oolong from Teabox Tea, which is from the Assam region, an area known for its malty, black tea rather than its Oolong. The dry leaves are a beautiful blend of dark green, rusty-brown, and taupe, and they smell creamy, sweet, and soft. The flavor of the tea is reminiscent of the red clover flowers that I used to taste growing up in Ohio– slightly vegetal and slightly honeyed sweet. I also pick up a very subtle floral flavor– jasmine, maybe? The package mentions there should also be some minty notes, but I do not taste it. Basically, Doomni Summer Oolong tastes like Springtime, and it seems to cut through the fog wrapped around soggy tree trunks. This tea is best sipped hot, but if you’re going to nurse it, you can add some honey to cut the bitterness that surfaces as it cools.

Have you ever been so nervous to start a new book that you found yourself procrastinating?