BabyJane Hudson wrote:
> As I type these words, I am drinking a cup of Bigelow English Teatime.
> I am on disability so until I get paid, I am drinking what I bought at
> Kroger's, but when within a week, I will be buying some loose leaf on
> line from one of the sites you guys mentioned.
>
> Thanks,
> Jane

Hey Jane,

TeaTimer is a pretty cool little application, I have been a Linux user
(an alternative to Windows operating system) since about 1995 and
TeaTimer used to be part of the regular install and I always found it
pretty cool. It's been a long time since I installed it or used it
since, but I knew exactly what you meant and it brought a long lost
little app back into my memory.

As far as the disability/expensive tea, you may be surprised to find
how affordable (and most likely cheaper) some good teas can be. If you
have any Asian or Indian markets in your area, they can be a goldmine.
The tea will be lower to mid level, but it will be much better than the
average supermarket variety. I always pick up four main ones:

Asian Market:
"Sunflower Brand" Jasmine Tea (loose green tea) in a yellow tin that
says "Jasmine Tea" all around it in various languages. Cost is about
$1.79 for a 120g tin.

A decent Oolong, which also costs about $2 for a cardboard canister.

Indian Market:
Brook Bond Taj Mahal Assam tea for about $3.99 for a large box

Lipton green label Darjeeling also $3.99 for a large box

These teas will yield a ton more than even a box of 100ct tea bags from
the store and be a bit better quality and add some variety. I grew up
knowing to value a dollar, and I have found a number of very low cost
teas that are excellent over the years. I have similarly tasted some
very expensive tea that wasn't worth a dime. I also like to bring up
that if you were to buy a cup of tea for $0.75-$1 you could be drinking
a $100/lb. tea instead which will undoubtably be high quality. Tea is
one of the best values, and with some know how, you can drink some of
the best tea in the world for the price of a box of Tetley. Upton's
website is a great place to start, they have very reasonable prices
(about half the cost of similar tea elsewhere) and even more reasonable
shipping.

Best of luck, and welcome!

- Dominic

For those using Linux, there is also "kteatime", which comes with newer
versions of KDE.

--k