The time it takes to make boba depends on what kind you're making. Generally, boba pearls take 30 or more minutes to cook, but you can get ones that take less time to cook too. The ones that take less time don't have as nice of a texture generally, but the ones I've tried aren't bad. If you want, you can even make your own, and dry them by setting them out on a sheet pan and turning them every so often for maybe 12 hours.
If you're just doing brown sugar tea, you just need to make the brown sugar syrup (which you usually finish cooking the boba in) and steep and cool the black tea. If you're doing this on impulse or forgot to make the tea until the end, which I usually am because I have no impulse control or focus, you can put the tea container in a large bowl of ice and water. (Stirring makes it cool down faster.) But you can make a lot of other flavors too! Taro boba is really good, but I'd imagine it's much, much harder to make it from actual taro root. I just used some poi (we live in the Midwest, but we can get poi shipped). There are a lot of other flavors you can make, though. I also made one with jasmine green tea, a bit of honey and sugar, and milk (coconut milk worked great), which was delicious even though I'm usually very against milk and sugar in green tea.
I actually read a YA book that was pretty good - I mean, the issues came from standard writing issues. It's The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones. The characters were fine. I liked the concept for Fane, but don't feel like any of them really got enough development. Mer was a bit overpowered - I think that, instead of being able to freeze and heat up water, she should only have been able to move it and such. Also a harder limit on how much magic she could use would be helpful. I think she was less interesting than Fane. The beginning was really interesting (there was a really bad transition from Mer's POV to Fane's, though - I think it would have been better if they had seen him and then switched to his POV, which could still work great in context), but the middle lacked tension. Although I might have been missing something - a lot of the stakes were only mentioned once. The worst part came at the end, so I won't spoil it, but basically, if you repeatedly have a character's POV, maybe don't reveal that they actually have this other major motivation at the end???? It was very bad, I'll tell you that. Nonentheless, the book was pretty enjoyable. Plus there was a corgi.
The reveal was the worst thing, but the most annoying thing is that the author set reader expectations that a character at the beginning would be important and then he never came in again. And I really liked that character from the, like, two chapters we got with him *sobs* But I think for him to have a name and that much focus on him, he should have come in at least a little more.
And to be clear, whenever I write about a book, it's important to note that I am way more critical than most people are and most people would probably really like it. But I enjoy picking apart the flaws.
Oh, this is longer than I thought. I was going to write about DnD, which I've been doing, but I'll save that for later :D Bye!
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submitted by Blackfooted Bobcat (March 27, 2023 - 7:34 pm)
Ahhh sheep I thought I responded and I was like dang why is Blackfooted Bobcat taking so long-- xD sorry!
That book sounds cool...I looked it up and it's set in medieval Wales?? Yessss. Wales is so mysterious and magical, I'd love to read a book set there (also they have a town called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Which tells you a lot about Welsh people I think).
Ooh I just had an idea! What if we had a little 3-person book club and chose a book for every 2 months or so, and then talked about it on here? I think I've attempted to start a CB book club before and it didn't work very well, but maybe it'd be easier to organize with less people. Only if y'all want to or have time though :)
I'd love to hear your thoughts on DnD! My brother's really into it and we've started to play it as a family recently with him as the DM. My character is a forest gnome bard. I still haven't come up with a name for her yet, though...any suggestions?
The book club sounds like a good idea. Be warned, though, that on my end it'll be me going on about everything that didn't work :P (I barely wrote any critiques of The Drowned Woods, you have no idea.)
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submitted by Blackfooted TOPcat (May 1, 2023 - 6:55 pm)
Sorry it's been so long, words are hard and I can't sit still XD Actually made boba tea today!
Guess what? There's a Bach/baroque music festival in my area (it's a relatively small city but we have two really good professional orchestras and a lot of good music stuff) and there's a Young Musicians night! And guess what I am?! I'm going to play Bach's violin concerto in a minor 3rd movement and possibly some of the Telemann viola concerto. I fixed up the Telemann for a small open mic and it was actually really fun when you can practice harder things too. I played it at the open mic and everyone loved it. I hope I'm not bragging, but almost everyone came up to me and said I was good. It was amazing. I slipped up, like, every time in one of the repeated spots, though, ugh :((( Nobody noticed, at least XD
Also we had our orchestra concert. It went well :D I messed up the second violins in the dress rehearsal because they didn't have the right chair at first so I couldn't play, and then I was really flustered (I'm just glad I didn't meltdown though) so everything went bad. But the concert went well.
Annoyingly my semi-chronic pain issues have been acting up so it's been harder to practice. (I say semi because I don't know if it's bad enough to count as chronic pain? It's gotten a lot better too, and sometimes there's not any) I should have everything ready by the Bach festival, but I want to get to a better song for violin auditions too. (I just need a seating hearing in August/September, so I have time.)
DnD is fun. Everyone's been shockingly accepting of me using a computer to communicate. Like, nobody really even was weirded out. (The one guy who kind of was got over it really quickly.) To give you an idea of the group, somebody gave me 110 gold (everything they had) so I'd buy then a 10 gold useless mechanical spider so they could pet it one time. I accepted, obviously. and then there's the guy who ran into the middle of a super fancy rich market and yelled "HAMBURGER". There's so much, I could go on forever.
I'll end here for now!
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submitted by Blackfooted Bobcat (May 8, 2023 - 3:17 pm)
Congratulations on your successful open mic! Open mics are so fun. I've only done one, which was for poetry not music, and the music one that I know of in my town is more for vocal/guitar kinds of things so people would probably be confused if I went up and tried to play a concerto xD But it sounds like yours went really well, which is great! Good luck on the festival, I bet it'll be really fun.
And yay for your orchestra concert :D Is your conductor the kind of person who will shame you if you don't do well? Ours kind of does that, but we usually manage to pull together so we don't get shamed too often (before the concert is another story). We had our orchestra concert last weekend, and I was the concertmaster (o_O) and had two solos (0_o) and it actually went really well! I practiced the solos so much out of fear, and they ended up sounding good :D
I'm sorry about your pain :( violin is hard on a good day, and adding pain into the mix does not help. I hope you feel better soon.
In non-music news, I chopped my hair off! Well, a haircutter did. It used to be about shoulder-length, and now it's short in the back and longer in the front with a side-part (I have a hard time describing haircuts without a picture lol). It's very fun. I've always wanted to cut it short but never had the courage. Also, today I was in line for a bathroom and a man walked up and asked me if I was waiting, and I think he thought I was a boy for a second, which was pretty interesting since that's never happened to me before. I identify as a girl, but it's kind of fun to have people not know just by looking at me.
That's all for now! I have finals coming up next week for precalc and chemistry so I did 3 1/2 pages of math today and like 7 pages of chemistry yesterday T_T wish me luck
How is trumpet going, Bobcat? That sounds like a lot of fun. I really wanted to play trombone a few years ago, which totally baffled my family. "Why the trombone?" they kept asking to which I could never give a very satisfactory answer.
The open mic you attended sounded really fun. I'm glad you got a performance opportunity!
Could you explain to me what DnD is? I hear people talk about it but I haven't been able to get a definitive definition of what it is. A sort of role play?
I hope you are feeling better, and that the pain stays away. It's no fun.
As for talking to people, I can talk (to some) but I never seem to have meaningful conversations or work up the courage to start one. I usually end up regreting some of the things I said or did, and wishing I had said or done things I hadn't. And then I stress about how what I said or did appeared to the other person. I really want to make friends with kids in my locale (I mostly have pen pals, whom I love as friends but I can't see them in person), it's just unfortunately asking "will you be my friend?" doesn't work anymore and I worry that asking for someone's contact information when we've only talked a few times is wierd.
Lupine, I had totally forgot about suggesting Meditation from Thais. The funny thing is for that recital I played Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto (1st mvt.), the adagio of Bach's Sonata No. 1 for solo violin, and -- Meditation from Thais! It is a really pretty piece.
Nice haircut! (From how you described it.) Your being mistaken for a boy story is funny. I was mistaken for a boy once when I was wearing a rain jacket with the hood up, and once someone asked if I was a boy or girl (again I was wearing a unisex rain coat) which I found amusing. I am female and I look like it, so I didn't think I could ever be thought otherwise.
And the promised YA fiction rant (which shall be distilled in to bullet points so as not to run off on a tangent):
- bad romance. I don't mind some romance, but when every single plot is drowned in romance (and fake romance, at that) it drives me crazy. The plot idea might have been great, until the author became so caught up in writing romance that the actual plot fell to the sidelines.
- gory violence. I will say I generally avoid Ski Lodges, so maybe I have a lower tolerance for violence than most others, but the detailed killing and gore in YA books sickens me. What's worse is that many times the characters seem okay with it if it is their enemies, though when it is done to those of their side they riot in anger. No one seems to point out that by doing to your enemies what they do to you, you are no better than they.
- unoriginal plotlines.
- poor writing quality.
- cartoon-y and unoriginal cover art. (I have seen some cool ones though.)
With all that said, I will say that I have come across some good books. Though now I think about it I am not sure they are actually YA... Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is good if you are looking for a clean book. I think it is adult fiction, but it met my standards.
I'm afraid I couldn't participate in a bookclub. Mostly due to time. I really shouldn't take on any more commitments. However, if you and Bobcat start one, I look forward to seeing your comments on the books you read.
I hope you all are doing well!
I recently read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. It's very good, but has some adult themes, so I would recommend it for older teens (17 or 18) and up.
The time it takes to make boba depends on what kind you're making. Generally, boba pearls take 30 or more minutes to cook, but you can get ones that take less time to cook too. The ones that take less time don't have as nice of a texture generally, but the ones I've tried aren't bad. If you want, you can even make your own, and dry them by setting them out on a sheet pan and turning them every so often for maybe 12 hours.
If you're just doing brown sugar tea, you just need to make the brown sugar syrup (which you usually finish cooking the boba in) and steep and cool the black tea. If you're doing this on impulse or forgot to make the tea until the end, which I usually am because I have no impulse control or focus, you can put the tea container in a large bowl of ice and water. (Stirring makes it cool down faster.) But you can make a lot of other flavors too! Taro boba is really good, but I'd imagine it's much, much harder to make it from actual taro root. I just used some poi (we live in the Midwest, but we can get poi shipped). There are a lot of other flavors you can make, though. I also made one with jasmine green tea, a bit of honey and sugar, and milk (coconut milk worked great), which was delicious even though I'm usually very against milk and sugar in green tea.
I actually read a YA book that was pretty good - I mean, the issues came from standard writing issues. It's The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones. The characters were fine. I liked the concept for Fane, but don't feel like any of them really got enough development. Mer was a bit overpowered - I think that, instead of being able to freeze and heat up water, she should only have been able to move it and such. Also a harder limit on how much magic she could use would be helpful. I think she was less interesting than Fane. The beginning was really interesting (there was a really bad transition from Mer's POV to Fane's, though - I think it would have been better if they had seen him and then switched to his POV, which could still work great in context), but the middle lacked tension. Although I might have been missing something - a lot of the stakes were only mentioned once. The worst part came at the end, so I won't spoil it, but basically, if you repeatedly have a character's POV, maybe don't reveal that they actually have this other major motivation at the end???? It was very bad, I'll tell you that. Nonentheless, the book was pretty enjoyable. Plus there was a corgi.
The reveal was the worst thing, but the most annoying thing is that the author set reader expectations that a character at the beginning would be important and then he never came in again. And I really liked that character from the, like, two chapters we got with him *sobs* But I think for him to have a name and that much focus on him, he should have come in at least a little more.
And to be clear, whenever I write about a book, it's important to note that I am way more critical than most people are and most people would probably really like it. But I enjoy picking apart the flaws.
Oh, this is longer than I thought. I was going to write about DnD, which I've been doing, but I'll save that for later :D Bye!
(March 27, 2023 - 7:34 pm)
(April 2, 2023 - 8:10 pm)
(April 6, 2023 - 10:37 am)
(April 17, 2023 - 7:27 pm)
CAPTCHA says "boook"
(April 20, 2023 - 11:58 am)
(April 25, 2023 - 6:38 pm)
Ahhh sheep I thought I responded and I was like dang why is Blackfooted Bobcat taking so long-- xD sorry!
That book sounds cool...I looked it up and it's set in medieval Wales?? Yessss. Wales is so mysterious and magical, I'd love to read a book set there (also they have a town called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Which tells you a lot about Welsh people I think).
Ooh I just had an idea! What if we had a little 3-person book club and chose a book for every 2 months or so, and then talked about it on here? I think I've attempted to start a CB book club before and it didn't work very well, but maybe it'd be easier to organize with less people. Only if y'all want to or have time though :)
I'd love to hear your thoughts on DnD! My brother's really into it and we've started to play it as a family recently with him as the DM. My character is a forest gnome bard. I still haven't come up with a name for her yet, though...any suggestions?
(April 26, 2023 - 10:55 pm)
The book club sounds like a good idea. Be warned, though, that on my end it'll be me going on about everything that didn't work :P (I barely wrote any critiques of The Drowned Woods, you have no idea.)
(May 1, 2023 - 6:55 pm)
(May 8, 2023 - 1:06 pm)
Sorry it's been so long, words are hard and I can't sit still XD Actually made boba tea today!
Guess what? There's a Bach/baroque music festival in my area (it's a relatively small city but we have two really good professional orchestras and a lot of good music stuff) and there's a Young Musicians night! And guess what I am?! I'm going to play Bach's violin concerto in a minor 3rd movement and possibly some of the Telemann viola concerto. I fixed up the Telemann for a small open mic and it was actually really fun when you can practice harder things too. I played it at the open mic and everyone loved it. I hope I'm not bragging, but almost everyone came up to me and said I was good. It was amazing. I slipped up, like, every time in one of the repeated spots, though, ugh :((( Nobody noticed, at least XD
Also we had our orchestra concert. It went well :D I messed up the second violins in the dress rehearsal because they didn't have the right chair at first so I couldn't play, and then I was really flustered (I'm just glad I didn't meltdown though) so everything went bad. But the concert went well.
Annoyingly my semi-chronic pain issues have been acting up so it's been harder to practice. (I say semi because I don't know if it's bad enough to count as chronic pain? It's gotten a lot better too, and sometimes there's not any) I should have everything ready by the Bach festival, but I want to get to a better song for violin auditions too. (I just need a seating hearing in August/September, so I have time.)
DnD is fun. Everyone's been shockingly accepting of me using a computer to communicate. Like, nobody really even was weirded out. (The one guy who kind of was got over it really quickly.) To give you an idea of the group, somebody gave me 110 gold (everything they had) so I'd buy then a 10 gold useless mechanical spider so they could pet it one time. I accepted, obviously. and then there's the guy who ran into the middle of a super fancy rich market and yelled "HAMBURGER". There's so much, I could go on forever.
I'll end here for now!
(May 8, 2023 - 3:17 pm)
Congratulations on your successful open mic! Open mics are so fun. I've only done one, which was for poetry not music, and the music one that I know of in my town is more for vocal/guitar kinds of things so people would probably be confused if I went up and tried to play a concerto xD But it sounds like yours went really well, which is great! Good luck on the festival, I bet it'll be really fun.
And yay for your orchestra concert :D Is your conductor the kind of person who will shame you if you don't do well? Ours kind of does that, but we usually manage to pull together so we don't get shamed too often (before the concert is another story). We had our orchestra concert last weekend, and I was the concertmaster (o_O) and had two solos (0_o) and it actually went really well! I practiced the solos so much out of fear, and they ended up sounding good :D
I'm sorry about your pain :( violin is hard on a good day, and adding pain into the mix does not help. I hope you feel better soon.
In non-music news, I chopped my hair off! Well, a haircutter did. It used to be about shoulder-length, and now it's short in the back and longer in the front with a side-part (I have a hard time describing haircuts without a picture lol). It's very fun. I've always wanted to cut it short but never had the courage. Also, today I was in line for a bathroom and a man walked up and asked me if I was waiting, and I think he thought I was a boy for a second, which was pretty interesting since that's never happened to me before. I identify as a girl, but it's kind of fun to have people not know just by looking at me.
That's all for now! I have finals coming up next week for precalc and chemistry so I did 3 1/2 pages of math today and like 7 pages of chemistry yesterday T_T wish me luck
(May 13, 2023 - 11:16 pm)
Just wanted to come on quickly amd wish you luck! I'll be back.
(May 16, 2023 - 12:19 pm)
(May 15, 2023 - 8:13 pm)
How is trumpet going, Bobcat? That sounds like a lot of fun. I really wanted to play trombone a few years ago, which totally baffled my family. "Why the trombone?" they kept asking to which I could never give a very satisfactory answer.
The open mic you attended sounded really fun. I'm glad you got a performance opportunity!
Could you explain to me what DnD is? I hear people talk about it but I haven't been able to get a definitive definition of what it is. A sort of role play?
I hope you are feeling better, and that the pain stays away. It's no fun.
As for talking to people, I can talk (to some) but I never seem to have meaningful conversations or work up the courage to start one. I usually end up regreting some of the things I said or did, and wishing I had said or done things I hadn't. And then I stress about how what I said or did appeared to the other person. I really want to make friends with kids in my locale (I mostly have pen pals, whom I love as friends but I can't see them in person), it's just unfortunately asking "will you be my friend?" doesn't work anymore and I worry that asking for someone's contact information when we've only talked a few times is wierd.
Lupine, I had totally forgot about suggesting Meditation from Thais. The funny thing is for that recital I played Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto (1st mvt.), the adagio of Bach's Sonata No. 1 for solo violin, and -- Meditation from Thais! It is a really pretty piece.
Nice haircut! (From how you described it.) Your being mistaken for a boy story is funny. I was mistaken for a boy once when I was wearing a rain jacket with the hood up, and once someone asked if I was a boy or girl (again I was wearing a unisex rain coat) which I found amusing. I am female and I look like it, so I didn't think I could ever be thought otherwise.
And the promised YA fiction rant (which shall be distilled in to bullet points so as not to run off on a tangent):
- bad romance. I don't mind some romance, but when every single plot is drowned in romance (and fake romance, at that) it drives me crazy. The plot idea might have been great, until the author became so caught up in writing romance that the actual plot fell to the sidelines.
- gory violence. I will say I generally avoid Ski Lodges, so maybe I have a lower tolerance for violence than most others, but the detailed killing and gore in YA books sickens me. What's worse is that many times the characters seem okay with it if it is their enemies, though when it is done to those of their side they riot in anger. No one seems to point out that by doing to your enemies what they do to you, you are no better than they.
- unoriginal plotlines.
- poor writing quality.
- cartoon-y and unoriginal cover art. (I have seen some cool ones though.)
With all that said, I will say that I have come across some good books. Though now I think about it I am not sure they are actually YA... Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is good if you are looking for a clean book. I think it is adult fiction, but it met my standards.
I'm afraid I couldn't participate in a bookclub. Mostly due to time. I really shouldn't take on any more commitments. However, if you and Bobcat start one, I look forward to seeing your comments on the books you read.
I hope you all are doing well!
I recently read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. It's very good, but has some adult themes, so I would recommend it for older teens (17 or 18) and up.
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