My weekend was tea, tea, and more tea.

Tea the First: regular chanoyu class. I practiced a thin-tea ceremony using this shelf. We'll continue using the sunken hearth to heat water for another month or so, when we'll make the seasonal switch to a portable brazier.

Tea the Second: tea at Punitha's place as part of elwing2000's multi-stage bachelorette party, which also included dinner at The Melting Pot and drinks at Cafe Citron. With so many of my friends getting married, buying houses, having kids, and traveling around the world, I feel like the only one with nothing in particular to look forward to. Foreseeing those friendships dying away as the years go on and the friends with new families insulate themselves—not to mention looking back to my party-less wedding and the friends I've lost since then—is frankly depressing. So I'm trying to concentrate on celebrating elwing2000's marriage.

Tea the Third, a Cherry Blossom River Tea along with my parents, my brother's mother-in-law, seelevarcuzzo, Justin, and Eli. It had seemed like a good idea, but in practice, the cruise was overbooked, the service was poor, the view (through sheets of plastic because the air was too chilly for true al fresco dining) blurry, and the diesel fumes nearly sickening. On a different day, it might have been a completely different experience. We did see lots of gorgeous flowers blooming around the National Mall area, though, and we saw "the Castle" and a little of the Hirshhorn.

I caught some cherry blossoms last night before the weather turned cold and wet. Pictures here; they convinced me to crack open my camera's manual to see if I can do better.

I've been asked not to come to the kayaking skills weekend clinic I'd been looking forward to at the end of this month, due to my not yet having demonstrated comfort with being underwater in an out-of-control situation. I'm torn between using that as a motivation to focus all my effort on overcoming this issue and accepting that safe kayaking is just going to be too hard for me.

This weekend I got together with rebelzero, elwing2000, hyperferret, and brian_252 for a picnic under the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin in DC. It was sunny but windy; the water was too choppy for paddle boats to be rented, and the dry weather and general trampling of unpaved areas resulted in a lot of dust and fine dirt particles blowing all over the place. The tourists weren't deterred, of course.

We had a nice picnic and took the requisite photographs, but we didn't stick around for too long afterwards before heading up to brian_252's place to enjoy sake and anime. I brought my theretofore unused pair of 木升 wooden sake cups, but somehow the sake tasted different—and not in an agreeable way—when drunk from them than it did from the usual ceramic cups.

Update: elwing2000 has posted her cherry blossom pictures too.