FLU you (suz)

bill maher’s great article on flu vaccination.
i agree with this pretty much all the way.

plus, hes funny— “

But no, I don’t think the A.M.A. and Big Pharma and Aetna and Dr. Frist’s hospital chain all meet in a board room and cackle about keeping us sick. They meet on the golf course. (Just kidding.)

“

sandwich # 11 (suzy and her love)

i eat this whenever i work in midtown east:
#11 VEGETARIAN SPECIAL
$6.99
Romaine lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber, avocado, alfalfa sprout, shredded red cabbage and sweet pepper on 7-grain whole wheat with honey dijon mustard

it is from an amazing shop called lenny’s.

it was just like this for me with silk city’s black russian sandwich w the avocados (which doesnt exist anymore bc of new owners)– i never make this sandwich for myself. i just love it and buy it weekly or biweekly.

maybe you will like it for yourself, and make it for you. and, for me? may, be,

FL (s)

hi im back! back to working a million hours a week it feels like, already, but, eh, thats ok:)
flordia was nice. somewhat devoid of culture, but, good to get away.

we drove from orlando to miami.
miami was weird and showy, but, also had a few cool things like the art deco and design districts.
and here is the answer to the burning question, are there hipsters in miami? ha. this question is phrased soooo weirdly on that webpage. i think the person asking is either very foreign or very much a db.

i always try to find brooklyn wherever i go. not full on complete hispter havens, but, something i feel comfortable w at least. miami was all scene and weirdness to me, fast cars and girls-gone-clubbing.

alex i saw your friends last night for a quick drink!! nori and tess:)
what else is the good news of the moment…? um, i work two jobs today, but its my last day in my office. thats nice news. i finish moving in this weekend. i am going to maybe do some winter shopping finally bc ive been too busy to… (new glasses!!!). i hope to pick up a good new book to read. and, i try to figure my life out as always. the end, for now<3

HA! -a

soup, fall, portland (alexander)

.. i have been on a huge soup kick, suzy – i wish you were here with me to enjoy.  i make nice big batches that last me a few days of goodness.  and if i get sick of it a some days in, i toss the rest in the freezer.  last night i had the best curried lentil that i froze ages ago.  i’m only now learning the brilliance of freezing (the right things.)   i also had a few delicious days of cream of potato and celery.  and then an amazing smoked tomato with all the roma tomatoes from my garden.  they lacked flavor raw, so a yummy tomato soup was great.  i made homemade croutons by tearing up a whole wheat loaf and tossing it in oil and brown mustard and pepper.  and i think i mentioned the cheddar broccoli soup.  tonight, i am cooking up a split pea, a slow slow cook.  and yes, with bacon!  it such comforting warm loveliness for me these cool cool days in oregon.

i want to see pirate radio only because you said to.   i’ll have to read up on it.  

here are some simple shots of fall from me…

personality test via sirrus radio (suzy)

so… there is a sirrus radio in the car and i LOVEEEE it. new music, old music, anything i want all the time.
and i set all the presets. XMU, alt nation (which is better than it sounds; i know, it sounds so 90s), and underground garage. then 3 npr type stations, with good ole bbc mixed in.

well, i have this very bad (good?) (def annoying for people in the car!) habit of switching between the three music stations. even if a song i pretty much love is on one of the stations, i have this need to hear whats on the other three before i commit.

i think that says a lot about my life.
other people are like ‘you like this song. who cares what else is on?’
and… why do i care?
but, i do.

related: just saw ‘the men who stare at goats’ (good, but more interesting to just know about that stuff broadly to now research it). and then we snuck into ‘pirate radio’ like teenagers after that. i LOVED that movie. omg. i love the music from that era, and there are so many good actors in it. and a cute cute cute young young boy who reminds me a lot of jesse vile (funny!). i want someone else out of our group of friends to see this and confirm or dispute it with me.

and alex, i bought you a great tee shirt.
oxooxoxoxoox world. i loves you.

oh, i see… percentage. forecast. just means a rain sometime, somewhere (alexander in portland)

k. so i know i am still very much a newbie here.  (actually i just realized it is just almost about a year ago that i made the actual decision to come to portland.  it didn’t happen until last march, but as november/08 came, the world persuaded me to depart la for the northwest.)   in any event, the rain stereotype lived on, as i have now told many friends around the world about my moving to portland – rain is always the first question.  from my immediate experience, it was pretty much a myth.  and in the summer, it is entirely true that there is no rain.  but yes, winter was looming and most of the long-time locals warned me it could get bad – more gray than anything.  which sounds just like london.  either way, i don’t care much… i look forward to a dramatic season.  (after all those years in CA, no less).  the funny thing though is the vague weather reports from the internet/local news etc.   as november crept in, the weather forecasts began to more and more look like this:

 

and now that i am truly in it, i realize how to interpret these strange and depressing looking reports.  (i’ve been told over and over not to even look at them, but still, i can not yet come to ignore em).  a day with a rainy icon simply means that there is a chance (maybe 60%) that it will rain at some point, in some area of the city, some certain amount.   so basically, though there is  60% of precipitation, it is even more likely that the cloud may pass over your neighborhood.  or you might be lost in a book store (or god forbid, have a job) and entirely miss the so called rain.  i guess thats why they say shower.  

sitting for the evening in a cafe up the street, after taking some photographs of the fall look around town and dropping yet another resume of at a fabulous health food store, the rain did come. and hard.  a serious downpour.  the kind that made enough noise that everyone in here stopped what they were doing to pay attention to it for a few minutes.  the quick darkness passing over, the water like buckets hitting sidewalks and car tops.  the window view blurs into a painting on the wall.    and quickly, it ends.  it’s like the cloud shakes itself of and moves along out to sea.  just splashing our city clean and fresh.

never in one spot (both of us, FROM A)

S!-  what the hell?  What’s in FL and when/why/HUH?  

Like I should talk… just flew in from a weekend in SF/Oakland this evening.  Now… I PROMISE I have no trip on my agenda.    The weekend was fun filled with family, friends, drinks, sunrises, thai food, indian food, fried chicken, and more bacon that I would like to admit. 

Exciting job interview tomorrow – please think good things peoples.

OK, off to the co-op because all weekend (which has included a wee unhealthy food choices) has me craving something organic and warm and delicious, so I’m going to make up a batch of cream of brocolli and cheddar soup for dinner, and then bed.

 

 http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/broccoli-cheddar-soup-recipe.html

 

opps (by suzy darling)

i havent posted since then. and, now i am off to FL for awhile.
i had a very very long work week last week, and have been avoiding doing anything very real since.
i will write a real post when i return. or maybe from the beach.

i want to camp on the beach and also stay at a hostel. that may be impossible, but we will see : )

workwerkworkwerk …… (s)

im at WORK right NOW
but we just had a fun event with an open bar.
makes it worth it.
sortaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

btw, walking down the street near my office today, and a crazy lady kept saying ‘TIME Time TIME is of the ESSENCE. TIMEEEE TIMEEE TIMEEE’ like a Reverend or something. i liked it. enough. it applied both to my day and my life.

somewhat uninteresting self portraiture (by/of A)

eh, playing with the camera at a late hour.  

this is special. life is short. be cool. (alexander)

this was in a bar in portland called zack’s shack.  i asked about where it came from and they said, “from zack.”

 

shook google’s hand (suzy)

i just wanted to give a quick life update.
i just moved, as you know, and am having the busiest week imaginable at work. events all week.
we had a panal discussion last night at the new york public library with a bunch of all stars, including the ceo of google. i shook his hand and tried my best to get him to come to the private party afterwards, but he politely declined. (he was stuck on a plane for hours before getting to us.)

he was smart and very kind.

i will write more later (as always). <3

WHAT DO WE THINK!? (excerpts from some old 2004 piece of writing suzy and alex worked on but i don’t think ever published)

((((s- i just stumbled amidst my old word.doc areas and found this 3 pager that you and i wrote back and forth just post bush won in 04.  funny, nearly 5 years later, oh how things have changed – well a tiny bit, but. well. ))))  ((((i’m not pasting the entire thing, just the good and short and sweet parts.  so it might seem pretty discombobulated as a structure.))))))

 

President BOOOSH and his pals got the election, perhaps not fairly, but we’ll never know and so evil looms again; a 2nd term for republicans. We miss when we didn’t know or care to know what any of this all meant. 

And there is a small side that says its ALL FUCKED, ALWAYS WAS (how did the slaves feel about their reality?). Corporate and government ties, money. oil corruption, halliburton, religious right winged puritans.  Conspiracy since forever.  The RICH V THE POOR, tonight at 8pm and so on. 

Then again, there is a world that can, almost easily, exist. We just forget it’s possible. 

 Just overcome that barrier that an abundance of choices creates, leaving us feeling so un-free:  (Here, is a great computer, where you can create anything, but it is the not the best technology we have, it’s just enough to keep you busy. here, is a cell phone. talk all day about where you are going all night. but don’t talk of anything serious. just plans to stay too busy to DO anything. here, is a carmel latte. it’s sinfully good, it will slowly kill you, & it’s way overpriced.  here, is a college education. which everyone says you need. but no one knows if it will get you anywhere, produced by the some of the same people who love the American “way” and make fine money off it.  Actually, college helpfully distracts millions of twentysomethings with no direction, who might do something extreme if not occupied.)

We have it sometimes bad (more scary then anything), and yet some have it horribly, awfully, worse than this.  

So we try to remain happy with what we have. Travel within this beautiful country and most of this world (with expensive skies!).  Manage our daily lives as we please, meet and love anyone we want (well sorta).

We can each live a good life.  One with beliefs. Yes, it is a complicated system, but we have a place in it and can make our own decision to do good or bad every moment of every day.  Make love or make shit.  We have instincts like every other creature alive.  Do what you’d like to do and have whatever you want to have without hurting anyone on the way to it.  It isn’t hard.  

While “they” do their thing with money and power and connections with the other powerful kids on the playground, we do our thing of love and life and learning and enjoying that fact that the government doesn’t live in this wonderful reality of REAL life anyway. 

Turn everything off and sit in the sunshine for a while, each day is a new change at eternity. 

4 pictures by alexander

WHAT IS THIS A PHOTO OF?  WELL, IT IS MY HALLOWEEN COSTUME STREWN ON THE FLOOR, BUT WITH AN ADDED CAT ON THE HAT.

 

 

AND HERE ARE 2 CATS HAVING LUNCH.

 

 

AND THIS IS A WHILE BACK, BUT S PRETTY.  BAKED TOFU WITH CARAMELIZED BRUSSELL SPROUTS, ONION, PECANS, AND APPLE.   WONDERFUL.  SOMEONE SHOULD PAY ME TO DO THIS.