From New York to Nicaragua…..And Back

I walked to work today, as usual, and for the first time this season it was snowing. This is not the snow you are picturing in your mind, but more the snow that melts as soon as it touches whatever it lands on. For a second I thought it was small pieces of feather or lint, and that maybe someone on the 15th floor of the housing projects nearby was playing a cruel joke on us all - or maybe just cleaning a chicken - but turns out it was snow. I was a lot easier to believe about ten minutes into my walk when my face was ice cold and my hands were freezing. I was making mental notes to put gloves in my bag and considering switching to the train. For some reason I would rather be freezing cold some days than feel the despair and hopelessness that often pours out of the masses on a crowded train during the commute hours in the morning - the evening commute is a different story and everyone seems more relieved and tired. Aside from the weather turning, there is not a lot to report. We are looking forward to being home for Thanksgiving and I am predicting I will gain about 5 pounds but it will be well worth it.

The building photos from today are up around the mid to high 50’s around 7th ave. I was passing through on my way to a work event and took a few pics thinking some new buildings would be a good change of pace for my legions of building photo followers

The 45 minute walk to work I take every morning is starting to fall victim to the option to take the train just 4 stops as the cold Fall air is creeping into the city more every day. Maybe it’s because I still have Californian blood, maybe it’s because our last winter was spent bussing across Central America (not a drop of snow) or maybe I am just a warm weather person but I have a hard time looking forward to a few months of this. Snow in the mountains - beautiful. Snow in the plains - picturesque. Snow in urban areas - gray, nasty and not so pretty. Believe me that it only looks good in the movies when people watch it through the windows with christmas lights from Rockefeller center in the background around an enourmous uptown apartment. The reality is that as soon as it stops snowing everything turns to this gray urban slush and slippery ice that rapidly looses appeal.

Enought with the Winter negativity though. It does make for some very clear days and for some reason the visibility is much improved. My addicition to lame building photos is starting to fade (I think I need to move or get another job since I have photographed almost every building of interest on my current route) and I am curious to see what replaces it. Before it does end I thought at least I would post these so you wouldn’t just have to read my words. Enjoy.

Before fall fully arrived and somewhere back in the flip flop and shorts days of summertime K and I took the ferry out to Governor’s Island, and had an awesome day wondering around what felt like a preserved time capsule of older military style buildings peppered with sprawling green lawns & trees - all surrounded by water with views of south Manhattan and the bridges connecting it to Brooklyn. Governor’s Island is awesome and we were both blown away by how accessible and close to the city it is, but how different and wide open the feeling is. This is an island off southern NYC that has generally been untouched for decades tied up in the politics of ownership, politics, development and history - and in some strange ways also reminded me of the former Fort Ord with its buildings that have been boarded up for years.

We decided to make a full day of it and brought our own homeade picnic, smuggled in some cold beer, and rented some bicycles once we got there to cruise around. The island itself is roughly the size of Central Park and almost totally flat, so the beach cruisers were a perfect means of transportation. It almost brought back some Santa Cruz memories of riding bikes along the waterfront with flip flops on, except instead of looking out onto the pacific you looked across the water to the towering presence of southern Manhattan. It also felt good to sprawl out on an open lawn in the sun and just relax outside of the city. We even got to see some free japanese performance art while we ate - bonus!

In some of these pics, I tried to capture the strange mix of open spaces, lawns and trees with the tall buildings overshadowing and looking down from across the river. Otherwise it is views from the ferry or the island looking north at the city. I want to say they only open this up for the summer but am not sure. Anyone looking for a fun and free trip to get out of the city without actually going far would love this and it felt like a visit to the park combined with a history lesson.

In light of the fact that I don’t have much else to post and it is getting ever so close to election day, I thought I would post a few pics of different campaign posters around NYC. It really is no fun living in NYC during national elections, just like it was no fun living in California. The dems have us locked up and in turn when you walk around you feel like everybody has the same political opinion as you - and then you get scared because you are voting along the same line as the hoards of 20 something ’students and artists’ who are so easily mocked on the street and in public. Really. I agree with them. That’s how boring this election cycle has gotten.

I’m holding off on going into a partisan rant, mostly because I don’t have the energy or care enough this time around, but I will say that I forced myself to endure a 20 minute speech on Cspan from a John McCain rally in Colorado the other day, and although I am not voting for him, it was the first time I saw him actually get energized and excited in front of a home crowd-almost spiritual. He looked so good I almost thought he was in his 60’s, and the angry white audience surrounding him kept fueling the fire with the played out Yes we can’s! and U-S-A’S! Doesn’t anyone work? Who has time to go to these rally’s anymore and get excited when things are so crappy economically? And why do the presidents even want this job now that it will mostly involve digging out of crater left by W? If I was Hillary right now I might just be smiling and saying under my breath something along the lines of “you can have that this time around. I’m going to wait another 4-8 years for the bleeding to stop and swelling to go down before I try again.” End of Rant.

These pictures are almost too lame to post but since I have been slacking on this blog lately (although not as bad as K) I thought I would post them anyway. A couple of the pics are of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center over here in NYC. This place is enormous, way over on the west side, and really there is nothing special about it. I have been to a few shows here and snapped these pics while they were breaking down a show that had just ended in the main convention hall. I wish I could say there was more value to them but really there isn’t.

The other pic is just looking down a block somewhere in NYC on my walk from the Javits Center back to the apartment - which was longer than I thought and killed my feet.

No real updates from over here in NYC. It’s fall, the air is chilly, I am trying to figure out where my winter stuff is but usually come home from work burned out and not in the mood to do much - which sadly results in watching some TV and eating dinner with K. I will say however that lately K’s dad came out to visit and for a few days we lived quite high on the hog. That’s it for this post, time to work.

  In honor of the final debates (which we actually stayed up late enough to watch in their entirety) I thought I would post pics of the Red, White, & Blue Meal that K prepared in order to truly represent the spirit of our great nation (at least before Bush). We just thought it would be really funny to eat red, white & blue & K took it from there and ran with it. We actually had this meal during the Vice Presidential debates, but I am just getting around to posting them now and last night reminded me. K made some USA themed placemats from some felt we found out back, red white and blue gnocchi, and a red white and blue rice pudding desert all washed down by one of America’s blue collar beverage of choice - the Coor’s Light 40oz.  Our friend brought over some Palin Bingo to play along on the TV and the rest is pretty much history. True Patriots eat their nationalism dammit! (and I speak from experience that it all ends up one color in the morning!)Last night we watched the final Obama/McCain debate prefaced by an hour of Fox News, which we now receive for some reason on the cable we don’t pay for. I have to say, that is just about the most I have ever watched of Fox News and it was disturbing to see them paint a picture of ‘fair and balanced’ broadcasting and then hammer the right wing agenda. I guess I don’t really need to expand on their bias, because there are pretty much people who realize that Fox News is a joke, and the others who think it’s objective (most of these ‘others’ still think Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and have been seen chanting ‘USA’ very loudly in public places). There’s no sense trying to convince people who believe in Fox News how slanted it is, so don’t even waste your time. And it seems funny that the one thing they all have in common is white, conservative, republican values (sounds fair and balanced right?)Our opinions of the debate were that McCain blinked too much and looked physically a little weird, but generally there was nothing new to see and no big bombs that got dropped. Obviously our nation is no longer the global leader we once were and I couldn’t help thinking what a person in India or Asia watching the broadcast must have thought about the once feared USA. And if you are over there reading this post, can I please borrow a trillion dollars to help bandaid our economy - you know we’re good for it right….? I got these awesome ‘credit default swaps’ I can give you as collateral.

It was a beautiful sunny morning here in NYC and it is great to get some nice days before fall totally sets in. After staying up and having some beers with W, I woke up with an overwhelming urge for bacon. bacon hypnosis you might call it. After walking over to the key foods to get some I had an entirely high fat bacon, eggs, and toast breakfast and decided to go out for a walk since it was so nice.

Since I always walk north on my way to work, this time I decided to walk south and check out some different scenery. I ended up more or less wandering through chinatown towards the final district and just enjoying the weather and the relatively empty saturday morning streets. I also decided to go out today with headphones and the ipod, which is something I never do. It’s was interesting how music would influence my impressions on the buildings and space around me.

I also ended up walking around the world trade center and peeking in on the progress they are making. I wasn’t in new york before 911 but it amazes me the giant gap where they used to be and it does kind of stick out around all the other buildings. From here I went a little further south and then back up and back via Canal St. Fortunately the headphones prevented too many street vendors offering me handbags!

Here are a few more random building pics I took on the walk. And yes, for some reason I still have a lame building pic addiction.

I have a great excuse (for once) for not being able to post recently - we have no internet at the apartment. Our internet has been down roughly for the last week and has seriously cramped my style on a number of fronts. The repair person is coming tomorrow to see what the problem is and hopefully we should be back online by wednesday evening.

I have really grown to realize how dependant I am on a  reliable internet connection (K calls it addiction but I call it necessary tool), and without it I have been at a loss. We did have one good day reading magazines and going out,  but there is a ton of things I always seem to need to do that require being online (like post more lame building photos for everybody!). I guess in a way it is good to unplug for a little bit, but my fantasy football team definitely suffered and fortunaetly I don’t check my email too often anyways. Sadly I even resorted to reading the NY Times on K’s new iPhone over a cellular network - I am that pathetic.

So that’s my excuse but the good news is that I have some building pics from over on the west side as yesterday and Today I am at the Javits Center taking in parts of a conference. Be back soon!

One of the things I really like about living on the East Coast after so many years in Coastal California is how drastic the changing of the seasons is. I won’t go so far as to say that I am a big fan of the cold or snow (at least in the urban landscape), but it amazes me how fast each season turns over here. Right now, Fall is definitely here.

It almost seems like overnight the weather just decided that it was ready to transition towards winter, and brought on fall. The humidity has gotten a lot more tolerable and there is that cool chill in the air that whispers in my ear to figure out where I crammed those jackets and sweatshirts because pretty soon they are going to be mandatory.

In recognition of this I thought I would put together a few photos from the Union Square Farmers Market as kind of farewell to summer photo post. I am sure I have posted this before, and for anyone who reads this blog regularly - let me just say that it is a good thing NYC is so big because I have this real problem with only posted pictures that are taken between the east village and chelsea because that is my regular walk to work route. I also have an enormous 32MB memory stick in my AA battery powered camera so I am limited to about 8 pictures per walk, which strangely seems to work out well in terms of blog posting as well. I promise I will try to stray from my normal manhattan walking zone and that should be easy over the next week as I have plans to go to both Brooklyn (friends bday) and Long Island (work) so that should mix it up a little.

These pics are all from the Union Square Farmers Market in NYC and has tons of local organic produce from farms upstate and in Jersey (Yes we grow produce over here too and don’t just import it all from the Salinas Valley!)

Lately we’ve been relatively broke (read: since coming back from Central America) and because of this have been doing a lot of cooking at home. What I really mean by that is that K has been doing a lot of cooking and I have been reaping the tasty and healthy rewards. I might add that I am one hell of a dishwasher however and when you take into consideration our kitchen is only about 12 square feet (no joke - I am counting our laminate floor tiles from here to calculate and 12 is slightly generous), you can imagine cooking is not easy.

All this brings me to our decision last night to order Chineses food. We haven’t ordered a lot lately, K just got back from a long trip, and we decided to go for it. Keep in mind that choosing chinese from the unlimited other options we have is a little bit of a stretch, but we decided to choose a new place and go for it. (Side note - Only in NYC can a menu have 2 phone numbers and no address). Unfortunately for us this decision was a roll of the dice that turned up snakeyes! I feel it my duty to proclaim the unsurprising fact that bad chinese food still exists in NYC!

Of course if we had expected good Chinese we would have gone out but sometimes you have to try something new and see what happens. Calling this food ‘average’ would be too kind, and all of the food we ordered - with the exception of general tsao’s chicken - pretty much sucked. Seriosly - how can a Chinese place in New York City screw up hot and sour soup and vegetable chow mein? These aren’t to the most complex dishes out there and the competition here is fierce. They shouldn’t even be in business. Even W proclaimed she didn’t know what the vegetable chow mein was until we told her, and then it ‘made sense’. When we asked why she said it reminded her of some canned chow mein she had once in the past and this somewhat resembled it. How bad is that - Worse than chow mein in a can! In any case the place is in a yet to be determined location in the deliver zone of the east village and is called Meee. The menu is nice, the food is not.