whitney biennial

i was disappointed with the whitney biennial. before moving to new york, i had always felt i was missing it by not living in the city. maybe i had built up too high of an expectation.

the pieces were uninspiring. nothing held my attention for more than 5 seconds. the art felt lazy; there seemed to be this attitude that technique was unnecessary. that argument would be fine except that the pieces felt lazy conceptually too. the ideas gave the impression that they were not throughly thought out and/or executed.

i would've been more humble about my opinion had r not confirmed them. he's an artist, and he felt let down by the show too. also, we visit museums quite a bit, particularly art museums. in fact, our first date took us to the whitney. at the time, they had a great show on 70s psychedelic art, like music posters, elaborate drawings on sheets of acid, photographs of the era.

i was ready to buy a membership just to cut the line, but there was barely a line. considering it was the last weekend of the show, i should've realized that it was a sign.

byog

on our walk from the train station to r's apt last night, we walked past two girls and overheard the words, "bring your own gun." i didn't catch anything else they said so this might be totally taken out of context. still, i can't think of anything it could mean other than a new party theme i haven't heard of until now. it's not the type of party i should attend anyway. i'm pretty clumsy.

gotta have that smoke

last friday night, i was waiting under the virgin music building in union square to meet r for dinner. being a popular meeting place, there were quite a few people that came in and out of that area. it was also raining so the number of meeting places that provided shelter became more limited.

the people who stopped by were in their late teens, 20s, early 30s. then, a guy showed up, a bit older than the normal crowd. he set his bag on the ground and picked up a cigarette butt. to my horror, he proceeded to put it to his lips and attempted to pull a drag from it. he appeared unsuccessful on the first try so he looked for other butts.

he didn't have a light on him or asked anyone for it, pretty much keeping to himself. he seemed as if he was trying to suck just something, anything, out of them. i'd say a rainy night would prove to be a disadvantage to his feat. but maybe i had mistaken what he was looking for, maybe not a smoke but just something to do while waiting for the rain to subside.

fat ass and little pricks

on my way home last night, i took a seat on a bench for two on the subway. since it was fairly empty when i got on, i sat with my bag taking up the seat next to me and put my nose to a magazine. more people boarded during the next couple of stops, and one woman sat down next to me. her friend blocked me in by taking the seat in front of me.

i moved my bag, just standing it upright between the woman and myself. she started to shove herself against my bag to the point that i became concerned that she cracked my laptop in the bag. after a minute, she said, "sweetheart, can you move your bag, like put it on the floor? it's bothering me." immediately, i noticed the stench of her cheap perfume. (i HATE perfume. you only need to wear perfume if you have major BO issues.) also, my petite stature does not give anyone the license to call me sweetheart in that tone.

to keep her from further annoying me, i just moved the bag onto my lap. it was annoying because there were other empty seats on the train that she could've taken. if she was uncomfortable, she could take another seat. with my irritation growing as her fat ass pushed me up against the wall, i finally just stood up to climb over her and her friend to take another seat, even while the train was still moving.

then, she had the audacity to tell me to have a nice day. really? can't people just keep their mouth shut? also, it's the end of the day already. the sun had set. my day had been nice, but her fat ass and loud mouth just squashed my evening.

even after i switched trains, i couldn't focus on my magazine. my mind kept coming up with things i should've said and/or done to her: call her "fat ass," reply with "i had a nice day until you showed up," moo her, stand next to her for the rest of my ride on that train and hover. i was so deep in thought that i missed my stop. at least i realized just one stop later.

i got off the train and proceeded my trek back to my apartment. along the way, i passed a group of high school boys, hanging outside a building. they saw me, a little asian girl, and started harassing me. it's the same game: they start off saying, "hi," just to get your attention. if you don't respond, they'll start calling you names. i got "ugly" and "no ass." (asian girls generally don't have wide hips.)

i passed them in silence, being totally outnumbered, but was, once again, thinking of things i should've said and/or done to them: wave my little finger, make a sympathetic face and say "aww, i remember how it was, boys your age, with your undeveloped little pricks, longing for your first taste of pussy," yelled back "at least i'm running home to get laid."

i made it home fine the rest of the way. i'm just glad tonight's trip home was uneventful, which is exactly how i like it.

a miraculous restroom visit

last night, we went to dinner at ippudo, a fairly new japanese noodle place that's the rave-of-the-moment. i admit, it was delicious. the broth was heavy in flavor, and the ramen was of a good texture. we didn't get the umph or blow to the face we felt the first time we tried ramen setagaya, however, which has become one of our favorite spots. (we're actually going there tonight, for their monday special of ramen and gyoza for $12. it's pretty affordable by ny standards.)

the most impressive thing about the place though really had nothing to do with the restaurant itself, i guess. maybe it had more to do with the situation? i don't know. on our way out, we stopped by the restroom. as i landed on the basement level where we were directed, i saw a line for the men's room. r was the last in line with 2 guys ahead of him. instinctively, i looked for a line for the women's room and was confused when i didn't see one. i thought, maybe this is a unisex restroom with a single stall. but then, i noticed the picture on the door where the guys were waiting. it depicted the head of a man. so i walked past the guys to find another door with a picture depicting a woman's head. i gasped: there was a separate women's restroom! and there was a line to the men's room but not one for the women's room! how often does that happen at a typical public place?

i turned the knob, expecting it to be locked. to my surprise, though, it opened with ease. i was simply in disbelief and couldn't help but feel giddy as i stepped in, flashing the guys, still in line, a grin before i shut the door.

boston

r and i visited boston last weekend. it was sort of a weird visit because we stayed with his friend who lives about an hour outside of the city so we weren't actually in boston. but we actually hit boston itself first on friday, to kill time waiting for his friend to arrive at his home. we went straight to the institute of contemporary art. they were in between major exhibitions so we ended up paying full admission to see just half of the museum. what they had was cool, but we felt a little gypped.

afterwards, we headed to the barking crab restaurant for a late lunch. it was within walking distance from the museum, and boston is a seafood city. we were totally disappointed, however. again, we felt gypped having ordered the crab cake appetizer. it was $12 for 3 tiny little medallions of mostly breading. we had excellent crabcakes not long ago at jacques imo's in new orleans where we could see large chunks of crab meat. then, our entrees came. i don't mind the paper plates and the whole picnic feel to the restaurant even though they were certainly not charging picnic prices for their food. the food was not that impressive though, especially for what we were paying for. overall, i would recommend avoiding this place.

we headed to r's friend's house that evening. we just took it easy, after a long drive for r, and had dinner and saw iron man. the movie was good. nothing mind blowing, but it was fun.

the oddest thing i encountered was actually the pets. i know someone who has 4 cats which, to me, is quite a handful, having grown up pretty much without pets. but r's friend has a dozen animals: 6 dogs and 6-7 cats. it was a little overwhelming for me, but i love seeing r around dogs. he has a great fondness for them and loses all inhibitions to doggy-talk to them.

since r has never been to boston before, he wanted to some of the more touristy things. he's very interested in history and wanted to do the freedom trail. unfortunately, saturday was a dismal day, and his friend suggested that we visit the museum of fine arts instead, an indoors activity. we were totally fine since we love art. we hit this museum at a good time. i LOVED the british printmaking exhibition: rhythms of modern life, british prints 1914-1939. using simple lines and forms and no more than 3 colors at a time, the artists were able to convey so much. the pieces held so much energy.

r was absolutely inspired by the antonio lopez garcia exhibit. his work is so meticulous that, upon first seeing them, i thought they were photographs, when in fact, they were paintings. r is fascinated with space, being a set designer, and loved the way lopez garcia captured an empty apartment in his paintings. i could tell he was itching to start a painting of his own.

afterwards, r's friend took us to a bar, then dinner, and another bar where one of his friends is playing in a band. when we first arrived at the bar, we had walked into "nerd night." it was nerdy people giving power points to share their extensive knowledge. r's friend's friend started heckling the presenters. immediately, i thought to myself, r's friends were the people i and my friends were escaping when we chose to apply for ncssm. i couldn't take sides. luckily, the band finally started to perform.

the next day, r and i headed into boston on our own. i wanted to visit my friends, p & d, and meet their baby girl. n is so precious. they let me hold her for a little while. apparently, d was taking pictures of everyone and anyone who holds the baby. we caught for a bit and then they walked us to a shopping center where r and i grabbed some korean food for lunch. p & d took the baby back to the their house, and r and i decided to roam the city. we were finally on our own.

we left r's truck at p & d's house and walked to the T station nearby. r wanted to compare the T to NY's metro. we got off near charles street and walked to boston commons. luckily, the weather finally cleared up. it was cloudy but not wet. so we embarked on the freedom trail, going all the way into the italian district in the north end. r really wanted to see paul revere's house, which we did. unfortunately, it was already closed by the time we made it there. but we got some italian pastry before we headed back to get the truck. that afternoon was my favorite part of the trip.

r noticed that boston is so much cleaner than new york. i couldn't agree more. maybe we were just in the nicer parts of town, but i never thought to look for feces on the sidewalk as i ALWAYS do in new york. we definitely want to go back again, but we might do it a little differently this time, like staying IN boston and putting up with ONE baby instead of a DOZEN animals.

baltimore is next on my list of places to visit with r. it will probably have to wait until june. stay tuned.

lost underground

a woman approached me at the dekalb station in brooklyn yesterday. i'd probably put her in her 50s, just a little younger than my mother. she must've been banking on the fact that i could speak cantonese. she lucked out. she asked me if this was where she would catch the N train. i told her the N train actually doesn't stop at this station. she would need to take the R train to the next station to connect to the N train. she said that she had seen several R trains go by, that she had been waiting at this station for over an hour, basically waiting for something that would never arrive.

immediately, i thought, this is a situation i could totally see my mother getting into if she were left to travel in the city by herself. i told her that i was waiting for the R train anyway, going in the same direction as she needed to go. she said she'd stick with me. i nodded okay.

she noticed that i was reading something and asked if i was studying. i told her i was just reading a magazine. just to make sure i wasn't pointing her in the wrong direction, i asked if she was heading into brooklyn or manhattan. she said brooklyn and then what i heard as "b-broadway." afterwards, i realized she was saying "bay parkway" which was in brooklyn, actually near the end of the N line. but at the time, i just assumed that there must be some other broadway in brooklyn, which is often the case that boroughs shared street names.

after a longer wait than normal, the R train finally arrived. she boarded with me and took a seat by the door. with the only other seat available blocked by shopping bags, i stood, holding onto a pole. i asked her if she was on her way to visit someone. she said she was actually on her way to have her portrait taken. only then did i realize she was dressed in relatively bright colors, including lots of red, typical of the chinese.

soon, we arrived at the station where she needed to transfer to the N train. i told her it would be really easy to transfer, just to wait on the other side of the platform. she had shown no sense of fear, to my surprise, even though she was basically lost in a giant labyrinth beneath a thundering metropolis. still, i emphasized that the transfer and the rest of her journey should be easy, to give her confidence. before she got off the train, she thanked me, patted my cheek, and squeezed my hand. i wanted to tell her to take care but couldn't even mutter it. i almost wanted to accompany her the rest of her way.

even after i arrived home, i couldn't help but wonder if that woman made it to her destination okay. how much english can she read? would she be able to tell which station she needs to get off? obviously, she knew her alphabet, but i imagine that her english level isn't far from my mother's. i thought it brave of her to travel alone, but at the same time, i felt slightly frustrated that no one accompanied her. i just can't imagine myself letting my mother go on the ny metro alone. but at some point, i guess we all must let go a bit, as parent or child, of each other because, at the end, we all will turn out okay, in one way or another.

back in nyc

whew. we made it back to nyc friday night, and it's so good to be back. we're not thrilled with the dreary weather yesterday and today, but at least saturday was pretty good to us. we had ethiopian for dinner last night at awash. it was a treat.

we just walked around the city a bit on saturday and stumbled upon a street fair. walking around is the thing i missed the most about new york. not necessarily people watching or feeling the energy of the city. it's just being able to walk around and maybe finding something of interest.

i have to admit, i do miss surrey's and blue bird cafe in nola. they were great breakfast places. we did benny's burritos for brunch on saturday, and it was really good. it's probably our newly found favorite breakfast place. cheap, easy, simple, delicious. we had dimsum for brunch yesterday. i need to make a trip to the bagel factory in south park slope, brooklyn by the week's end. i probably would put that at the top of my ny breakfast place.

two doves just landed on the branches in my view. i will take that as a welcome home.

fuel efficiency

seeing this article today, being earth day, reminded me how furious i was, and still am, when i first heard about this possible legislation: federal regulators are expected to unveil on tuesday an accelerated schedule for auto companies to work toward a fuel-efficiency goal of 35 miles a gallon by 2020 for their vehicle fleets.

seriously, this is all we can accomplish in the next 12 years? why even bother? let's just keep raping this planet for all we can. why bother making any effort to reel back what we've collectively done as a species? this is a futile piece of regulation. we should ALREADY be at this level of fuel-efficiency. 12 years later, all vehicles should be at the level of what the hybrids are offering now. 12 years later, a fuel-efficiency goal of 50 miles a gallon is acceptable, not really that progressive, but it's still realistic to obtain. why bother making a regulation when it's meaningless? it's like implementing a blood alcohol content level at the point of alcohol poisoning for a dui.

any progress we make is good, but is this the best we can do?

orlando, fl

r and i traveled to orlando this weekend for one of his friend's wedding. the only other time that i've been there was when i was little with disneyland as the destination. we didn't see much of anything other than what was on mickey's campus. this time, even though our time was consumed with the wedding and hanging out with r's friends, i saw a bit of the city.

orlando feels so clean. maybe that characteristic stands out especially because of having been in nola for the past few months, and the griminess is one of my biggest complaints here. i don't remember encountering any potholes in orlando whereas we'd come across 3 of them on average a day in nola. the amount of development, mostly strip malls with large plots of asphalt for parking lots, was a little sad and very scary. the amount of vegetation that has cleared since r's childhood was astounding to him. unfortunately, it's the way all new cities are headed with commerce as the target and any environmental concerns falling to the wayside.

before the wedding, we made a trip out to the edges of orlando to visit r's mom and grandparents. they are the nicest folks. he spent part of his youth on the ranch with lots of dogs and horses, unlike me having grown up in urban/suburban areas. his mom keeps 4 border collies, 3 horses, 2 birds, and a greenhouse. horses are such large creatures in person. i didn't know they grow a winter fur and then shed it when the season changes. it was so refreshing to be in the country, knowing the air i was breathing was clean, and to see so many shades of green instead of grey.

the wedding was nice, and we had fun, especially r. it was also a reunion for him and his high school buddies. i learned a few things about his past that i cherish and find adorable. his friends are great people. being boys, the groom requested a mosh pit at the end of the night to recapture their youth. it was weird seeing r in the pile of guys shoving each other around. and then, it was kind of pathetic that they couldn't last for one entire song. it was cute while it lasted.

on our way to the airport the next day, r drove by his house situated in a part of town called colonial town. it's actually populated by a sizable vietnamese community with storefronts bearing vietnamese writing on their signs. we stopped by viet garden restaurant to grab lunch to go. the food deserved all the rave that r had given it. the peanut sauce was powerful. i licked the little cup that held it clean.

it was a great trip, and i wish we were able to stay longer, especially for r to have more time to hang out with his buddies and family. it'll have to wait until next time. nyc is next on our travel agenda, heading back to home. we're counting down the days.

abita springs

r and i have only one more week of work in new orleans, and then, we'll be back in nyc. r has a calendar by his desk where he's already started marking off the days with a red pen.

of course, this weekend, when we thought we were getting a reprieve from the big easy and heading for orlando, r's friend invited us to a crawfish boil, which we're going to have to miss.

his friend lives in abita springs, which is a really cute small town just across from lake pontchartrain. we drove there last sunday. r took me to the ucm museum that was full of wacky things that the people in town seemed to have found in their basements and attics and contributed to the place. there's apparently some mythical alligator-bass that's the equivalent of the lochness monster. we called his friend to see if they were home. they were but weren't near the phone so we, unfortunately, didn't get to visit them. r's friend is a signwriter on movies and had made a lot of the signs that we saw around town. his house is full of crazy signs that he's made in his career. it would've been fun to see his collection.

on our way out, we got sno-balls. not that i've had a hawaiian shaved ice before, but i imagine that it's similar. it's basically just shaved ice with syrup. i can see how much of a treat it will be when the summer hits this place. i won't be here to find out, however. i'm just going to be stuck with sorbets in new york. oh well.

ice-cream truck at work

there's an ice-cream truck that's been pulling up to our office recently. i guess it's out and about with the weather warming up in new orleans.

the music drives me NUTS! it's like a repeating 15-second long piece of carnival music, and it begins with "hello" at every rotation. it's not as if we're at a location surrounded by residences. we're in a business district, mostly warehouses. there are no children around. they're probably enticing the working adults which is fine, but HELLO! TURN OFF THAT MUSIC!

mobile, alabama

i went on a trip to mobile, alabama today. the project i'm working on involves a car race. the company has decided to use the mobile international speedway as the location, and i joined the group of coworkers to check it out. this is the first time i've stepped foot in the deep south. (in my head, the DEEP south consists of mississippi, alabama, and georgia. louisiana has creole and cajun influences that distinguishes it, and south carolina is geographically not as south.)

granted, we were only there for a few hours to check out the speedway and then had lunch at a local joint in mississippi so i know i'm not giving the deep south a fair chance. but i still had a feeling that i wouldn't see much diversity in the population today. i was right. people i met and saw were either white or black. everyone was nice, but i felt like an alien.

i've lived in lexington, ky, but there's a tight-knit chinese community. being a marine town, jacksonville, nc is really diverse (especially the female population). then, there was durham and chapel hill which are college towns. los angeles and new york which are metropolises. the only other time i felt so out of place was stopping for gas in kansas. come to think of it, at least the people i met today were really nice. the people at the kansas gas station stared with no reservations.

it's just odd to still run into places in the 21st century where i feel out of place on a racial level. i guess america will always be america.

couldn't hold it any longer

i stopped by walgreens the other night. it was around 7p. on my way out, i walked past this guy by the wall just a few feet from the front door of the pharmacy. i noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a stream of liquid shooting from his hip area. it took me another second to realize that he was urinating on the wall of the building. just feet away from the front door. in front of a row of cars.

i picked up my pace to the car, and told r about what i had just witnessed. he, then, made a valid point: even in nyc, people have the decency to avoid urinating in public (that's not a restroom) where other people are around. they, at least, make the effort to be discreet about it.

maybe this guy just HAD to go. when i was little, my parents would pull over on the side of a highway to let us relieve ourselves in cases of emergency. so i admit to having urinated in public. but my mom would stand close by and shield me. also, i was a child. this was a grown man. what is this world coming to?

easter

amazingly, we managed to miss the easter parade(s) this weekend. we weren't exactly avoiding them actively although we definitely preferred not to run into any of them. i'm tired of beads. really, how many strings of them does one need?

we were glad for the 3-day weekend but had trouble figuring what to do with the time. we're getting to the point where we feel like we're just whittling time away, and we hate it. even though we look forward to the weekends, the only thing great about them is that we don't have to go to work, not that we have any actual event to look forward to.

i keep trying to think, what we would be doing in nyc instead of nola? would we actually have plans? or would we be whittling time away just like this? then, r made a good point: at least in nyc, we would head into manhattan and something WOULD actually happen. like either we just walk around union square and find a cool store, which is what happened when we traveled back on president's day weekend. or we would walk past a theatre and see a cool movie that would interest us. or we would go to some part of town where we're not familiar with and check it out.

i know a lot of people live in new orleans and love it here, but i guess it's just not the place for me. or it's just that we feel stuck here because we came for work. the best thing about nola is the vietnamese food. this is one thing that nyc is missing. we go to the vietnamese restaurant down the street from the office EVERY day, and i'm yet to be tired of it. we branched out this weekend and went to a different vietnamese restaurant that was just as scrumptious. there you go, one thing i'm not tired of yet. the saving grace of this place. although it's not enough to bring me back after i leave here. no wonder people drink so much here.

country or no country

we were walking back to our apartment after spending the afternoon on magazine street, avoiding getting lobbed in the head with cabbages, carrots, onions, potatoes, and more beads from the st patrick's day parade. when we were passing through this new development that resembled the scary suburbs with the same 5 floor plans and 5 paint colors for houses, i overheard this young girl, in her late teens, telling one of her elders that she "ain't country." realizing the irony, they broke into stomach-aching laughter as soon as her sentence ended.

dreadful walmart

i know it sounds elitist to say that i hate walmart. i think they're a horrible company and have warped the way business is conducted. i went there today, out of convenience, and this experience is why i avoid it whenever possible.

where we're staying in new orleans, there's a walmart just down the street, probably within walking distance. i have a sinus infection, and after filling my prescription elsewhere, i figured i'd stop at this walmart, which is on my way back to the apt, to pick up some lemons and honey. i also grabbed some chayote squash, and sure enough, they rang up too expensive than what was posted. it took FOREVER for them to send someone to do a price check, and it wasn't even a busy time of the day. the cashier bagged my stuff using 3 bags when she only needed one. they don't hire or encourage their employees to think. it's so sad because human resource is valuable. people are capable so treat them like they are!

nola breakfast/brunch favorites

my favorite meal to go out for is breakfast. if you have time to go out for breakfast, the rest of your day can probably be spent pretty leisurely. i'm not including picking up a pastry or bagel at a coffee shop. i'm talking about sitting down to enjoy breakfast as a meal, one that is often overlooked compared to lunch and dinner. i always try to go out on the weekends, and since we've been in new orleans, we've kept going back to two places.

because surrey's juice bar is within walking distance from where we're staying, we've been going there every weekend. depending on when we get there, we're usually able to get a table pretty quickly. the food is delicious, not as non-dairy conscious as i would love, but their menu is still focused on healthy food that supports the local community and tastiness. their specialty, as the name of the restaurant suggests, are juices, freshly prepared and usually organic. one i have a hard time passing up is the orange-pineapple-mango juice, served with a slice of lime. i can't say yet what my favorite dish is on their breakfast menu. my mood takes me in different directions. i can attest that everything i've tried has been excellent. i intend on trying everything on the menu before we leave the city.

the alternative is the bluebird cafe. because it's a little farther from where we are, we haven't gone there as often. a friend introduced me to it on my first saturday in nola. they offer a more traditional american breakfast menu, delicious but not necessarily as health-oriented as surrey's. i finally tried their yellow grits last sunday which was delicious. they throw in cornmeal which turns it yellow. i think i will have to include their grits as part of my breakfast from now on when we go there.

we've also tried slim goodies. the food is good but nothing extraordinary, and the place felt kind of unclean. we also tried tomatillos for a mexican breakfast which was good. but i definitely have to say surrey's and bluebird cafe are my favs.

ny food warmed my soul

we traveled back to new york this past weekend since president’s day gave us an extra day of leisure. food in new orleans has been great, but we missed our favorite spots in new york.

our first stop was awash, an ethiopian restaurant, on 6th street between 1st and 2nd avenue. we haven’t searched for ethiopian food in new orleans, but we’re pretty sure even if it exists, it’s extremely rare. and who know if it would be reliably delicious like awash? we were reminded how ass-kicking great berbere sauce tastes, which reminds me that i need to search for a recipe for it.

that evening, we had ramen at ramen setagaya. what joy to sit down to a steaming bowl of supreme ingredients, especially having been re-exposed all day to the new york winter. it was the perfect way to end the day.

we met my family for dimsum the next morning and were in for a treat. the celebration for chinese new year was still in order. lion dancers paraded into the restaurant while drummers added to the festive atmosphere. it was r’s introduction to dimsum, something i grew up with. i was relieved he loved it because i plan on having dimsum again.

after we saw persepolis, which is an amazing movie with incredible animation and a heartfelt storyline, we succumbed to indian food at brick lane, back on the same block as awash. ironically, it was our first time dining in the restaurant. we had had numerous take-out meals when r used to live on that block and voted it as the best indian restaurant on the block of about 20 other indian food establishments.

on our last day in the city, we had brunch at a new place, patisse. it was actually a little overpriced for breakfast for food that wasn’t particularly special. it wasn’t bad, just not worth what they charged.

we spent so much of the weekend just walking, sometimes we both miss dearly, for the intimacy with a city and the exercise. so it was a total bummer that we were stuck at jfk for over 3 hours because our flight was delayed, 3 more hours we could’ve spent IN the city. and 3 more hours we could’ve spent with my sister, whom i’m finding that i miss a lot. it gave us time, however, to enjoy a meal at deep blue sushi. finally, we boarded our flight and made it back to new orleans, another city of great food.

more will come about nola food.

mind in overdrive

work has finally caught up, and for the past couple of weeks, i've been swamped. we survived mardi gras. the shaybridge fotel finally let us move to another room where we don't have to open the curtains only to look out at the air conditioning unit for the entire building. for this coming president's day weekend, we're heading back to nyc. it'll be nice to be back "home" but the cold, the cold! it's so much warmer here.

have to get back to work, but a quick note on breakfast/brunch places - surrey's juice bar and bluebird cafe are the best. clean, healthy, nurturing food and atmosphere. slim goodies was okay. it gave me the impression of being a little dirty, and the food was not as good. more soon...