The downside of first class:

The downside of first class: a toddler in front, a snorer behind, an asshat to the left.

But an upgrade means i get "free" fruit for breakfast. Yum!

Ithaca is Gorges

some images of my last few days...

about 2% of what I did for two days: teaching people how to parse statutes. 

Moosewood Restaurant: I could never forgive myself if I didn't go there. And it was WOW: deeply unimpressive! I mean, everything was fine, edible, bordering on tasty. But nothing, nothing stood out. Clockwise from left:

• the salad had a somewhat tasty lemon tahini dressing, but the composition of green lettuce, carrots, shredded carrots, and a few (hidden) plum tomatoes. 
• the wheat bread was thickly sliced, but very basic, very uninteresting, and the olive oil I asked for was way too little (though the server gladly brought out the pourer and left it when I asked for more olive oil.) 
• the Caribbean black bean soup was bland and boring. It needed salt, more vegetables, more depth, some acid, and something besides black beans and boring fine chopped veggies. 

Yes, I know: I got the $8 daily special, which is a good buy. But the two vegan-available nightly specials were lame, full of boring vegetables, no meaningful vegan protein, and at $15, I didn't care to risk either.

Fun graffiti and official signage in downtown Ithaca. 

Solid food at Viva Taqueria, a tofu mole burrito, chips, and the house-made hot sauces. At $6.98 total, the best buy of the weekend. Except all of the food other people bought. But still perhaps the tastiest.

Sitting in the tiny cute Ithaca airport now, waiting to fly back to DTW, then ATL.

A few down days, then J and I go to Arizona for vacation. Whee!

sdnbfsdbn

sadghdsf

More food porn

Based on the earlier mise en place post, broccoli, tofu, red jalapenos, ginger, garlic.

It smells AMAZING. we'll see how much is left for wraps tomorrow.

Mise en place

For tomorrow's wraps, for flying to Ithaca. Red jalapenos, broccoli, ginger, tomato, garlic, beer!

Food porn, also NOW.

Yeah. Baby potatoes, roasted toaster oven style, with olive oil and salt. Yum!

Food porn

Pre-grilling. Yum.

Charlie Brown Xmas Tree, take 2

The other one was crapping out, and the pickings on the ground were solid when J and i were at Whole Paycheck earlier. 

It only fell out of my bike grocery bag panniers once on the ride home.

Happy Charlie Brown Alcoholic Christmas!

Take note: that's 151, yo.

Thanks to the scraps laying around from the free range vegetarian feed humanely killed xmas trees at Whole Paycheck!

Berkeley!

Triple Rock: hot sauce and beer for second lunch!

Vegan hotel lounge complimentary

Napa style. Livin' large!

Happy hour at the San Juan airport

$4 caipirinhas make up for crappy overpriced sandwiches.

Vegan San Juan, Puerto Rico airport

Yep: eating Subway for the second time in 16 hours. Puerto Rico is tough for vegans.

Fortunately it's also fucking gorgeous.

Lies the City of a Hundred Hills

This references an earlier post, with a point I might already have made, but: waking through the Atlanta airport underground walkway this morning, i again saw one of my favorite quotes. unfortunately omitting (at the ellipsis) "City of a hundred hills"

Huh. Go figure.

Okay, fine, it's not actually a surprise.

I'd love to see George Bush Sr. take this, since he'd almost certainly end up more liberal than Obama. Or Reagan, or Ford, or Nixon, or Eisenhower, or... okay, you get my point, right?

Wednesday morning, must be Sacramento

Finally got all of the doors replace closet doors in in the door project from hell.

A Halloween flight now back to ATL, then headed to Puerto Rico tomorrow. Big times!

Vegan Caribbean inn Atlanta!

At Healthful Essence.

Delicious!

When you fence the people off from their

rivers. What have you got?

Rio Grande, near Albuquerque

I've been traveling so damn much that I haven't had much time to blog. But I ALWAYS have time to please my audience with FOOD PORN! (And some random shit.)

Random stuff at home in Atlanta.

Garlic in Atlanta. 

You've seen this one!

Same car, same place, different dinner service. 

Green Sprout, in Atlanta. It was fantastic! 

Got garlic? Yum. 

A hard lockdown. 

Greens and okra and ONIONS in Atlanta!

A good cause. For reals!

Ok, so, look: I didn't hit y'all up this year for donations to a charity bike ride. (I was actually entirely too busy to do one of these great rides, which is pretty sad.)

Good friends who operate a really fantastic nonprofit in Alderson, West Virginia, have a fundraising call out. The Alderson Hospitality House is asking for the very small donation of $10. (Well, lots of those, hopefully.)

The Alderson Hospitality House is so warm, so full of kindness and beauty and hope, that it's hard to express in words. I've had the extraordinary opportunity to visit a few times.

I have already donated the full $100, and encourage any of you who can to consider donating any amount that makes sense for you. If you can, match me! If you can't, please give whatever you can.

The Alderson Hospitality House provides hospitality to the families of women incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp at Alderson:

The Alderson Hospitality House supports the women of the Federal Prison Camp Alderson and their friends and families. We believe in the importance of visitors during incarceration. Our volunteers and staff, through donations, demonstrate this belief by providing temporary lodging, meals, transportation assistance, information and support.
Since AHH opened in 1977, there have been more than 50,000 overnight guests from all over the world.  We do not charge for our services, but rely only on the generosity of our guests and friends of the house for operating funds.  We are not part of, nor do we receive any assistance from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, any church or religious organization, any government entity or any corporation.  Our staff, who live and work at AHH, and Board of Directors, who are local community leaders, are all volunteers.

Below is the fundraising pitch for this. As though any more than going through the website is needed. (Really: please go through their website.)

The Alderson Hospitality House needs your help to continue offering free housing and meals to our guests. 

Some of the most important visitors to the House are the children of the women incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp. They come in all ages, all colors, and most importantly, they all miss their mothers. The children travel from all over the country to spend just a few short hours with mom in the visiting room. Our job at the Hospitality House is to make these children feel as comfortable as possible. A beautiful playroom with lots of toys, home-cooked meals, and a listening ear are just a few of the ways we accomplish this goal. After an emotional day of behaving in the visiting room, it is important to let the children play and get their energy out. Our house is here for them during this difficult time.

I need your help to keep the doors open for these children and their families. I have to find 10 people willing to give 10 dollars in the next 10 days. Will you help me out? It's simple. Just click on the link below and click on the amount you are willing to give. Don't wait, click now before the 10 days disappear.

http://www.razoo.com/story/10-In-10

Thanks for your support.

Vote! (I did.)

As longtime readers of this blog already know, I take voting very seriously. Though it mystifies some of my lefty friends, I believe that the franchise is a critical right, and should be expressed meaningfully and thoughtfully by all those who we haven't disenfranchised fucked over.

And since I'm pretty open about it, as I did in 2010, I'm again posting photograph of both sides of my voted ballot for the Alaska 2012 general election:

Some thoughts:

voting thoughtfully is a time consuming process. It once again took me several hours of research to decide how I was going to vote.
I was surprised to find that I actually was okay with voting for the democrats in the US House, State Senate, and State House races, and didn't feel like I was just voting against the republicrats.
I particularly dig the candidate for US House, Sharon Cissna, who is aggressively anti-TSA for outstanding reasons. (And Michelle Scannell is her former chief of staff.)
As for bonds, I'm generally tax-and-spend, but unstated transportation bonds where I couldn't find any clear indication of what it would be spent on? Since it's a decent prediction that that "something" would be primarily to build and improve infrastructure for single passenger automobile transportation, I passed.
A constitutional convention? Ummm, sure? Why the heck not? (This is required by state law to be automatically included on the ballot every ten years.) Here are some thoughts on what a constitutional convention could do (though I'm not at all sure how I feel about a unicameral legislature, which the author advocates for.)
Justice Winfree I was genuinely kind of torn on, and it was a somewhat close call. (I mostly evaluate appellate judges based on their written opinions, especially their dissents, where you get to judge how they really feel about stuff.) 
Judge Bolger sucks.
The real timesuck was researching every single superior court and district court judge, using their applications to the bench, in some cases their reappointment packets, and in some cases, extraneous web searches when this didn't yield enough information.
Turns out it's actually really important to vote on judicial retention in Alaska: judges are regularly retained by as little as 55-60% of voters.

Okay: back to work for me!