Voting Polls are Open

Today is an important day. It's Election Day. And even if we aren't voting for the Presidency, it's important to go and exercise your rights as part of a democracy.

Today's elections are for the legislative branch of the US Government. It's important because they are the ones that pass and make the laws. So, if you want your rights to be the same or if you want them to change, it's important to make your voice heard by voting wisely for the person who best represents your thinking.

I went bright and early this morning. In fact, I was the 6th voter in my district. And in NYC, the voting machines are a little different. You get to fill in a blank and then scan your paper through a machine. It was really cool!

So go out there and make your opinions known.

Spies Like Us

While having a conversation with my friend the other day, we realized we have a penchant for spy novels, movies and televisions shows. The world of espionage intrigues us immensely. I was obsessed with the television show ‘Alias’ while it was on. I wanted to be a spy like Sydney Bristow – feminine, smart and kick-ass!

This television season there are a bunch of spy shows that I’m watching – ‘Nikita’ and ‘Undercovers’ to name a few. What intrigues me most about spies is their double lives. How can they keep the daily lives they are leading straight? I can barely walk into the kitchen without forgetting why I went there in the first place. Spies have to keep all their personality traits and stories in order so they aren’t found out! I hardly remember what my name is on most days.

I suppose I’m interested in spies because I want to see them mess up! I want to see them get caught. Or maybe I just think it’s cool to travel the world and know government secrets. Regardless, espionage is a guilty pleasure of mine.

Seasonal Allergies

Cursed! Plagued!! That’s me. I have had allergies for a number of years. Some times of the year are worse than others. I get an occasional flare up in the spring but the bane of my existence happens at the end of the summer. Just as the weather is easing into fall…
Ragweed! How I hate you?!


I woke up one morning last week and thought someone had inflated my brain. The pressure and tension of my congested head made me want to take a pin and pop myself. I felt like I was carrying a watermelon around as my head. At any moment, it could tumble forward and break!

This year’s symptoms have been more unbearable than usual. I dragged myself to the doctor only to hear what I had already known – it’s a bad allergy year. He gave me some new medication and it’s helped so far.

Irony isn’t lost on me. I absolutely love flowers and trees and yet every so often during the year, those same items of splendor and beauty make me want to just crawl into bed and sleep.

Disappearing Acts

Every so often some of my friends disappear off the radar screen in my life. It’s not always a mutual decision; it just happens. For some people this could be upsetting or off-putting but for me, it is ok. I am used to it.

One of my friends is pretty high up on the corporate food chain and is also a bit of a social misfit so I know that there will be radio silence. There is an understood agreement between us.

I’m not so great about being on top of my friends. I just think people are busy and I get busy too. It’s not as though I don’t think about them but sometimes work and life happen and I forget what is important.

A couple of recent events have made me realize it’s is important to stay in touch with friends. They do enrich your life and my friends always make me laugh. Work is always going to be there but friends may not be. It’s important to embrace them while they are around.

Black Coffee

Jetlag is hard to overcome. Usually a bit of melatonin and trying to get on a schedule based on the location I am at the moment helps. However, this time around it’s been a bit difficult.

Being in Italy for over 10 days makes my relationship with coffee a little different than my daily NYC coffee consumption. While in the Big Apple, I have one cup of American coffee for the most part. I do relish in an occasional treat of another cup on some days but it’s rare. However, in Italy, I end up having at least 3 espressos a day. This creates a problem.

Espresso may have less caffeine than a cup of Starbucks – probably 115 grams to the chain’s 175…but if I have at least 3 of them a day….I’m getting more caffeine!!

More caffeine throws my body out of whack…not really, but on some days it can. Especially when on one day alone I had 6 cups of espresso (the occupational hazard of visiting with family is the constant offering of espresso). The waves of energetic spikes followed by lethargy are tough. And that’s how I am feeling now that I am back in NYC. I have some moments of lucidity and then I just want to curl up and take a nap.

The only comfort is that I know that when I have my coffee, I’m more alert and productive. It’s sad for those who consistently drink coffee and it does absolutely nothing for the mental state – they are still sluggish and unproductive.

The List of Signs

Lately I’ve been reading many articles on how you know you need a new job or how to know you are bored with your job. I’ve decided to give my input on this very fashionable topic.

Signs you need a new job according to me:
1) You ask anyone and everyone you know if they have a gun to use either on yourself or to use on those who inflict daily work torture on you
2) Most of your answers to any work decisions is “I don’t care” or ‘I don’t give a flip’
3) When a office dweller says “Good Morning” to you, your gut response is to say “Die!” to them
4) You are convinced you have some kind of disease based on all the health symptoms amassing in, around and on your body
5) Even if the floor you work on is like an igloo, you never notice because you are fuming with rage every moment of every workday

If you can think of more, please let me know. This is not a definitive list at all.

Saving Lives

Prioritization is something you learn throughout life and often it’s from on-the-job experience. You have a whole checklist of things that need to be done. You assess which items are the most important things to do while also determining which items can wait for a few hours or days.

I think I’m pretty good at prioritizing stuff. If what I need to do affects clients, then I need to get on top of that as soon as possible. If it is something that doesn’t impact clients, I can move it down my list. But what I come across on a daily basis is a serious problem – it’s the chicken-without-a-head urgency that some people put on work items that in my view doesn’t merit all the commotion that they are creating.

A few days ago this guys called me at work and sounded like he was hyperventilating about completing something. This ‘thing’ didn’t impact clients and it certainly wasn’t super important in the scheme of things. But boy did it sound like an aneurysm was about to happen while he was talking on the phone with me.
I finally told him he needed to calm down because it would all be worked through and completed. It momentarily quieted his ticker but I’m sure after he hung up, he must have croaked.

I’m not a doctor and I sure as hell don’t play one on tv. What I can’t seem to understand is why so many people in the business world think that everything is a matter of life and death. I must have missed a memo! I don’t see the point to all the fire drills and all the dog-chasing-its-tail madness. I guess that could explain why I don’t feel like I’m going anywhere while others move up the ladder.

All I have to say is that it’s nice when some people who are ‘saving lives’ at work aren’t at work. I feel like I never have to scrub in and resuscitate anyone. All of this mad scrambling certainly makes me appreciate those emergency room doctors and nurses a lot more though.

Don't Be So Corny

You can’t drive anywhere in Mexico without being greeted by their dependency on corn. It’s a part of the culture and the food in so many ways. Where other countries make and consume bread, Mexicans eat tortillas which are usually made out of corn. Mexicans break off pieces of the hot thin corncakes and use them to mop up whatever food is left on their plate. Or they use the tortillas to make tacos out of whatever is for breakfast, lunch or dinner. To not have tortillas at a meal is a sin.

Corn is a fantastic vegetable. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who hated corn. It’s warm and sweet and welcoming like many Mexicans. I’ve had my share of tortillas and although I like them, I prefer flour tortillas ( I commit a crime every time I ask for them, I know). But tortillas aren’t the only place to taste corn.

Corn is dried and ground up to make masa, which is used to make tortillas. Masa is also used to make tamales. Tamales are usually the masa with some local produce or meat that is wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed. It’s so luscious and flavorful no matter what the interior combination is. I do love tamales with cheese or huitlacoche ( a corn fungus – I told you they love their corn) or salsa verde. But let me go back to the corn for a moment.

Corn in Mexico is different than corn found in the USA. It’s not as sweet. The kernels are much bigger and have more of a gritty taste to them. They sometimes use the kernels to make pozole, which is another fabulous concoction with corn. But honestly the best way to have corn in Mexico is two ways:

1) On the cob – called elote
2) Or in a soup – called esquite

You find street vendors all over Mexico selling boiled corn on a cob. You can garnish this cob with any number of things. Sometimes nothing more than butter. Other times, you use mayonnaise. Some people put chili pepper and lime juice on the corn while others coat it in cheese. It’s quite a rich meal no matter how you prepare it. I had always heard about elote from my husband but I never tasted it until this visit. I had mine with mayonnaise that had a touch of lime juice and some chile pepper. I felt like I was eating the most fantastic 5 star appetizer in my life. The heat off the chili was accompanied by the cooling component of the mayonnaise. Yummy doesn’t even come close to describing the happiness is my mouth and my tummy while I was consuming it.

The second dish – esquite - is just as fabulous. It’s nothing more than boiling corn in some water and using some fresh herbs to bring out the inherent complexity of this Mexican corn. Of course like more dishes in Mexico people adorn the soup with lime juice, chili, tortilla chips. I like mine with a little lime. It is as comforting as a hot bowl of chicken soup on a cold day. This is all Mexican comfort food and if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend you try it.

Sweet and Spicy

Mexican food is so rich in flavors and textures. One of my favorite specialties is called Chiles en Nogada. It can only be found in Mexico and in Mexican restaurants around this time of the year. The reason that this meal is in hiding the rest of the year is due to its ingredients. They aren’t the most exotic ingredients but in keeping with seasonal produce, they only appear in and around September.

The first component is the walnut but it’s not any old walnut. It’s a special one that needs to be peeled to reveal only the pulp. The skin of this special walnut tends to be bitter and that would take away from the complexity of the chiles. This walnut is used with condensed milk or some other kind of cooling dairy agent (cream, sour cream etc) to create a sweet sauce to go over the chiles.

The main portion of the meal comes from the poblano pepper – itself a hearty smoked pepper with a slight bitterness – stuffed with various items. The stuffing can be made of ground beef or pork mixed with raisins and spices and nuts. Sometimes the walnut makes its appearance in the stuffing itself. Other times one finds almonds among the mix. The stuffing is often spicy with various other chilis adding their heat to the dish.

When you cut through the sauce and into the pepper and taste the entrée, your mouth feels first a cool sweetness accompanied by a spicy, crunchy, crumbly mixture. The sensation it leaves in your mouth is incredible. Varying from sweet to heat is intense enough on its own. Then to have the liquid sauce melt over the brittle members of the stuffing feels like a firework exploding in your mouth.

I love to eat. When a dish is full of complexity such as Chiles en Nogada, it makes me happy to be alive and to be able to keep tasting such true gastronomic miracles.

Family Reunion

As you might know, I have issues with the institution known as the ‘family’. Based on my past and the past of my family, it has always manifested itself as pejorative instead of ameliorative. I have always tried to forge my own definition in opposition to what I grew up with and saw. I can’t say I have been entirely successful but I keep forging ahead.

My husband is very family-oriented which is tricky because his concept of family is very different than mine. For him, family can do no harm. They are your support system and who you turn to when you need help. In theory, I agree with this and accept it. It hasn’t completely been this way for me; I wish I had more experiences to foster that same understanding in myself. I often look for support outside my family. I’ve created an infrastructure of good friends and one or two family members to whom I turn when I need advice or have a problem.

Given this information family reunions are comparatively different for both of us. I barely have family reunions. I think I only see cousins when someone is in the hospital or when there is a funeral. On occasion I might catch up with people at weddings. With the exception of one cousin, I rarely see my paternal cousins. My maternal cousins are in Italy. And even there, I only communicate extensively with one of them. Although I do talk often to one of my aunts.

My husband on the other hand, talks to his cousins frequently via email or on Facebook. And whenever we return to Mexico, we see most of his maternal cousins. This time around I finally got to meet some of his paternal cousins. And it was bittersweet. It’s nice to see people so happy to see each other - for a big family to sit around a table and make fun of each other in a nostalgic way. The infecting sound of laughter after the retelling of stories and remembrances of common moments where everyone had fun. No moments of dejection where the maliciousness of mistakes are retold to feel superior to those around you. No jumping down each other’s throats when people disagree with opinions.

The warmth I felt in their midst is something that I never feel with my extended family. I can only replicate that warmth with my dogs, my sister and my friends. I suppose ‘family’ is what you make of it. I choose my family while my husband has one.