http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/

These little town blues are melting away

I left Berkeley on a high, albeit extremely stressful note. Getting back into NY and hanging out with Sarah , Williams and Trent and a couple other ladies I haven't seen in years was pretty wonderful. It's almost strange to be back at school and have things pick up almost right where they left off. I start classes tomorrow and I can't wait, although for now it's nice to just sit around in the comfort of familiar company.

Radio plays what they want you to hear

After going through the unhappy experience of signing up for health insurance, I was out last night and found out a friend of a friend worked for an insurance company. After a little small talk about how he's able to sleep at night, we chatted a bit about my new policy and other plans. When each plan was rebuked with, "psh, that's overpriced." "no no, that's crap" "no they're totally cheating you," I asked, "So, if you were me, how would you get good insurance? like how would you go about that? What would you do?"

"Work for a huge corporation."

Til this house feels like it did before

I can't sleep. I haven't been able to sleep for days. I'll get in a few hours and then wake up to twiddle my thumbs trying for a few more hours before I have to drag myself to work. I'm a little stressed out. It seems like a whole lot of items piled on my plate all at the same inopportune moment. I think I'm going to really miss everyone here and the restaurant and Berkeley and all of it, but at the moment I would want to be back in NY if for no other reason than to have this stress over and done with and feel like I can breathe a little. I've gotten in 3 hours of sleep so far tonight. It's almost four and I've been awake for well over an hour now. I think it's time for me to just toss in the towel and make some progress on the million things I need to do.

Skin has gotten thicker but it burns the same

I have two weeks left in California. Exactly. With a day off today, I decided to head to San Francisco and meander around. At one point I find myself running errands in the Mission district, and realize there's an ice cream joint nearby that I had been meaning to go to since I arrived. I see this group of four teenage boys looking tough but nearly identical, 3 of them in extremely oversized white Ts, one in black. I start pondering their lack of individuality when I notice one of them is carrying a golf club. At the very instant that I think how strange this is, all of them scramble into the bus stop. Now mostly covered by the signs on the walls, all I can see is a 5th body laying on the ground cowering in the corner of the stop and arms raised and plunged down behind the sign. The boy with the golf club stays behind the others, lurching around but from time to time the head of the club is thrown into the air and forced to disappear with the arms. A man in front of me rushes to the stop where he hesitates and looks around, his shocked and terrified face echoing an understatement of my thoughts. Lasting all of 5 seconds, the four boys leap out of the bus stop, one yells in Spanish and then another screams, "Let's go" as they fly and leap and scramble down the street. Tears fill my eyes without spilling onto my cheeks and I realize my jaw has been stretched open in horror and my back is now against a store front my body seems to think will protect me. The body in the bus stop rolls around as the man makes sure he's ok and lifts his cell phone to his ear. Everyone else keeps walking.

It's time for me to get out of here.