deceptively caloric salad dressing

....I HATE IT!

im on a new diet.. only 1,200 calories a day unless i workout in which case i get to subtract the calories. its very mathematical. and i write everything down. to be honest with you, i actually made a spreadsheet on excel which i printed out, cut, and glued into a small notebook i bought specifically for the purpose.

don't roll your eyes, i swear i eat too much!
i can out-eat matt like DOUBLE any day of the week.

so i decided to get healthy and take a good hard look at what i was eating by writing it all down and counting calories and setting a goal.

so matt and i go to baja fresh today and since i wasn't able to actually COUNT my calories before i ate them, i went with a soup and side salad thinking that would be fine.

i got home after and checked the baja fresh nutritional calculator online... i know i'm psycho but i have to count somehow.

anyway, the soup was fine. the salad was fine, totallying like 450 calories, but then the dressing, the gosh darn dressing was 280 calories!!! what in all hell? just a vinaigrette?!

so im warning you people
beware of deceptively caloric salad dressing
...beware

now i have to go to the gym and burn 600 calories. grrr.
on a sidenote, matt had a steak quesadilla and it was over 1,200 calories -- it was more than my entire daily allowance! hah.

love
suz

right now

i'm bored at work there is not enough to do.


and.


i apologize for how political my last few blog posts were ;)


and.


i'm really excited for matt! he might (cross your fingers) have his article that he worked on while at seaworld published in the journal of veterinary pathology. he was first author! imagine that. just a veterinary technician, hasn't even applied to vet school yet, and already has a paper published in a prominant journal -- which (here's where i brag) the vast majority of veterinarians themselves likely haven't accomplished. :)





matt never brags or gloats so i am doing that for him.


i hope he gets published!


if it gets rejected which it has before, they will submit it to another journal.


perhaps the journal of wildlife diseases.



:-)


and who was the article about?


these guys!

i always think about how matts future seems so much brighter than mine. i dont mean that in a poor-me kind of way, but his dreams are just so... cool! and interesting! i can't wait to see how far he will go in this life.

i think this photo and story speaks for itself.

Soldier Kareem R. Khan

By The New York Times

On “Meet the Press” today, Colin L. Powell concluded his endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama by referring to the death of a Muslim soldier, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan of Manahawkin, N.J., who was killed in Iraq on Aug. 6, 2007, and whose remains were buried in Arlington.

He and three other soldiers, including a corporal from Washington Heights, were killed in Baquba after a bomb detonated while they were checking abandoned houses for explosives. They served in the Stryker Brigade combat team of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, based in Ft. Lewis, Washington.

Mr. Khan graduated from Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin in 2005, and enlisted in the Army a few months later, spurred by his memories of the 9/11 terror attacks. “His Muslim faith did not make him not want to go. It never stopped him,” his father, Feroze Khan, told the Gannett News Service in a story printed shortly after his death. “He looked at it that he’s American and he has a job to do.”

Mr. Powell mentioned Mr. Khan’s death to underscore why he was deeply troubled by Republican personal attacks on Mr. Obama, especially false intimations that he was Muslim.

Mr. Obama is a lifelong Christian, not a Muslim, he said. But, he added, “The really right answer is, what if he is?”

“Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country? No, that’s not America,” he said.

Mr. Khan’s death came to his attention, Mr. Powell said, when he saw a photo essay in a magazine about the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. One picture showed a mother pressing her head against the gravestone of her fallen son in Arlington cemetery. It was the grave of 20-year-old Mr. Khan, engraved with his name, his military awards, and the Muslim symbol of the crescent and star.

“He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could go serve his country, and he gave his life,” Mr. Powell said. “Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way.”

Mr. Powell said that he had heard senior members of the Republican Party “drop this suggestion that he [Obama] is a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.”

“Now, John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that within the party we have these kinds of expressions.”

Mr. Khan had served in Iraq for just over a year, arriving in July 2006. He had sent home pictures to his family of him playing soccer with Iraqi children and hugging a smiling young Iraqi boy in Baghdad, according to his obituary in the Newark Star-Ledger.

He loved rooting for the Dallas Cowboys with his father, and challenging his 12-year old stepsister, Aliya, to video games. He last saw his family during a two-week visit in September 2006.

the secret to our joy

i've just been thinking about how i want to share this little tidbit with some people.
matt and i have been together for quite some time now, five months of marriage after six years of relationship (give or take). and we are really happy. i mean very content, happy in our marriage; if ever we are sad and down its for reasons outside each other ..usually. we actually had very little doubts going into our wedding day, it felt natural and right. i actually felt so excited and so warm-footed the months before our big day, i thought something was wrong with me. we are just content. this is true ... i wouldn't dare post this if it wasn't! :)

i think when listing things that lead to a happy relationship and/or marriage, a few years ago, i might've said "honesty," "trust," "communication" (haha, okay, ALL very important things nonetheless) ... but there is just one little thing that has really tipped the scales in our favor, in addition to those things of course.

that what makes our time together so happy and special is -- simply put -- our time apart.
in our whole relationship we've valued more than anything an almost unusual prioritizing of our friendships alongside our relationship. yes, our relationship is #1. but when there is a friend in need in either of our lives, we are there. not only that, we encourage each other to BE there. if matt had a friend in need, i'd actually be mad if he was with me. we go out with our own friends at least one night a weekend if not two, we build friendships that can carry us like life rafts when we need it -- i have sisterhoods that will last a lifetime, friendships with women just as crucial to my development as my husband. yes, i said "just as" not "almost as."

i think a lot of people find it funny matt and i have spent the majority of our new year's eves apart -- even in different cities -- by choice. our halloweens apart, and so on. i'm sure some couples might find something awry or bizarre about it. but this is what works for us. why? because we truly, truly value our time together and don't take a moment for granted. we can sit down at dinner and tell stories about our own independent lives, and always have something to talk about. we are never sick of each other, we are just a team going forward in this life who pledged to one another to always BE that sounding board. and we enjoy that. and we intend to keep it that way as long as our friends will have us :)

our time apart is what truly keeps us together. our support system of friendships outside our marriage and relationship is the secret to what's within our marriage. i can honestly say this with conviction. no matter how much you hang out with that person you love, you are human and will get sick of them like anyone else. and if you dont have fifty friends on speed dial, go to a coffee shop and read a book. or blog like my dorky self. but be independent, develop your own person, then come together to share that person with the one you love. seriously give it a shot. it might just be your secret too!


matt in australia. clearly lost and suzless.


suz in zanzibar. clearly mattless but with cocoa, a distant relative of milk chocolate, and therefore an adequate substitute for matt.

bless your heart sir

another political blog.

These are my premises:

1) i am a liberal

2) i like sarah palin

again, just in case that's undigestable, in other words:

I am a liberal and I like Sarah Palin.

She is authentic. She has personality. She is witty as hell (case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h0xOjsOqdk). She isn't afraid to speak forcefully and with conviction to a roomful of higher degreed men. There are a bunch of things I like about her. Yes, I think she's a fierce feminist. To me, feminism is not the ideology of a particular party. It is about women, not party lines. In no way should 'feminist' equate with 'Democrat.' By doing so we severely cripple the scope, reach, and potential of the feminist movement.

Websters defines feminist as "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes." It is a very dangerous place when we assume that the only women pioneering that theory are liberals. That is essentially saying that Republican women are vying for the opposite, or are satisfied with the status quo? Are satisfied with being paid less, being outnumbered 3, 4 times by men in their workplace? Not only is that a completely ignorant and unfair assertion, it is discriminatory and takes us all significantly further back in our progress. Furthermore, Sarah Palin is by no means an example of a submissive woman settling for the status quo. Whether you are happy or not with her selection as a VP candidate (which i personally very much am NOT), she DID, on her OWN, go from mayor to the first female Governor of her state, all whilst rearing five children and having an approval rating over 80%, the highest in the nation. This was not handed to her by a famous last name or a wealthy family. She worked for that.

The evidence that liberal feminist women have been citing to support their conviction that Palin is not a feminist all stem from her political views. While I completely disagree with her views relating to abortion, stem cell research, the environment, and more -- her reasons are personal, just like our views are, and she has indicated that she will not push legislation to make them shared by the rest of the US. So we demean her with our ignorant tear-down tactics over an issue that really ultimately will only be decided (and has been decided) by the court system, not by the executive branch.

What really pushed me to post this was a quote from Pink, a pop star for those of you not interested in the latest Billboard chart, who dare i say is not any authority on politics: Pink says about Palin, "This woman hates women. She is not a feminist. She is not the woman that's going to come behind Hillary Clinton and do anything that Hillary Clinton would've been capable of ... I can't imagine overturning Roe vs. Wade. She's not of this time. The woman terrifies me."

No, she's not going to do anything Hillary Clinton would've done. She stands for totally different things. I don't think she's going to try to do what Hillary would've. But, she HATES WOMEN? That is utterly and completely ignorant and outrageous.

Pink's not the only one, while I respect and love all of my feminist friends opinions, I've heard them gripe similarly about Palin. I hope this encourages women (and men) to think twice about what feminism really is. We liberals should not be trampling on women who stood up for what they believed in and blazed a trail no other woman in their state's history has; instead we should gripe she was picked -- with all her inexperience -- to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. While we don't agree with her as a VP, we don't hate her as a woman and don't believe she hates us likewise. Dare I say, if none of this had happened, and she emerged as a figurehead leading a large nonprofit for example, we would all love her. Women are hating her BECAUSE she was vetted. Why can't we hate the people who chose her, yet respectfully agree she might possibly be good at another position in this world? I honestly feel bad for her. Of course she has to defend her record and answer tough questions -- it's not an option for her to back out of a race with so much at stake. We should cast our votes and get on with it. Argue against her with weapons of educated politics not cheap accusations.

I am sick and tired of women tearing down other women.
End of rant.

In other news, Obama/Biden 2008.

Very best,
Suz

i am very passionately against

PROPOSITION 8. The California proposition to take away gay's right to marry, which was newly granted to them by the supreme court of CA just this year. it happened while matt and i were on our honeymoon actually, which made us happy. it was nice to see that our happiness was about to be shared by thousands of loving couples.

i very much respect religions of all sorts, and christianity, and with Jesus, I always thought "God is love" was supposed to be the core essential truth of it all, and that he had an open door policy, that he was the opposite of hate. If you are Christian feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about God being love and having an open door policy.

So, why does it logically follow, that some people of said beliefs, find their passion not fueled to care for the poor (like jesus) or love friends in need (like jesus) or feed the hungry (like jesus) but to become passionate, so passionate about taking away this newfound right for gays to marry, that they should get an insane amount of signatures to get this on the ballot. this is what people were spending their time doing. i know because i worked an event shortly after, and was asked to sign one of them.

its fine to be passionate about things but ... you have to ask yourself ... does this really make the world a better place? or ... am i just wasting my time? or worse, am i hurting others? alienating them?

i see NO difference between this discrimination and that of a more racist basis, interracial marriage. in 1959 interracial marriage became legal in california for the first time. are you in an interracial relationship? have you been? do you know someone who is? are your parents? to us now -- i should hope -- the very fact that it was illegal is nauseating.

hypothetical. interracial couple in 1958 has been together 25 years and have 3 children. man is in an accident, on his deathbed, and the woman cannot be allowed in the room? her partner and the father of her children?

i know the "rationale" behind it -- according to the proponents of the proposition -- is to 'protect marriage.'
but i firmly believe that is but a cloak to hide an immature, petty, and discriminatory 'disgust' our society has with couples in loving, happy same-sex relationships.

why can't we just leave them be? have we forgotten what injustice feels like? in our personal lives? have we thought to ourselves 'wow, what if i couldn't marry the person i loved'? are we truly acting out of 'love' to our friends and community members who are gay?

OLD WINE in NEW BOTTLES.
the thucydides quote. he got it right in ancient Greece. and we are still trying to hash it out (we always will be). there will be justice in [california] when those who [have rights] feel as outraged as [their community members who don't]!

two thousand and eight

2008 has been an eventful year so far!

we got married!

here.

and took some pictures.


our friends and family wrote us wishes

even sparky.

and went to tahiti.

and celebrated with bubbly.

while sporting dorky shades.

and gaby had a baby boy Alex (held by my mom)

we organized the MDA San Diego Labor Day Telethon

Our firefighters filled-the-boot for Jerry's Kids in 95 degree heat!

Caleb became our inspiration.

He has a very rare form of MD.

Short-staffed and overworked...Angel and I got it DONE! :)

This year (so far) has flown by!

what it's all about

things at work - muscular dystrophy association - can be very work-ish. about numbers, fundraising, hitting goals, coworker and boss drama, you name it, thats how its been. my interaction with clients has been at best minimal since i got here, and quite frankly (and i understand why) some of them haven't been too interested in getting to know me. there has been just so much turnover in our office, so many new faces rolled in and rolled out over the years, that after a while i'm sure clients are sick of the revolving door. after all they think i wont be here long, either, which sadly, is probably true... not because i dont want to be, but because life has other plans for me.

but in the middle of a hard day of calling for donations and getting hung up on, yelled at, treated as if i am asking the WORLD of every person i approach for a donation, i would sometimes just like to KNOW a client. to say, i'm doing this for so-and-so. and this dollar matters because it just might be the extra dollar that finds so-and-so's wheelchair, or helps pay for that grant that finds help and hope for our clients ... maybe even a cure.

i always always have seen myself as very simple. we have a new boss who has kindly waltzed in the door and is ready to conduct a full body cavity search of our office, establishing a hierarchy bordering on micromanagement that i simply dont agree with. i get that she's, and i quote, "not here to make friends," but at the same time i cant help but laugh when people say stuff like that. YES you are. WHO isn't. WHO walks into any situation and says they're not there to make friends. human nature. its so simple. we want a friendly working environment, a happy place, a place to feel good about ourselves. its so simple. i hate when people pretend their managerial style is the key to success. actually, no. its simpler than that. fostering a healthy working environment is key. but anyway, this is a complete tangent from where i want to go.

all this to say, is, that is NOT what its all about. all these bureaucratic issues have honestly overtaken my thoughts at work and sadly... outside of it. worrying about hitting numbers, etcetera. etcetera. etcetera.

recently however, in the past week, but really in the past hour, i have finally seen what-it's-all-about. though i might not know many of our clients personally, here is what happened.

i speak spanish alright, but its still embarrassing for all the schooling i've had, i should be much more fluent. but naturally, when a spanish-speaking caller calls in, i take the call because at the very least, I can understand THEM. a caller called last week, her name Maura, and she didnt speak a word of english. on top of it, she was frantic. "El doctor me dice que mi hija tiene una problema con sus musculos." hysterical. it was a heartbreaking sentence for anyone to hear, and her tone of voice just did it. "The doctor told me that my daughter has a problem with her muscles."

What's so heartbreaking about that is it could mean the end of her daughter walking, depending on the exact diagnosis. Even the end of her daughter's life. With no cures and nothing really to slow disease progression, it very well could be one of those two. Regardless, this woman's life was about to turn upside down.

Then an even more hysterical line, even more heartbreaking. "No tenemos seguro." We don't have medical insurance. I'll spare you the spanish, but next she told me that the doctor gave her our number at MDA. Said we could help her daughter, Diana, somehow.

This was the part I was waiting for. I listened to her torn up and sat their smiling because I was so excited that I got to be the one to say the next thing. So often I am the one who begs people to raise money for us, begs people to please donate, pleads with people who make me feel like crap for asking anything of them. I got to say something different this time. To put it simply, in most conversations I can sometimes feel ... powerless. And in this one I felt so powerful. I could feel myself metaphorically taking from all those people who'd given me a hard time, and handing it right back to the needy with my next line.

I said (in spanish) Maura, don't you worry. We are going to help you pay for a wheelchair for your daughter, leg braces, or whatever it is she needs. You don't have insurance, that's fine. We are going to cover your fees at our weekly muscle disease clinic at Children's, where Diana can see anyone she needs and obtain a clear diagnosis, physical therapy, occupational therapy, you name it. If you need to borrow a wheelchair or leg braces, we have a loan closet, we will loan you one. We have a Spanish speaking support group, you can attend that with Diana. It is free to become one of our clients. We can send your daughter to summer camp where she can meet all sorts of local San Diego kids in her shoes, also free. We will take care of you and Diana. Don't worry.

I could tell Maura didn't really believe me. Probably if I'd been through everything Maura had -- not just with her daughter's diagnosis but the bigger picture, living in a country where you don't know the language, not having insurance. If I'd been through all that, I wouldn't believe me either. So we sent Maura the client registration card and Diana became a client.

This morning, Diana and her mother Maura and their family went to clinic for the first time. And fittingly, right now as I type in my office, our Spanish support group is going on and all of our local Spanish-speaking clients with muscular dystrophy are convening as a unit, to console eachother and offer resources. Diana and Maura and their family are in there.

I got to meet Maura and Diana finally tonight and it was a wonderful meeting, I was excited to put a face to a voice on the phone. I brought Diana's younger sister some candy and made everyone coffee for support group and Maura pulled me aside and in Spanish said, "Suzy, here is the thing, you are beautiful. But, you are an incredible person. I don't understand where you came from, how you are possible, but you are an incredible person. You have changed our lives forever. Thank you." With tears in her eyes.

It's not me however. It's the millions of firefighters that go out in 95 degree heat and fill their boots with dollar bills for MDA. And the checkers at Vons who ask each customer to donate just $1, sometimes getting 10 to 20 "NO's" in a row, even in the most affluent communities. It's those people that are the incredible, beautiful beings Maura was talking about. I like to think, those are the faces of America. Maura, Diana, and those people on the other end, raising $1 at a time for our cause. I just get to sit here in the middle of it, and I say that it is a priviledge and I mean that it is a priviledge. I just landed here in the middle to see the best of people, helping people, get through the hardest and most impossible of diagnoses. And THAT is what it's all about.

domesticity

i have to confess i absolutely love domestic life. i know that sounds like a sentence that leads in to an ultra-boring blog post about my drama free quiet current state of being. i apologize & i promise i'll try to make it more interesting.

i dont really like routine, i am still feeling the travel bug (which has turned into like a travel rash the need is so strong) but matt and i are really enjoying married life, it is bliss for us right now. my favorite part of the day is when he walks in the door, and going for a run together, making dinner, having a beer and watching one of our billion reality tv shoes on tivo.

when you are happy & in happy times like we are right now, i think you get a little lazy in your own contentment. kinda like a passive 'im doing great im not going to interact with anything hard so i can keep it simple and be as-is.' and you completely lose sight of things, news articles become numbers, 1583 killed in darfur in last few weeks... thousands of children killed in earthquaked china... 560 million wasted on failed iraq reconstruction efforts... and you gravitate toward watercooler articles like Batman grossing an unprecedented $300 million and the identity of banksy revealed, or some controversial statement made by the great aunt of a presidential candidate's wife that we should all debate about.

it just gets to be like -- forgive me because in my own opinion i want to bring light to this mentality -- people start becoming numb, ignoring iraq articles and darfur articles because it's like another day, another death toll. every once in a while it gets you but we just cant conceive of what it would feel like to have our child walking home from the fields in afghanistan only to never return because of one of hundreds of landmines still blanketing the area. we just dont know what that feels like for the mother.

its that kind of realization that ignites passion in me, at least. when i finally put a face to a number. but in my frustration that is why i feel guilt about my contentment right now. because i know i cannot rest and cannot pretend to live so easily without the weight of somebody-i-dont-know-halfway-around-the-world's pain on my shoulders.

which brings me to one of my favorite favorite people, the greek historian thucydides. i know quotes are cliche and usually just make us think for a flicker of 10 seconds but from time to time, i encourage you to medidate on this one. allow me to paraphrase: justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.

kick starting the old blog

i'm back.
after a hiatus that lasted nearly a year -- i have moved back to san diego, Matt and I got married exactly two months ago (and as of today, we began dating exactly six years ago), i have been working, and setting my sights on the next wave.

i feel a little bit like i'm on a big surfboard waiting for the next wave, quite literally, and my feet are getting cold (no pun intended re: the aforementioned nuptuals), and i keep mistaking the seaweed at my feet for scary things like sharks and rays.

the things going right are our marriage -- its fantastic, fun, and just about every other positive adjective out there -- our apartment -- which is so nicely put together considering the two disorganized procrastinators Matt and I are naturally. it's located right on the bay, and we have these great beach cruisers so we can bike pretty much everywhere. it makes for a fun laid-back lifestyle, potentially.

if it weren't for work. i am now in fundraising, and it is tough on me in a number of ways. i feel challenged and i'm learning a ton, i just don't feel good enough. and when you feel inadequate 8 hours a day, it somehow manages to affect how you feel the rest of the day. the hardest part is my time both outside of work and without matt there distracting me. it is those times that it becomes apparent my lack of girl friends in san diego. though i love calling madeleine in boston and safa in texas and my other friends up north, it just isn't the same as having a girls night every once in a while. i miss that more than anything.

and i miss the uncomplicated lifestyle that i had in africa exactly a year ago -- exactly a year ago i was just arriving at the village of nyakasiru in uganda.

even though on the surface everything appears right, it just doesn't feel right. i feel like i'm supposed to be somewhere else right now. i know we need to stay here -- save money, matt has classes to take, and so on -- but i don't like this waiting game. matt reminded me last night about a quote denzel washington is known to teach to his kids: "you have to do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do." i just don't like hearing that quote right now.
so i'm starting this again to address why. why i find the contentment i once had to be giving way to feelings of inadequacy, pressure, stress, anxiousness. i hope that i can find (as i usually do) in my own words, a roadmap for recovery.

suzy