Summer In the City--And You're Long Gone from This City

Whatever it is in New York at the moment, it is far from summer. But this line from Regina Spektor’s song “Summer in the City” totally captures my mood lately. I’ve lived in small towns and big cities alike—and sometimes, living in a big city is lonelier.

My boyfriend lives in Europe. And while I have a lot of great friends in New York, I also have a lot of close friends and family live at least several states away, at most an ocean away. Sometimes I’m too busy to think about it—too busy to think, period. But other times I feel the absence of people I love. I wish I could drop in on my parents for some wine and a home-cooked meal. I wish I could meet my sister for an all-afternoon-long lunch-turned-shopping spree. I wish I could drink margaritas with my best friends from college on the roof of a hotel, several times a month. I wish I could come home to my boyfriend.

YA Heroines and the Discovery of Sexuality

I love reading YA. And I love YA heroines. I’ve been seeing them much more in the past few years than I have when I was younger, which is really heartening—it means hopefully the publishing industry is becoming more comfortable with publishing YA novels with female protagonists.

I’ve understood that in the past, publishers avoided female protagonists for YA because while girls will read about girls and boys, boys only want to read about boys—so sales are better for male protagonists. Which I think is a huge shame—because I remember as a child (I grew up in the 80’s) absolutely hungering for strong female characters I could relate to. My favorite character in Lord of the Rings was Eowyn—a minor character to many readers, but to me, she was crucial.

Why "Sexy" Is a Dirty Word for Me

I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, a model as we usually think of models. I’m not eight feet tall. I don’t walk the runway. I will never be in Victoria’s Secret.

But as part of expanding my acting business, I’m looking into commercial modeling. Commercial models are people in print ads. A commercial model can be a beautiful woman, or an average-looking and approachable woman, or a seventy-five-year-old man. You don’t have to conform to the standards of fashion-model beauty. What you do have to do is portray a certain “type”—the stressed-out mom, the successful businessman, the ambitious new intern. It’s an acting exercise that falls between acting and modeling.

New Year, New Start

I like New Years Resolutions.

I realize I’m probably in the minority here. For a lot of people, the New Years resolution is just another thing to commit to, then forget about three weeks after it’s made. I get that. I used to be like that. I still am, for some goals. I’ve changed in the past few years, though.

Really, it started with turning 30. I don’t know what caused it—I wish I have an interesting, relevatory story to tell, but I don’t. I just looked at my life and thought to myself, I can do better. And I started to be consistent about certain things. To set aside a certain amount of time per day. And I began to see real progress. Sometimes it can take a long time to see progress, but once you start to see it, you’re hooked.

Last Day in Crete

Our plane didn’t leave until 9PM that night, so we spent the day in Heraklio. The most notable thing about that day was going to the archaeological museum. Actually, it was just a small exhibit of some of the more important artifacts—the entire museum was closed for renovations, and that contains tens of thousands of artifacts from ruins like the ones we visited all over the island. Still, I got to see the Phaistos disc (BIG deal for me) along with some other neat stuff:

The Phaistos Disc is a Minoan artifact found in Phaistos, one of the palaces I visited. It's estimated to be about four thousand years old. It's a disc of fired clay with symbols punched into it in a spiral pattern, and it's special because it's the first known example of an actual typeface--it was made by pressing pre-made stamps into the clay. It's never been translated.

Epic Bike Ride to Argyropoulis

Our last full day in Crete, MJ and I stayed in Rethymno. We wanted to take a day trip to Argyropoulis, a town in the mountains that supposedly had some stunning springs and Roman and Venetian ruins. But the buses weren’t running on the weekend. So we decided to bike.

This was crazy for two reasons. One, while Rethymno is on the coast, Argyropoulis is in the hills—and the hills are enormous. Two, it was also about 23 kilometers away. Still, we were feeling like some exercise—at least I was; I’m not sure how enthused MJ was about this even though he suggested it—so we rented bikes.

On the Importance of Speaking Greek in Greece

Knowing the native language in the country you’re visiting goes a long way.

I usually try to learn the basics: “please,” “thank you,” “hello,” “excuse me,” and “bathroom.” Really, just “Hello” and “thank you” will get you a long way. When I greeted the man selling tickets to Phaistos in Greek, he smiled and gave me an orange. When I talked to the lady minding the door, she let me take my sandwich into the ruins—even though it was officially not allowed. Knowing a tiny amount of Greek words got me free raki shots in restaurants as well as curious questions about where I was from. It made the locals much friendlier—and made me think about how annoying it must be to have people continually walking up to you and nattering on in a language that isn’t yours, blithely assuming that you’ll understand.