starting summer

I am home from Buffalo and so excited to finish up my summer and prepare to move back to Boston. Before I go back to school, there are a few things I have to do...

--camping on the Cape (leaving tomorrow)
--NYC with Agnese (visiting from Italy!)
--Jon and Ellie's Wedding

I have so much to look forward to and so many people to spend time with. I'm excited to finish up my summer surrounded by the people that I love.

just over the rainbow bridge

Living in Buffalo definitely has its perks; not only are the real estate prices low and wings hot, the proximity to Canada is very desirable. The Niagara Falls are one of the great natural landmarks in this part of the world. The Falls are absolutely beautiful and their force and power are breathtaking the first time you see them. They are also a tourist trap, including Clifton Hill, a strip akin to Vegas or Times Square: trashy and flashy. Niagara Falls is about a twenty or thirty minute drive from my current residence in Buffalo, so it would have been a shame to not make an appearance.

Two good friends from Albany came out to Buffalo for the weekend and we crossed the border for two days of responsibly careless fun. We stayed in a sketchy hostel and made it our mission to do everything we don’t or can’t do in our own country.

While on a tour of the Hillebrand Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario we met a nice middle-aged couple from Toronto. They were very nice, as per the Canadian stereotype and via their suggestion, we ended up at a chocolate store down the street. One thing led to another and this suggestion led to free chocolate-covered strawberries, which we took as an obvious omen to visit every destination suggested by local or Canadians. This took us on an adventure that proved to be amazing, placing us in an Irish pub, a country-store specializing in gourmet peanuts, a few too many Tim Horton’s, and loveable Canadian-chain restaurants.

I think this is a really amazing travel tip. Ask questions and listen to the people who live in the areas you’re exploring. You can research and read reviews other travelers have written, but for an authentic experience, the little things count. There is no way we would have stopped at this run-down chocolate factory, or a random country peanut store if we weren’t told to, and that we would have really missed out!

We had a great time. The weekend was exactly what I needed: to see my friends and stop worrying for a minute about my future. We made “friends” from all over the world (Canada, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, and the unidentified home of the newly engaged girl we took a picture with). We roughed it in a hostel and the whole weekend made me so excited for my semester in Europe, Spring 2011!

guppy

I need an internship for the fall in Boston. I have been applying to publishing companies around the city, but so far to no avail. I have been sending resumes left and right, but so many companies have already found interns for the fall. A few haven’t responded yet, so I am going to send second inquiries.

I am a little nervous that I will never be able to find an internship (or on a grander scale, a job) in a big city. As much as I have enjoyed working at Prometheus in Amherst, it is in Amherst, New York. I don’t want to be a big fish in a small pond; I don’t want to live in a small town or the suburbs of a rust-belt city. I want to be a guppy: a guppy in Boston, New York, London, or San Francisco. I know that when the time comes I will get a job where I can find one. I will not be Rory Gilmore circa the eighth season of Gilmore Girls.

In other news, I am growing more pretentious every day. Yesterday Ellie and I went to a bookstore and I bought the most recent issue of McSweeney’s. I then drank my bold brew from Café Aroma and laughed aloud at sarcasm from writers with inflated egos.

bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day

My time at Prometheus is coming to an end. My last day is a week from tomorrow. It’s so bizarre to be thinking of leaving. I finally know where everything is, what I’m doing, and how to do it. I know where the commas go and that quotations go on the outside of the period at the end of the sentence. I’ve learned a lot about myself and so much about publishing. The field no longer has this shield of mystery. I know what to expect from a company that works to produce well-written, and well-designed books that reinforce the morals and ideas by which Prometheus was built.

I’ve learned that I am genuinely interested in becoming an editor. I met with Jade, an assistant editor at Prometheus. She has worked there for a year, and graduated from Ithaca College in 2008. We met to talk about her job, as she is doing exactly what I hope to do in a few years. Talking with her, I realized that in editing books, I would be a life-long student: learning something new from each new book. I never want to fall into a job where I am not using my brain. I never want to stop learning.

I am a writer, or at least that’s what I tell myself, but I am not going to try to build a career around unreliable jobs. I want to work with other writers in making their great ideas better. If I can be part of the process that distributes important discourse to a greater public, I will feel as if I have done my job. Books, in print and online (alright, I’ll acknowledge the e-book phenomenon) are vital to society as a whole. Literature shouldn’t be a hobby available to a pretentious niche. Books, nonfiction and otherwise are important enough for me to feel as though I want to work with them for the greater part of my life.

I have realized the passion I have always felt for literature and book publishing is not unfounded. That is probably the most significant thing I have taken from this internship. Even working with the trivial details of the industry, I appreciate it for the experience I have gained.

Thank you, Prometheus, for teaching me not only to carry the torch of secular understanding and reason with a set of humanistic ideals, but also to continue on the academic path I have started on; to lay the bricks for my future.

A note to the nonexistant people reading this blog: Buy books from Prometheus, they're not all crazy-atheist. Do it!

save it

A writer’s blog about rejections is not an original idea, so I will keep this brief.

I have recently been rejected by Quick Fiction and Staccato Fiction for publication. I was also notified that I didn’t get an internship I interviewed for.

I knew rejection was going to be part of this game.

I’m thinking about starting a scrapbook. A scrapbook of all my rejections.

Make that three rejections. Bananafish provided me with a 6-hour rejection. Woot!

kind of creepy

I’ve been writing a lot of Spot Coffee, trying to meet the deadline I’ve set for myself. I’m writing a novel, for better or for embarrassment, due on the 28th of August, right before I go back to Boston.

Last week, when we were out running errands, we went to the downtown Spot, as opposed to the shop closer to home. While we were there I noticed a guy who was wearing plaid and counting syllables. He is obviously my soul mate.

I went back to Spot with Ellie on Tuesday to get work done, and syllable-man was sitting a few tables over, deep in his work. It’s interesting how you notice people who have similar schedules, out in the world.

I went to Spot again today, to continue to write my novel, it is currently seventeen pages (!) and he was there again. I am accidentally, borderline stalking him. Or he is stalking Spot.

Maybe we will be friends. Probably not, but its nice to recognize regulars in a community or in my life. I have become a regular at Spot, and in Buffalo. I don’t feel like I’m visiting anymore, I feel completely at home where I have my regular places to go, where I am bound to run into people I recognize, people who are regulars in their own right.

I would like to count syllables, too.
Ellie, this entry is for you.

(Oh, a rhyming couplet!)

[very]shortstories

She asked if he was tired of Europe, ready to go home to her. He said he spends the whole time running to catch trains that he misses anyway.

what more

Taste of Buffalo is amazing. Vendors of all the restaurants in Buffalo together, downtown, between ‘the chip strip’ and City Hall. They are set up with their best menu items and with tickets you buy things and eat your way through downtown Buffalo. It’s a great way to get people out and appreciating the city.

Downtown Buffalo makes me sad. It is everything Albany would be if it weren’t the capital of New York: cities that were booming during industrial periods that have since been decimated. Vacant streets and little business. Abandoned store-fronts and ‘historic’ landmarks that are falling down but too precious to demolish.

I’m really starting to like the city of Buffalo. It has a lot to offer a younger crowd and downtown is actually really [architecturally] beautiful. If I were to have gone to school here I would have had a great time. The people of Buffalo are as nice as those of the mid-west (I assume, based on stereotypes, having never been there). Buffalo has an arts scene and great coffee. Bars and restaurants are open late and real estate prices are low. Everyone should pack their bags, become Bills and Sabres fans, and move to Buffalo.

Good chicken wings and lake-effect snow. What more could you want?

heatwave

It is hot out. Yes, it is summer. We are having a heat-wave. I am not complaining. I love the heat.

After work I went out to the pool in our apartment complex that I have never before used. I have found my place for the rest of the summer.

If I complain about heat I constantly think of when I complain of the cold during winter. I am trying to be appreciative of things when I have them. I refuse to want what’s on the other side of the fence.

I don’t want to regret losing things I didn’t appreciate to begin with.

disease

I have a dress collection that has been in progress since high school. I love dresses and wear them the majority of days. Today I wore two different dresses and found both of them uncomfortably large. I’m borderline depressed because my dress collection is beginning to render itself useless. Who wants fifty dresses that are too big?

I suppose I will just have to buy more.

the90 home

I drove back to Buffalo with a friend from home who is also living out here for the summer. He lives in a part of Buffalo that I’m not familiar with (the suburbs…). After dropping him off I was nervous I wasn’t going to be able to find my way back to W. Ferry, but my navigational skills surprised me and I was home without a glitch.

I felt like I was driving home tonight and being familiar with the streets of Buffalo is comforting. I am finally getting to know the area, a little, and it is definitely a great feeling.

I love traveling and seeing new places but I think I want to spend enough time in each place that I am familiar with the area enough to call it home. Is it practical to think I could live in many different areas throughout my life? I might get tired of moving around. I might crave to consider one place home.

a tip for retail

Ellie and I took Audrey for a walk when I got home from work. It was a beautiful day in the mid 70s and sunny, a rarity for Buffalo, even in the summer. We walked through Elmwood Village, where I, naturally, had to stop at Spot Coffee.

While Ellie waited outside with the dog, I went in and got a cappuccino, a Thursday afternoon reward (yes, I can justify anything). The hipster punk-scum that worked there asked what he could get for me. But no, he didn’t phrase it in such a nice way. He said, “Ma’am, what can I get for you?” Oooooh, he called me ma’am (which now justifies my calling him hipster punk-scum).

When complaining to a friend about being called ma’am, I was told, “why don’t you blog about it”, in a rather belittling way. However facetious this phrase was meant, I am taking the suggestion seriously. This is an opportunity to set something straight.

The term, Ma’am, should never be used to refer to a woman who is either A. younger than thirty, B. unmarried, or C. wearing an adorable sundress.

For those of you working in retail, pay attention. You are always safe when you use Miss. Nobody will ever be offended when they are referred to as Miss, even if they are approaching an age that is embarrassing to reveal. If you do feel the necessity of throwing around Ma’am, save it for a woman who has a toddler on her hip or a baby in a stroller.

To break it down:

Stroller/hip child- Ma’am
Girl in sundress- Miss

That is the end of my rant. Spot Coffee, I will forgive you if you fire that child.