Deep down inside, I have a girlie side too (where the hell did it go? ah, there it is). This version of Madonna’s “Erotica” song really brings out my girlie, romantic, even sexual side of me. I always kinda disliked the original “dirty” version of Erotica, but this one, along with the choreography, touches me so deeply that makes me take advances towards my husband. Only to be crushed by him 3 seconds later: “I am tired tonight baby…”.

Oh well, there’s always the weekend!

One thing you don’t know about me is that I can sketch. Not very well, but truth is, better than most people can. I learned sketching all by myself since the age of 4. I still remember the beating I got for sketching all over my family’s (expensive) encyclopedia when I was 7.

Since the last serious sketching I did was 9 years ago, not even my own husband has seen my work (which I have left back in Greece, and possibly the rats have already eaten it away by now in the cellar). A portrait of Captain Hook was my best work ever, which I completed during a cold afternoon of 1992 in Germany. After that, I did very little sketching and I pretty much stopped in 1999 (except for a quick attempt to sketch JBQ in 2002).

But today was the day. The Marvel announcements brought me some inspiration back, but I was afraid to grab the pencil back to my hands. After all, 9 years without sketching guaranteed a failure. Thankfully, I did better than I thought I would. I finished with a pencil, scanned it, and then used PaintShopPro to just add the colors. Here it is.

Today isn’t my lucky day.

1. Friends came by to take me to lunch over at Google, while I was 100% sure that our rendezvous was for tomorrow, Friday. Not only that, but I had told JBQ that it would be Friday, so he was not expecting us at work until tomorrow! Sorry Brent, Amy! I screwed up, I really need to read emails more carefully!

2. A reader asked me if he can license one of my articles (which he linked to his email to me) for his newsletter, and I gave him authorization for a completely different article! Again, I didn’t read my email straight.

3. There’s a good chance I am going to shoot a music video clip for a local indie band soon, and I made some tests locally. The idea was to have the audio sped up 25%, shoot a video lip-syncing to the sped up audio, bring the video to Vegas and slow it down to the point that it lip syncs to the original non-sped up version of the audio. Thing is, when I told Vegas to slow-down the video, I told it to do so at 0.750 rate (75% of the 1.000 playback rate, right?). Well, it wouldn’t sync. I emailed Vegas support, only to come back to me, looking like a buffoon to them, and reply to me the obvious: that the video rate should be 0.800, not 0.750. I suck at calculations.

When I was 13, there was this kid (15 year old) in the school that would make fun of me. He would just be right in my nose every day.

One Saturday night, I was out with my parents at a local cafeteria which also had coin-up games. That kid happened to be there that night and he wouldn’t let me play Pacman and Phoenix. So, I go to my father who was sitting outside, and told him to come and reason with him.

My father indeed comes in, and the kid gets a pretty macho pose, thinking that he would be able to outdo (and ignore) any lecture that my father would have to give him. But he wasn’t prepared for what my father had in store for him.

He told him: “If you are going to bully my daughter and dishonor her, you will have to marry her. So, I will be talking to your family to arrange the marriage”.

He never bullied me, ever again. If anything, he was avoiding me for the years to come, even after we were both adults and we knew that my father was joking.

So, the first time we made love. No, not my first time (there is nothing worth blogging about it), but the first time JBQ and I made love: it felt so right. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel guilty, or dirty, or used, for having sex. It felt just right. And I cried.

Thom’s post yesterday about his missing cat reminded me of my first pet cat: Sebastian.

It was 1984, and I was 11 when Sebastian visited our home in the mountains for the first time. Sebastian was a nice cat, but he wasn’t our cat. He belonged to a family about 400 meters away from our home, but he was not getting much love (or food) there, so he was dividing his time between the two homes. Once, the owners came with a sack to take him away, but he returned to us the next day.

The time came in 1985 that we had to move to Louros, a nearby town, just so I didn’t have to travel 2.5+ hours a day to go to high-school and my father could find new jobs as a house builder. We came back to visit our home in the mountains a month later. Within the hour, we would hear from far away a fade “miaou, miaou” and we would soon see a fast approaching cat (literally running towards us). Sebastian wouldn’t stop for over 5 minutes: “miaou, miaou, miaou, miaou, miaou, miaou…”. If he was a human, he would be crying hard and ask us where we’ve been and why we left him behind.

But two days later we had to leave again and go back to Louros. And we couldn’t get him with us as he wasn’t our cat and we were not allowed pets in our rented apartment. I never saw him again.

In the ’90s, and while my father finished building our own home in Louros where we could have our own pets (but not living with us inside the house), we had a multitude of cats in our home, but most of them were poisoned by a specific neighbor of ours. The two most notable cats I had was Miaoulis and her son, Bobo, both beautiful all-white cats. I found Miaoulis half-dead as a kitten in the wild and I took care of her (her mother left her to die, as she was born ill and didn’t want the rest of her kittens to get ill too — good survival instinct). Miaoulis got her name not only because she would “miaou” all day, but also because of this Greek hero. Bobo got his name from DJ Bobo that I had a crash upon at the time.

I totally recognize myself in Homer Simpson (although my IQ is admittedly over 100). I like to eat a lot, including donuts, I am abrupt and have weird humor, I am lazy, I don’t have much hair left, and of course, I have this weird fascination about pigs: spider pig, spider pig… I totally get that.

JBQ is a Marge. Always the logical, down to earth person, who likes things being in order. He even has the long hair to prove all that. And he loves me so, even if I am a pig.

I’ve talked many times on my blog about the mountainous village I am coming from, Skiadas. A friend, who originates from the same village too (and currently lives in Athens), sent me a URL with a picture of the village. My parent’s home is not visible in the photo though, as it’s on the left side (only half of the village is shown in the pic). I lived less than 6 years there, ages 2-4 & 9-12, but it’s what I consider “home” (I was born in Athens, then moved to the nearby city Preveza, and later we stayed for good in Louros, a nearby town). When I close my eyes at night, that’s the only place I find myself into.

My favorite times there were during Easter. So many people would come back to the village from the surrounding cities, Athens or even Germany. For at least a week the village would be buzzing with 400 people who came back to their birthplace for the biggest celebration of Orthodoxy. Everyone knew everyone too, so there was not much you could do to escape the social requirements of being presentable and well groomed at all times.

And at the Easter night, at 12 AM, either at the Saint Paraskevi or Saint Christopher church, the mass would take place and the whole village would be there. All 400+ of them (not all fit inside the church). The lights would go off, and the priest would share his candle flame with someone, and the flame would spread among the crowd. Soon, the only light available would be candle light. Some people would use fireworks in the later times, but originally in my village some men would usually used their guns to shoot towards the sky (hehe…).

Then, we would go home and feast on either fried, or as a soup, lamb/goat intestines (the animal was given to us from my uncle, as in my own family we never herded big animals as my father is a house builder instead). I preferred them fried personally, with home-made fries (potatoes usually from our garden, stored from the previous year). And that felt as an amazing food, as we had to fast for at least a week before Easter (a strict vegan diet, while on Good Friday we were not allowed to eat anything oily either — some people would fast like this for 40 days, e.g. both my grandmothers).

And the next day, what a feast with our extended family! Greek easter lamb (or goat). Best. Food. Ever. Food coma for the rest of the day. And many bathroom visits too.

But the day after Easter, the village population would go down to about 100 people again, and today, only about 35 people live there. Since most inhabitants left the village at around 1990, the school was abandoned, and none of the six churches have a mass anymore as there is no priest to fill in. An abandoned village, just like so many others in the Epirus region. Mass migration to big cities to seek better employment and a better life. Life at these villages is hard in the winter…

I miss my hens though.

Just came back from the doctor. I have this back of the neck problem for a while now, where my neck will do crackling noises when turning left and right in the area where it attaches to the head, while sometimes I will literally hear the blood going upstream with difficulty (like trying to drink a soda with a bad straw). He suggested an MRI. Not sure if I will do so yet, but I might have to. And all that because of the way I sit in front of my PCs in the past 10 years.

I remembered today a great uncle and a great aunt of mine (brother and sister) still living in the mountainous north Greece. The great uncle was born with health problems, he is disfigured and he can’t control his body well. They are both in their 70s now. My aunt never got married. She dedicated her life in taking care of her brother. Sending him to an institute was not an option as not only these cost money, money that sheep herders don’t have to spend, but also because back in the day Greece didn’t even have such institutes, and the ones that appeared later were abysmal in living conditions. So she stayed with him. Never got married, never had a companion in her life. I am sure that there would have been some arranged marriage talks in her youth (that’s how it was done back then in the rural Greece), but by mentioning of also taking care of her brother probably cut these deals off. That’s true love, and even more importantly in this case, true responsibility, right there.