Resurrection of the five star

More than 4 years have passed since my last post, which, let's be honest, was not that stellar or scintillating. Still, re-reading the entries gave me some great memories of a couple of past lives - when did I ever live in southern France? In that sprawling garden specked with palm trees and hugged by a 6-foot stucco wall that Oliver seemed to scale without the least bit of effort. The barbecue terrace roofed by a criss-crossing of grape vines and a twinkling string of dragonfly lights. The images are in my mind, the photos filed deep somewhere in a folder called 2005. How was it that I lived there? And how is it that I'm now stuck in this most pedestrian of a life, back in the U.S., a 9-5 temp job, most of my French forgotten?
Which brings me to the resurrection - the revival of the five star. My inspiration for "Wanna be a five star" is here, but now, in the middle stretch of my early 30s (please can we just stop counting birthdays now??) my five stars have taken on a whole new meaning. My five stars are not about languages, they are not five countries or the five office days a week that lie as an obstacle between me and the weekends. Five stars, my friends, continues to be the setting of goals, the personal challenge I always meant it to be, but now that challenge is much different, much more profound -- at the moment, the challenges are not entirely known to me, the outcome even less certain.
I have my Master's degree, I have a vague idea of what I want to do, I have no idea where I want to be, or where I will end up. But for the moment, the challenge lies ahead. The 9-5 drudgery or the infinity of possibilities? Only the stars know for sure.

Lost inspiration

I found this incomplete entry under "drafts," and since this is the first time in 4 years I've even logged onto my blog account, I had no idea it was here. I'm so intrigued, I wonder what great, cold-medicine induced thought inspired me to write this post. It was called simply: "Frenadol Inspiration", dated 8/23/05.

I got one of those nasty summer colds which are always blamed on 1. air-conditioning or 2. "change in air pressure". Wherever it came from, I'd like it and all of its brain-filling mucus to go away -though it did allow me to take a 1/2 off from work and yet another excuse to not go to the gym (I've now put going to the gym off for 23 days, the last effort was foiled by my forgetting to bring workout pants. argh). Anyway, I am taking Frenadol, which is the worst-tasting cold medicine you can find, and may have no effect whatsoever on the actual cold symptoms. It does have paracetamol (acetominophen) and caffeine, which makes my headache go away and makes sure I'm awake to enjoy it. Last night I couldn't go to sleep, so I blame it on Frenadol. But while I was laying there, I started thinking about

waaaaah!

I just had lunch with a friend who had also gone to the interview for the TV show and they told her right away that they wanted her, while they told me they'd "call me next week". So even though the week is only half-way over, I think my budding TV talkshow career is all the way over. I think that if they didn't tell me right away, that they won't tell me at all, so I will just add it to my list of almosts, along with any play I ever tried out for after high school and all of the decent flats I looked at while looking for a place to live (well, even the really decrepit ones had just been taken). Next time I will try for loud, obnoxious, pushy instead of my usual mild-mannered self and see if that gets me anywhere. I had nothing to lose anyway, and it was a fun experience. Right?

Another kind of star

On Tuesday I got a call from a woman I hadn't seen or heard from in about 3 years. She left me a message saying a friend of hers is producing a new daytime tv talkshow and are looking for people of different nationalities to participate in a weekly roundtable to discuss current events. They were looking for an American (me!) who speaks good Spanish (also me!) and who is nice (but of course, me!). So I called up Juan Carlos the producer and he had me come in for an audition on Thursday. I went and met one of the writers, who had lived in New York for 5 years as a kid and was wholy unimpressed that I was from Colorado. He seemed to think I grew up wearing skirts and skipping through fields and milking cows instead of being a real American, which was for him someone from New York. Ugh, I hate it when I meet foreigners who think there's nothing more to the US than NY or LA. Unhappily, a girl walked in right after me from New York (bi-atch) and the writer and her became fast friends while I sat quietly trying to think of something to say about New York so he would be interested in me again. Aaanyway, next I went into the meeting with the directors and some writers, I guess I don't really know who they were. They grilled me on current events and asked if I had access to info on events from the American point of view, to give a spin to the show. I don't know what they really thought of me, but seems to smile and nod appropriately. So they either loved me or were giving me sympathetic encouragement. I'll find out next week if I get to go on to the next step as token foreign girl...