swingchickie | jumping in with the meme du jour...

i think you've all seen this by now... respond to this post saying "interview me", and i will ask you 5 questions that you have to answer in your own LJ. then you offer to interview other people.

1. I'm pretty sure you once alluded to having been a serious karaoke junkie... like I am now. Where did you sing at the time? How did your oke-all-the-time phase come to an end?

yeah, i really was. i thought it was stupid at first (in 1992 when i graduated from college), but my best friend dragged me up to sing erasure's "chains of love" with her, and i was hooked. my "standard" songs at the time were "love will keep us together" by captain and tenille, "don't it make my brown eyes blue" by crystal gayle, and my best friend and i did a killer version of "enough is enough" by donna summer and barbara streisand. the one place i can remember where we always sang was at the doylestown inn... every friday and saturday night was karaoke, it was PACKED, and they got some amazing singers out. the other places we went, i don't remember the names. but the d-town inn was my favorite place.

the karaoke stuff started to phase out when my best friend got married. it just didn't feel the same going without her. then the doylestown inn stopped karaoke night, and i moved to boston. and it just sort of ended.

2. Everyone has their own version of a city. Tell me about life in your Boston.

oh god, i could write for days. and i don't even know where to start! in a nutshell: i lived in an area called davis square, about a mile from harvard and maybe 5 miles from downtown boston. it was the perfect location for me, because there was a balance of environments at my fingertips... i could walk 2 blocks to the T (subway) and be in the middle of the city within minutes... or i could stay in the square and still have the energy of a busy area (several coffee shops, cool ethnic restaurants, several bars, an old movie theater, etc. etc.) that felt like a neighborhood. i loved to go to the diesel cafe, or to the local ice cream parlor, and just sit there and people-watch and take in all of the energy of the square. and i lived 2 blocks from the square, but my street was absolutely gorgeous -- a stunning tree-lined street with big beautiful old houses that were kept so perfectly. and... cape cod was only about an hour's drive away.

socially, i was in a great spot... drinks on friday nights at the B-side lounge, and old diner turned retro bar that made amazing martinis and had the best bar food ever... saturdays i could run errands walking around the square, or spend the day wandering newbury street (the rodeo drive of boston)... sundays were often bagels and coffee (and maybe shooting some pool) at diesel, where i'd usually run into friends. weeknights were spent out swing dancing or hanging with friends. (or hibernating with some takeout.)

plus... i worked from home... so my schedule was semi-flexible, and i was out driving around in the sunshine on beautiful days. on crappy days, my co-workers and i would call each other and meet up for lunch at a local deli so that we could hang out for a bit and get out of the cold or rain.

i'm re-reading what i just typed, and it doesn't even do it justice. basically, i had the best social life i've ever had, and the best living situation i've ever had, and a good income at a job i liked. it was a great run while it lasted. :)

3. How did you first get into sales, if that's an accurate term for what you do?

i worked at Y-100 for a couple of years as a "recruitment specialist". basically, the radio station hired me (with my human resources background) to focus specifically on employment advertising. so instead of having nightclubs and soda companies as my clients, i was selling radio ads to lockheed martin and red lobster to get more employees. i loved it when i started, because 1. i was still involved in HR, so it didn't feel like "sales", and 2. i got to meet rock stars at the station all the time... but then the job got more sales-y, and more cutthroat (you would not believe the back-stabbing crap that goes on in radio sales), and i just had to get out of it. moving to pharmaceutical sales, while still competitive, was something i was much more comfortable with, because i liked discussing science with people and feeling like i was actually changing people's lives with my work.

4. You're househunting at the moment. Where, realistically, would you like to live?

i'll probably end up somewhere around king of prussia, conshohocken, or maybe phoenixville. the property prices are reasonable, and i won't be too far from the city. i don't want to buy a cheap place in the boonies and then hibernate because i'm too far from philly to go out...

5. Where, unrealistically, would you like to live?

well, there's a few answers for this.

city: boston. (well, "duh")

location within PA: a big open loft somewhere in old city or rittenhouse square. massive floor-to-ceiling windows, hardwood floors, exposed brick, in the middle of all of philly's energy. *drool*

fantasy location if i could change the physical structure of the earth: a beach house within a half hour of my office. (hee.) i love the ocean, i feel really grounded when i'm at the beach... i'd love to be able to wake up on a saturday morning and have my coffee on a deck overlooking the ocean, have massive beach parties with my friends that last all weekend... *sigh* one of my goals is to start spending a week every year with friends in a beach house somewhere. anywhere.