Category Archives: Personal

Four Years: The Roulette Anniversary

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Four years ago yesterday, I met a Brit in the Las Vegas’ Palms Hotel at the Ghost Bar, and thus started a love that inspired a novel, and countless other blog posts, dribblings, and musings.

Since we didn’t actually start getting serious until four months later, we have two anniversaries. This March anniversary is a fun, casual date that always involves some sort of gambling. Our first ever date, we gambled – so, we carry on the tradition!

Our first anniversary, we went to the dog races in Portsmouth and won a bet on a dog named “Vegas” and “Ghost Dog” (or something VERY similar – it was bizarre).

Our second anniversary, we hit the Bingo tables with all the other blue haired ladies, and lost terribly.

Our third anniversary, we bought a bunch of scratch off tickets, and spent the evening scratching one off for every beer we had. We won $5.

So, for our fourth anniversary, we decided to gamble our entire evening…meaning, there was not one decision we could make on our own, we had to either flip a coin, spin a roulette wheel app, or pick a name out of a jar.

I knew the evening was going to go awry when we started naming “types of cuisines” (everything from delicious French to mouth-watering Thai food), but I threw in “Irish” as a joke at the end. Well, of course, I picked “Irish” out of the 16 other types of cuisines. I love Irish pubs on a good day, but not exactly the most romantic way to spend a four-year anniversary.

We threw in a bunch of shady places, but luckily the one we picked was Timothy O’Toole’s – not too far away, a fun, lively pub (underground), and one I had been wanting to go back to for some time (not sure why…).

The next steps went like this:

  • Number each item on the menu
  • Associate number with number on roulette wheel
  • Order whatever item the roulette wheel fell on

Needless to say, Jock was limited to veggie choices (he gave up meat for Lent) – and ended up with 1. a pretzel and 2. a bread bowl of tomato soup. But is soup supposed to do this??

I ended up with a Reuben sandwich (which I haven’t ordered since I was a teenager), and we both drank some Stouts mixed with Sam Adams (because the wheel told us to).

The next place we went was determined by a coin – we picked North or South, and then headed in that direction to the first bar we saw. Whether or not we met up with some friends was also determined by a flip of the coin, and the rest of our night, we had to drink the following beverages:

  • Bloody Mary
  • Gin Spritzer
  • Red Wine
  • Lager
  • Stout

Surprisingly, I feel pretty damn good today.

Moral of the story? It may sound freeing to not have to decide anything for an entire night, but ultimately, you know what you like better than some dumb iPhone roulette app!

Lots of love, Jocko.

P.S. If you want to see some embarrassing photos of us the night we first met, find my profile on Facebook. :)

What is a Quarter-Life Crisis?

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When I started writing my novel, I was in the middle of coming out of a quarter-life crisis. The themes throughout my novel, Three Questions follow this path. This quarter-life crisis could be described as the moment I left college, left a great job (casting) to start working in a pointless, menial job (aka personal assisting), and began questioning everything that my childhood and teenage life had set up for my adult life to take on. I was promised a world of, well, just that…promises, happiness – adulthood was supposed to be knowing who I was, what I wanted to do, and how to make anything happen. I was unprepared. I didn’t know this “moment” or “crisis” even existed at this point in a person’s life.

But, then again, I should’ve just googled it – apparently, I wasn’t the only one – although it felt like it at the time. Wikipedia has a brief page on having a quarter life crisis that says “The quarterlife crisis is a period of life following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the late teens to the early thirties, in which a person begins to feel doubtful about their own lives, brought on by the stress of becoming an adult.” Jesus – I should have written that post. Why didn’t you tell us that becoming an adult was so difficult?!

symptoms of a quarter life crisis

Del (the main protagonist in Three Questions) addresses it in a scene with her best friend, Samantha. They are both actresses in Hollywood, and have been since they were eight years old. For the first time, they are questioning this path:

“But our parents told us all along, everyone did, they said that if we believe something enough, we can make it happen; that if we will ourselves to be actors, then we can become them. That’s the American way. They filled us with this intense self-belief that we are special and unique and if we believe it and set out to do it, we can. Then our mid-twenties strike,” I said.

“Out of nowhere,” she added.

“Completely out of the blue,” I agreed. “I swear we were 18 just yesterday. Mid-twenties means we’re almost too old. ‘Almost’ is just as bad as being too old. But then, oh but then, they do something even worse which is to tell us the unlikely tales of the actors in their forties who all of a sudden make it big. But that’s the question – what do you do in the meantime? Wait around for a career that may never happen? Spend most of your life miserable on the off chance that you’ll be discovered? I can’t do that.”

“Neither can I,” she admitted.

“So, what do we do?” I asked. My phone made a noise. I had a text message.

“No idea.”

quarter life crisis no mozzarella sticks

A BBC article from 2002 also stated that this was becoming more prevalent by the rise in student debt – they weren’t even in the middle of the unemployment crisis yet. I research further, and find a Guardian article from just May of last year titled “The quarterlife crisis: young, insecure and depressed”. They say it better than I would:

“It is supposed to be the time of opportunity and adventure, before mortgages and marriage have taken their toll. But struggling to cope with anxieties about jobs, unemployment, debt and relationships, many young adults are experiencing a “quarterlife crisis”, according to new research by British psychologists.”

But it makes sense – I graduated from college in 2006, and I felt it. I can only imagine what students now a days feel.

Quarter-Life Crisis Vs. Mid-Life Crisis

I’m not sure when it started – there wasn’t a definitive day. It was definitely a slow build up, and I don’t really even know when I got out of it. All I know is that it happened, it sucked, and I don’t look forward to the mid-life crisis. Although, to be honest, now that I have analyzed, been through and written a book about this crisis, I’m hoping I’ll recognize the next one and be able to by-pass it.

I know where a quarter life crisis comes from – you’ve spent your entire life with your parents, with a structure of some sort – and all of a sudden, you’re shot out of school’s digestion tract and expected to compose yourself, but the tract has given you all sorts of skills, ideas & nourishment, but no real way to deal with it in “real” life. You’re left like a big pile of poo – all this tract has done is left you slightly smelly, feeling like shit, and mushed up in a pile of confusion. (Bad analogy…really bad – but I know I felt like a big pile of poo at that point in my life!)

So, does the mid-life crisis come from realizing you’re more than half way through your life, and are closer to death than your birth for the first time ever? That kind of mortality reality would hit me hard.

Because, that, I think is scary. But, if it’s similar to a quarter life crisis, where you’ve gone the last twenty years taking care of children and other people, and working, and all of a sudden have all this free time, and no idea what to do with it….well, that, I could deal with. After all, I’ve written a book about just that.

All I know is that I plan on enjoying the next twenty five years…until the next crisis.

If you’re going through a quarter life crisis, you might, just might – get some solace from this novel, Three Questions.

Guest Posts & Happy Stuff

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All this plane flying has given me some time to write a few guest posts on other blogs (stay tuned for another one on Smitten By Britain‘s blog as well).

First up, I got to thinking more and more about why British actors are on our airwaves, and are seemingly better actors than us, the American counterparts.

This is what I came up with on Michelle‘s blog, The American Resident: Are British Actors Better than American Actors?

Then, a year ago, Toni Hargis, a British expat who now lives in Chicago and who met up with us in London during out expat bloggers convention (I’m exaggerating, there were about 6 of us), asked me to write about my repatriation experience.

Finally I got around to writing it: Repatriation: An American’s Story.

She also finished my novel, and wrote a smashing review! (You can read all my current reviews here – be sure to leave one if you haven’t already.)

“Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just another “girls-gone-wild” or chic-lit debut novel. Not only is “Three Questions” the delightful love story of American Adele and an Englishman named Guy- it asks surprisingly searching questions of both the characters and the reader.
From the simple – “What is your favorite meal?” to the scary “How would you describe your mom?”, Lopez delves deep into her characters’ hearts and souls. You’ll be rooting for the lovers throughout the book, and you won’t be disappointed with the denouement.”

8 days left before my Kickstarter ends – help me turn my novel into a screenplay through your contributions, and some great rewards (if you haven’t already). Email everyone you know, tweet out to the world, and post on Facebook! We can do this together!

 

Dreamers vs Realists

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I was watching a “Modern Family” episode the other day that perfectly described my relationship with Jock. Bear with me for a moment if you’ve seen it.
One half of the family (we’ll call them the “dreamers”) believed themselves completely able to lodge a pumpkin across the length of a football field. The other half (the “realists”) guffawed at the sheer idiocy of such a ridiculous idea.
The dreamers, not willing to give up their, well, ‘dream’, went to the football field with a rubber launching gadget and a pumpkin while the realists stood back waiting to be proven right.

Of course, the idea was ridiculous, the pumpkin barely got a few feet and splattered all over the ground, and the realists gloated for a few seconds while the dreamers were embarrassed and shamed. That’s when the magic happened (says the dreamer, and smiles).
The realists realized their cruelty (I like to call it “stomping on a poor, starving kitten after he rushed to get the last sip of milk”)…ah hem, anyway…and rushed to help figure out why it didn’t work and figure out a solution.

Now, if I weren’t a dreamer, I would never have written a book, left my job at Kelly Services to start working for a new startup nor would I always want the window seat on a plane simply to finally know what it was like to fly. But if Jock weren’t a realist to bring me back to earth, I would have spent all our money already, I would have published my book many months earlier when it wasn’t ready and I would have made countless other mistakes. Plus, we never have to argue about who gets the window seat. He prefers the aisle with extra leg room.

I like to think that I remind him that amazing things can happen if you let them and that sometimes dreaming makes life that much more exciting.

Here’s to the Ying balancing the yang.

Getting to know someone

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Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most overlooked.

I titled my book “Three Questions” based on the simple concept that Jock’s friend came up with while they were out and about. His friend, Darrell Kingsbury, used to sit in a pub and go around asking silly questions to the boys – “if you were an animal, what would you be?” “If London Bridge is standing why is there a song about it falling down?” or “Who would you rather…”

When Jock and I met for those 8 hours, we knew that there wasn’t much time to get to know each other in Las Vegas, while drinking and dancing. So, he took his friend’s idea, and brought it to our letters while he was traveling through Africa. He randomly chose “three questions” and the rest is history.

At my book launch, I created these great Moo.com Mini Cards where I took three questions from my book, and created conversation starters.

It was such an integral part to the beginning of Jock and my relationship, that I never really appreciated how special it was. Maybe couples that have long-distance relationships actually have more time to get to know each other because they’re not confused by all the physical and everyday stuff that sometimes gets in the way.

There’s just something so intensely romantic about getting to know someone through letters. Of course, the challenge is making sure that you aren’t projecting false information onto that person.

So, do you think you can get to know someone better by being long-distance, or is it better to be in the same town?