The City

Note to readers: For most of the past (almost) five (a long time!) years, I have written on this blog at least twice per month. I really appreciate you reading it! This month, however, was very busy (this whole summer has been good, but has gone by quickly and has had a lot of adjustments: new job, new daily schedule, new place to live, etc.) and writing this two blog posts was unfortunately not possible this month, and perhaps won't be happening in the fall. I still love writing, and I want to keep this blog. I am just unsure right now whether I will be writing once or twice per month from now on. I will at least be writing once per month.

Now, moving on to my topic this week - "the City." I have wanted to write about this for a long time. I remember once when I was a young teenager (13 or 14) I was outside of Toronto in some small town in Ontario on a school trip and I said to a friend "I just want to go back to the city." I have always been a city girl, but the older I got the more I realized that the meaning of 'the city' is relative. I imagine that to the surrounding areas/suburbs/further out more rural towns of bigger metropolitan areas or cities, that main city is "the city."

I guess it was probably the show Sex and the City which first made me realize that just because I referred to Toronto as "the city" it wasn't the only "the city" around. Even though I am from Toronto and prefer it to New York, I still have to say that New York (Manhattan) seems like the quintessential and ultimate "the city". The skyline, the density, its fame around the world, its distinctiveness from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx - for all these reasons  I just feel like the term "the city" really matches New York.

The boundaries of "the city" can also be hard to tell. A few weeks ago I was speaking with a client who told me he had a lawyer from "the city". Given that we were speaking in a courthouse approximately 2 hours 15 minutes northwest of Toronto, I wasn't positive Toronto was the city he meant. So I said "you have a lawyer from...?" and he said "Toronto" in the tone of voice that slightly implied I was an idiot for not knowing that "the city" = Toronto. I always thought it was only people who actually lived in Toronto or in the close suburbs (close is not 2 - 2.5 hours away) who referred it as "the city" but I guess I stand corrected, at least in the case of this one man.

In June 2006, my last month in Berkeley, S., K. and maybe L. had all read or were about to read John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley about his road trip across and around the United States with his dog Charley. I thought it sounded good then but I always have a long long list of books (and literal piles of books) to read and that one hasn't yet made it to the top of my list. S. told us that John Steinbeck wrote something about how when people say "the city" they really mean San Francisco. It's true that most people in the Bay Area think of and refer to San Francisco as "the city."(Although what about Oakland? It's on the Bay too and it's also a city!) But I never liked calling it that, mostly because I think that in each person's vocabulary there should only be one "the city" and for me it was Toronto. I also don't think there is just one "the city" in the world, despite what I wrote above about Manhattan. I do think that was probably the original but I think it's great our world has so many amazing cities that are all worthy of being known only as "the city."

I love full (or almost full) moon shots

The phrase "the city" conjures up excitement, tall buildings, lots of people, many different neighbourhoods - all things I don't find (and consequently miss a lot) in small towns. I have now lived in a small town for 2 months and it's pleasant and nice in a lot of ways but do I miss "the city".

What to make for lunch

I love lunch. I am always so hungry in the middle of the day so it comes at the perfect time. I also like typical lunch foods like sandwiches and salads, and going out for lunch is one of my favourite meals to eat out. I have never loved (nor, until recently, been particularly good at) making lunches. Luckily for me, my mom made my lunch until I was 18 and graduated from high school so I never had to make it then. I can't really remember what I did for lunch in either Berkeley or Austin but I know I didn't often eat big lunches or I would go out for lunch with friends. I rarely made lunch. Throughout my first two years of law school I ate relatively little at lunch. I'd have an apple, two mini light babybel cheeses, and an energy/power bar. In retrospect I can't believe that's all I ate but at the time I didn't want to buy (and there weren't good places) something every day and I didn't want to make lunch. Plus, I felt that eating less at lunch let me justify eating more at dinner.

But then last fall, I accepted that I was always really hungry at lunchtime, I no longer liked energy/power bars (not sure what exactly turned me off them but I don't like them anymore), and an apple and two small cheeses was not enough. Around the same time, D. and I decided we needed to start making lunch. For a while I emailed friends for lunch suggestions and did some googling (I googled: easy lunch suggestions) and we were really good about making lunch. We settled on turkey wraps (very good and easy to make: just a wrap, lettuce, corn, tomatoes and turkey) and were quite diligent about making them for a few months. Our good efforts then kind of trailed off (making lunch every day - though it sounds like it should be easy - can be hard! especially when lunch can be bought) but have started again since we moved at the end of June. Eating a proper lunch (so more than an apple and two babybel cheeses) is a necessity at work. I feel like I'm even hungrier at lunch at work because I'm usually running around and/or in court all morning. (While writing this post I also realized that when teaching English in Paris I would eat lunch every day too. I think working in the sense of interacting with other people expends more energy (and thus makes me hungrier) than sitting studying for school the way I did the last three years.)

The last few months before I left Montreal I went to this cafe called Resonance regularly. It was really close to where I lived, had a relaxed and nice atmosphere, and had really good food. I particularly liked their chili and also this sandwich they made which they called "The Thai." I liked it so much that I made note of all the ingredients (there weren't a lot) and decided I would start making it once I left Montreal. I am happy to announce that I have done just that. I am the type of person who once I like something, can eat it over and over and over again. (I can do this for breakfast and lunch - for dinner I prefer to have a few different options, but even then I usually eat one of five different options each night). Therefore, I have eaten my version of the Thai sandwich every single weekday in July. I plan on continuing to eat it in August too, and will probably eat it until I get sick of it and just can't eat it every day anymore. It's not that odd for me to eat the same thing every day for lunch as back in high school, I would eat the same lunch (that my mom so nicely made me) every day: a peanut butter sandwich on a bagel, cucumber slices and an apple. I think eventually, maybe in September, I'll have to come up with something else for D. and I to eat for lunch. Maybe we'll go back to turkey wraps? But in the meantime, I have always wanted to take pictures of each step as I was cooking, like they do on food blogs. And now I'm doing it!

Here are all the ingredients: almond butter, snack size dill pickles,  sriracha sauce and coconut flakes.

First put almond butter on both pieces of bread. 

 (One thing Resonance did that I have not yet tried is make the sandwich on all different kinds of bread. So sometimes it was served on a baguette, sometimes just plain whole wheat bread, etc. I have only ever made it on whole wheat or multigrain bread.)

This picture encompasses two steps: first, put the sriracha sauce (I only put it on one piece but if you really like hot sauce put it on both) on one piece, and then cut the pickles in half and put them on one piece. 

Last sprinkle the coconut flakes over both pieces.

And finally put the sandwich together and cut it in half. 

It doesn't take long to make this sandwich and it is delicious! Enjoy and happy lunches!

Well the universe is shaped exactly like the earth (or thoughts on mix cds)

I remember the fall I was 15 begging my mom to buy a new computer (given how reliant everyone in my family now is on the internet/their own computer it seriously astounds me that all through high school we had one computer for the whole house) that would be compatible with an external cd burner so that I could start making mix cds. A friend had recently shown me Napster and I was so excited about the idea of getting songs on Napster and then using them as tracks on a mix cd. After getting tired of my pestering her, my mom did buy a new computer, I put Napster on it (and proceeded to download Bon Jovi's Always and listen to it over and over - I swear, even then, my music taste was better than that but I still do like that song), got a cd burner, and began making mix cds. A tradition that continued until very recently.

Before I ever made mix cds, I was really into making mix tapes. In the late 1990s, the height of my mix tape making, the process of making a mix tape involved multiple steps. I used the stereo in our dining room (which we still have although rarely use now) to tape songs off of the radio on a blank tape, tape songs from cds onto a blank tape, and tape songs from other tapes onto a blank tape. It took some time (especially timing it right so as to be able to tape songs off the radio) but it was worth it. It was also so fun! I always loved choosing songs and trying to figure out the order I wanted the songs to play in. Plus, the cool thing about mix tapes were that they had two sides. I made a lot of mix tapes for friends and they always liked them. I remember one friend telling me that her older sister listened to the mix tape while she painted their living room and I felt so cool that a cool older sister liked the tape I made.

By the year 2000, I had made the transition to making mix cds with my shiny external cd burner. I made mix cds for friends on a regular basis through the rest of high school, university and after that. I loved making them and some friends very kindly said I had a talent for doing so :) Further proof (not to brag these compliments/stories just make me smile) is that I made a cd for my brother once and his then girlfriend (now wife) L. heard it, took it, and then played it a lot at her apt and her roommates all loved it too. In the fall of 2006 I made a mix for my friend D.  who was a PhD student I knew through my friend K. in Berkeley and was that fall starting a new job as a professor at a small college in a small town in Pennsylvania. D. told me he played the mix I made him at a party he had and multiple people asked him about it. He said (and I quote) "I relished telling them, fuck off [my first name] made it for me!" :) The only person who hasn't liked a mix cd I made for them was N. (I made him one during university) mostly because he said he didn't like Ben Harper, and I had put at least one (maybe two) Ben Harper songs on the mix. To be honest, N.'s rejection of my mix cd talent still bothers me to this day. I think it's because I pride myself on having a good sense of the types of songs/music that my friends would like. I must have genuinely thought N. would like the Ben Harper song and it irks me still that he didn't! This sounds so cheesy but figuring out which songs go well together is a bit of an art form, and one which I am good at 99% (N. being the sole exception) of the time.

One of my favourite part of mix cds is writing liner notes to go along with it. The first time I distinctly remember writing liner notes (or at least calling them that - I may have included written notes with some cds I made for friends in high school but I don't think I did) was in June 2004 when I was taking a summer course at Berkeley. I made a cd for my brother and I decided to include notes explaining why I had put the songs I did. I had so much fun writing notes about the songs (sometimes I would just include little facts about the band or a little anecdote about the first time I heard it) that I have since written liner notes for every mix cd I've made since then.

Example of liner notes except mine are always handwritten 

Whenever I think about making mixes for someone, I think of that scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack's character is making a mix for this woman he just met despite having a live-in girlfriend. I remember seeing that movie as a 16 and then 17 year old and wanting a relationship like John Cusack and his girlfriend Laura (her name in the movie). Even though for most of the movie their relationship was on the rocks, there was this one scene where they were both lying in bed reading and I remember thinking "One day I would love to have a boyfriend I could lie in bed with while reading."

This is an image of the exact scene I am talking about! 

I like giving mix cds a name. Usually the title wouldn't be that exciting just "Insert first name's Mix CD!" but sometimes cds I made had names. S. once made me a cd which she called Rainy Day Mix because I was so sad about G. turning out to be such a loser. I loved the title so much that I made her a cd titled (creatively I know) Rainy Day Mix Volume II. and then a year after that I made her another one called Rainy Day/Dreaming of Spring. (I actually have all three still in playlists on my itunes and I was just listening to Volume II. and was reminded of Modest Mouse's Third Planet and how much I like that song (and that's where the title of this post comes from). S. and I also made soundtracks of our time at Berkeley in May 2006 when we graduated. We burned two copies - one for ourselves and one for the other. I still have both of them saved on my itunes to as "my name: The Berkeley Years" and "S.: The Berkeley Years." I have made for and received so many from L. over the years too, many ofwhich I have as playlists on itunes too.

Mix cds are not the same anymore today what with most people listening to music digitally and not through cds. I haven't felt the same desire to make mp3 mixes over the past few years. Even though I have had itunes since 2004, I just feel like it's been different the past few years and that almost everything is digital now. The last mix cd I made was for D. last spring. I really enjoyed making it but I haven't made any since. D. made me a mix back but he just sent it to me as mp3 files over drop box. I really liked the mix and it didn't feel any mix-like or any less special because I never held an actual cd in my hands but as I am writing this I am thinking it maybe did make me feel a bit sad there was no cd. I think how D. made my mix is the way of the future, but I'm not sure I'm ready to embrace it just yet.

This is in High Fidelity too - it's when he's testing out songs for the mix tape he's making

The romance of rooftops

Rooftops have intrigued me and appealed to me since I was 17 and in Manhattan at the end of August 2001. (One day we went down to lower Manhattan and I remember that the World Trade Center was a fact of life, just there - seemingly viewable from all over. A few weeks later, on 9/11 and in the days following it, I kept thinking back to how we had been in New York so close to when everything changed. I wondered if I would have taken more pictures of the towers or done something differently if I'd known they wouldn't be there anymore less than a month later.) My parents and I were staying at a hotel in mid-town, on a fairly high up floor. We had a really nice room with multiple windows, and through one of them I could access a sort of balcony/fire escape. I think we were there about 3 or 4 nights and I climbed out on to it every night. I could see the Chrysler Building which was so cool and one night, at an apartment building across the street I could see some people having a dinner party on the roof of their building. It looked like something out of a movie - there were bright white christmas lights and what looked like a big table with people gathered around it. I was in awe. It looked so romantic and lovely and fun. I wished I were there, eating on that rooftop too. From that moment, I loved rooftops, despite never having gone on one.

Fortunately that changed in Berkeley, where so many of the apt buildings and co-ops on Northside had accessible roofs. I went on multiple rooftops in Berkeley over my time there but two will always be tied for my favourite. The first is the rooftop of CZ, a co-op on Ridge Road, which I love because of two different memorable nights I spent on it - the first in September 2002 and the second in October 2003. Both times/events/scenes were like something out of a Hollywood movie. And both times I felt so happy and lucky to be on a rooftop. My other favourite rooftop was the rooftop of my beloved Hilgard apt building. Whenever someone would come over to my apt, I would always take them up to the roof.  From both the CZ and my apt building's rooftop I had amazing views of the Bay Area. I could see the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the lights of Berkeley and Oakland, the Oakland docks in the distance, and the San Francisco lights and skyline across the Bay. Both rooftops, at the risk of sounding so overly cheesy, were magical. The views of the sky, of the city lights, the Bay - just writing this and thinking about them make me miss the rooftops and miss the Bay.

Berkeley and the Bay at night

Rooftop of CZ

Another thing I love about rooftops are the conversations that take place on them. In addition to many fabulous conversations on the rooftops mentioned above, when I went back to visit Berkeley in November 2006 I stayed one night at K.'s (and formerly L.'s but she had moved out by this point) in the Rockridge neighbourhood of Oakland. In the four months since I had been gone, K. had discovered she could climb out one of the upstairs windows and sit on the roof. It was different from being on a flat rooftop. Here, we were more on the side of the roof - sitting on it as it sloped down. But K., L. and I had a lovely time that night sitting out on the roof (how I love November in California!) just talking for a long long time. In the same vein, I have loved - since I first heard it in October 2003 - the PJ Harvey song "You Said Something". I was hooked from the first line "on a rooftop in Brooklyn one in the morning." And I still like the song all these years later.  

Toronto has cool rooftops too. N.'s aunt and uncle can apparently access the rooftop of their building on the Danforth from which you can apparently, according to N., get a great view of the skyline and downtown. Ever since N. told me about that rooftop I have wanted to go to it but the one time N. was painting his aunt and uncle's apt and therefore could have invited me over and taken me to the roof, he didn't! Annoying. I still wish I had gotten to go on it :) L.'s old condo building in Toronto had a rooftop patio which was also really cool. Maybe one day I'll get to live in a building in Toronto with a roof!

I told this friend L. (yet another L.!) I had in Austin about my love of rooftops and she told me about this short story by an Indian writer named Anita Desai called Rooftop Dwellers. I read it and loved it. It's about a young woman living on a rooftop in Delhi and about the community of rooftop dwellers she became a part of. I don't remember too many details but I do remember the main character being able to see so many other rooftops, and by extension so many other people living their lives on neighbouring rooftops, from her own front door. It was a very good story.

Rooftop dwellings in Delhi

I also like vistas of rooftops and Paris is the best for that. I love the view of Paris from Sacre Coeur in Montmartre mostly just because you see all these distinct Parisian rooftops. And though I know those roofs aren't made for rooftop patios or rooftop dinner parties, they are still very beautiful. But overall I would prefer a roof I could go out on over the roofs of Paris.

Rooftops of Paris with Sacre Coeur in the background

Well I know we should take a walk but you're such a fast walker

I love walking. I will almost always choose to walk somewhere over taking the bus/subway/car if I can. I just love it. I have always loved going for walks in the places I live. I used to take such amazing walks in Berkeley. I remember in June 2004 when I was taking a summer course and a lot of my friends had gone away for the summer I used to take long long walks by myself high up into the Berkeley hills. It was really really pleasant. I read somewhere recently that you should try to take 10,000 steps a day - the article even said to get a pedometer so you could keep track. I had no idea how far 10,000 steps is so I just googled it and it said that 2,000 steps is about one mile. So I need to walk about 5 miles a day (I wish it were in kilometres! I am bad at transferring between miles/kilometres and celsius/fahrenheit!) a day. When I was in law school, I definitely met that target because the walk between the school and my apt was fairly far. But I'll need to work harder to meet it in the future.

I also read somewhere that children who walk to school (I can't remember if the article gave a distance) do better in school (who knows if this is true...) than children driven in a car because they have a chance to be outside and to start their day being active. I know that I loved walking to school be it at Berkeley or McGill just because it was nice to have time every day to listen to a podcast, to be exercising, to be outside, to clear my thoughts, think, reflect, etc. Walking is a great way to start your day! That said, in high school my mom drove me every day, and I did just fine. So I don't think there is necessarily a correlation between walking to school and doing well. The new apt D. and I will be living in when I start my new job is a 5 minute walk from where I'll be working. At first this seemed like a downside to me because I love walking so much and it's an easy way to get some exercise in. But then my mom reminded me that it's not ideal to show up at work sweaty, which is how I would often show up at McGill :) This just means I am going to have to go for long walks either before or after work (or both). I am also thinking seriously about getting a dog sometime soon. One of the main reasons I'd love to have a dog is that I would love to go for walks with her. I visited some family friends in Florida once who have the most lovely golden retriever named Skyy (named after the vodka). They lived about a 10 minute drive from the beach and R. would take Skyy for long beach walks every morning. He said it was great for him because it got him to exercise and Skyy loved it. Although funnily enough since she is born and bred in Florida (although she was from Tampa which isn't right on the open ocean or gulf) she didn't like going into the ocean. But yes I'd love to have a dog with whom I could go for long walks.

My favourite way to explore cites (new ones or ones I know already) is by foot. Taking the subway in new cities can be interesting but walking is, for me, always a better experience. I love seeing different neighbourhoods, different shops, etc. all by foot. I get the chance to hear more, see more, and feel like I am a part of whatever city it is I am in. Walking on beaches is another thing I love to do whenever I have the chance. Walking right next to a body of water is very pleasant.

I am glad more people are taking walking as exercise seriously. When I taught English at Air France I remember with one group I had the students talking about what exercise/sports they liked to do. One of the students (this really nice woman who had an Italian boyfriend she was about to go on a holiday to Sicily with! I remember this so clearly because I have wanted to go to Sicily since I was told blood oranges grow there) asked me what exercise I did. When I told her I walked she laughed and pressed me to tell her what other "real" sports I did/liked. So while I did try to defend walking as a form of exercise, I also quickly said swimming just so she would be satisfied. But yeah, walking is exercise! And it's cool that more people are starting to notice that. I don't want to get all my exercise from walking but it is a form of exercise, and one that most people can participate in!

Being a Fan

TEAM CANADA Hockey fans!

When I was 16, I bought this cheesy little book called The Fun Book! 102 ways for girls to have some in some bargain bin at some bookstore. It had lots of suggestions, like rent a convertible for a day and tie a scarf around your hair while you drive (preferably beside the ocean or a long desert highway), and go have a drink in a hotel bar. I couldn't rent cars or drink in bars then but they seemed like cool ideas for when I was older. Now that I am older, I haven't rented a convertible, and while I've been to a few hotel bars it's not a regular habit. They still seem like cool ideas though. One of my favourite suggestions in the book was "Be a fan" - complete with a really cute illustration (the book had really good illustrations) of this curly haired woman wearing a team jersey and watching sports on TV while cheering. I loved that one then because I was a big sports fan in high school.

Here's the book

In 2000, 2001 and 2002 the Toronto Raptors basketball team were good enough to make the playoffs. So many of my friends liked the Raptors. It was always fun to get to school and talk about the Raptors game from the night before. And I was lucky enough (thanks to my dad) to get to go to a lot of games, including a playoff game in May 2001 when the Raptors were playing (and that game beat) the Philadelphia 76ers. Going to games was always so much fun! That year the Raptors heartbreakingly lost Game 7 in Philadelphia at the buzzer and I was crushed. The next year, if I remember correctly, they lost in the first round of the playoffs. But those years of cheering on the Raptors were so fun! Now they haven't made the playoffs in years and aren't that good anymore but I still do like them and hope they will get good again. I definitely know the best players from the early 2000s way better than I know or care about the best players today. I obviously loved Vince Carter (we all did and we were all sad that  he ended up leaving the Raps) since he was a Raptor but I also loved Chris Webber (C-Webb) of the Sacramento Kings. He was the best!

C-Webb

In terms of Toronto professional sports teams, I like the Blue Jays and Raptors best (it's a tie).  My love of the Jays stems from the early 1990s when they won the World Series twice (1992 and 1993) and were awesome!! Last year and this year, mostly thanks to my dad who is a big Jays fan, I have gotten back into them. I like watching the video replays of the game highlights that they win. Last year, my parents, D. and I went to two games (the Jays won both times) which were a lot of fun. I was (and definitely still am) a fair weather Leafs fan. I only ever care when they are in the playoffs.When I was in high school they made it as far as the conference finals a couple of times and that was  exciting. But I have just always preferred baseball and basketball.

The three outfielders do this every time the Jays win!

But in addition to baseball and basketball, I really like professional tennis. Tennis also one of the few sports where professional women players get as much attention as professional male athletes do, which is awesome (it's just sad that doesn't happen in more sports.) My all-time favourite tennis player is Steffi Graf. I also really really like Andre Agassi though and I love that they are married! I also really like Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Rafael Nadal. Tennis can be a really exciting sport to watch. I also like how it's an individual sport. Team sports are cool but there's also something neat about competing for (and relying only on) yourself.

Steffi

Serena and Venus

The worst part about being a fan is that it is so hard when your team loses! I especially feel like I can't take it when the team/player I like starts to lose. I remember when I was a kid and Steffi Graf was still playing tennis. I would start to watch the final of whatever grand slam tournament it happened to be and if she started to lose I wouldn't be able to handle it and would just off the TV and run upstairs. This year's Jays have so far in the season been a disappointment. They just cannot get to 6 games below .500 (at least so far) and that's bad! That's terrible in fact. They keep plateauing out at 7 games below.500 and it is really frustrating! If I am watching a game or checking the score and they are losing, I just turn off the computer and decide not to watch. Then I also try to avoid The Toronto Star's website because they always put  the Blue Jays score right on the homepage. It's nice to be surprised though. For example during last year's women's US Open tennis final, I saw that Serena Williams was down in the final set and it looked like she was going to lose. So I turned off the computer and figured she had lost. The next day when I went online, I saw a headline about Serena's comeback and to my happy surprise discovered she had actually come from behind and won. So that was nice! But yes, normally the way I deal with it when my team/favourite player loses is to pretend the match/game didn't happen :)

In some ways it's embarrassing that I care (it's embarrassing that anyone does) when my team loses. But on the other hand, I guess that's what makes it so much more fun when my/your team wins. There's this line in the song 11th Dimension by Julian Casablancas where he sings "Where cities come together to hate each other in the name of sport." I read an interview with him where he said he was thinking specifically of the Philadelphia Phillies and the NY Mets rivalry and how Philadelphia and New York supposedly hate each other because of that rivalry. Julian Casablancas also said in this same interview that he is a Mets fan which I love because I feel like most celebrities are Yankees fans so I think it's cool he prefers the Mets. But anyway, I get his overall point that cities hating each other because of sports is ridiculous. But I also think it's pretty confined to that one sport. In that, people from Philadelphia hate Mets fans and hate NY in regards to its association with the Mets but can have other objective opinions about NY not based around baseball. Maybe for some really intense diehard baseball fans it's a different story and they'd disagree with me, but I'd still like to think most people would be able to separate their sports and non-sports feelings.

So to conclude, being a fan is a good way for girls (and guys) to have fun. But it's also difficult at times. For now, I will just hope that in June the Jays can finally make it to 6 (and hopefully 5-4-3-2-1-0) games below 500, and that the tennis players I like win the French Open.

The Intriguing World of TV Spies

Recently I've watched a few different TV shows about spies and have been thinking quite a bit about the things that go along with being one. My aunt, uncle and I went to the Spy museum in DC back in the fall of 2006. It is a really cool museum. Unfortunately I don't remember that many details of our visit but I do remember reading a story about this couple (it's all a bit hazy so I can't remember everything) where the man was a Russian spy and his wife didn't find out until after he died! It must have been just so crazy to find something like that out after your husband dies. The next time I go to DC (and I do really want to go visit L. there) I will for sure go to the spy museum again.

D. and I started watching the show Homeland this past fall (we watched both season 1 which had aired the previous fall and season 2 which aired this past fall) and I am really into it! It has really sparked my interest in the CIA. I added some books about the history of the CIA to my Amazon wishlist and I look forward to reading them at some point. Claire Danes' character is an analyst - not a spy - as are most of the people she works with; so even though they are not spies I still think it works to talk about that show here. D. and I watched half (to be honest the movie was a bit slow and we just never went back and finished the whole thing) of the movie Fair Game which is based on that CIA spy Valerie Plame who Dick Cheney outed as a spy. Both Plame and her husband wrote memoirs about the incident (both of which are on my Amazon wishlist as well) which I am curious to read. Plame, unlike Carrie (Claire Danes' character on Homeland) was a spy, and thus could not tell her friends or family (including her husband and kids) about her assignments, where she was going, etc. Her friends didn't even know she was a spy or worked for the CIA. Spies had always seemed glamourous to me. (I imagined tall attractive people in trenchcoats walking down dark rainy streets.) The idea of continually getting to try different personas and be someone you're not at first seemed appealing. But when I think about it, not being able to tell people who you really are and what you really do seem like really acute downsides.

I imagined spies wearing trench coats like this.

Another show I've just begun to watch in the past few months is The Americans. I have long been fascinated with Russia/the Soviet Union and the Cold War and this show is all about that! It takes place during the early 1980s in Washington DC and is about a seemingly all-American couple named Elizabeth and Phillip who are actually secret KGB spies. Elizabeth is played by Keri Russell who I have loved ever since she played Chloe on Malibu Shores way back in the day. (Side note: the movie Salt with Angelina Jolie also deals with Russian spies in the USA and it is a really good movie!) The show is really interesting. In addition to all their spy work (which involves wicked disguises. Elizabeth and Phillip are constantly trying out different wigs, glasses, etc. each episode) the show raises a lot of interesting questions. Elizabeth and Phillip have two kids - Paige and Henry - who don't know their parents are really Russian. Elizabeth and Phillip are pretty different. Phillip seems to like living in the US a lot, while Elizabeth is completely devoted to Russia and her job as a KGB agent. Despite her hatred of all things American, Elizabeth convincingly plays the role of perfect American wife and mom. It's fascinating. She also doesn't seem to get stressed (or at least show her stress) by living under false pretences all the time. While she seems to genuinely care about her kids, it's clear that the KGB and Russia come first which is really interesting. Neither Elizabeth nor Phillip seem to give much thought to how their kids would feel if they were ever to discover that their parents were actually Russian spies which to me is crazy. Their poor kids would have their lives totally upturned if their parents' real identities were ever discovered!

Some of Elizabeth's various disguises. 

Keri Russell on Malibu Shores!

Two other interesting things I've noticed from The Americans: 1. KGB spies are trained really well and are amazing at hand to hand combat! It's always really interesting to watch how good Elizabeth and Phillip are when physically fighting others. 2. The show gives viewers lots to think about in relation to the role of women in early 1980s society, and in traditional male spheres like the FBI. Women are subjected to sexual violence - or feel the need to use sex in order to get information - on a regular basis. I'd like to think things have changed in the 30 plus years since then but the answer is probably that they have not changed enough. 


D. and I have also been watching this funny TV show called Archer recently. It takes place during the 1970s (except they have cell phones and the internet) and involves a spy agency called ISIS. The show is a comedy though, and is also animated. It is very funny. I always used to hear D. watching it and wondered what he was watching and laughing at. So I watched a few episodes with him and thought the show was actually really funny. We started at the beginning and are now in season 3 (there are four seasons and it's still going) and it's actually a really funny show. I love that they're spies/secret agents but my favourite character is the HR person at ISIS, Pam. (It's hard to pick a favourite though - all of the characters are pretty funny!) Mallory Archer, the head of ISIS, also  has been having a secret, many years on-going affair with the head of the KGB which is really funny too. Watch it! It is a light-hearted and fun spy show.

Here's Pam!

So far from my previous view of spies as alluring, attractive people in stylish clothes who jet set around the globe, these shows have shown me that the life of a spy can be difficult, amusing and at times seemingly mundane. Regardless, all of these shows reinforce the fact that shows about spies in any form are still a lot of fun to watch.