Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

1. How are you planning to spend the summer?

Working, if my boss continues to have stuff for me to do; performing, mostly with The Homespun Ceilidh Band; going to The Pennsic War.

2. What was your first summer job?

Montessori school teacher's-aide, the summer between 7th and 8th grades. I didn't get paid, but my little brother got a break on tuition.

3. If you could go anywhere this summer, where would you go?

Hadn't thought about it much ... on a whim, I'll say Nova Scotia, 'cause I liked it there the one time I went, I've been meaning to get back for about twenty years, and I'm hoping it's cooler than here. Really it's just that a Nova Scotia landscape popped extremely vividly into my head when I read the question. Yeah, going there would be fun, as long as I timed it so I'd get back in time to prepare for Pennsic.

4. What was your worst vacation ever?

Um ... I'm not sure. I've not done a whole lot of what I think of as "vacations". Does Pennsic count? I think of that as a "special case", not really a "vacation"; but if you want to count Pennsic, well there's the year my fibromyalgia was acting up so badly that I barely got out of my tent all week. Otherwise ... maybe the family trip to one of the Great Lakes, which had some really nifty bits but also had pretty uncomfortable lodging and a persistent sense of "we don't know what's going on".

5. What was your best vacation ever?

Similarly as for #4, I'm not really sure. Maybe the childhood trip to Nova Scotia I mentioned before. Very beautiful scenery, met friendly folks, my first ever time in a rowboat, crossing the Bay of Fundi on the ferry, and stopping at damn hear every "Oooh look what pretty rocks!" spot along the road in Maine on the way back to climb around the rocks with my siblings. (That's the trip I think about whenever I hear the Jonathan Richman song, "Oh, New England".) Either that or one of the trips to Florida to visit my grandparents when they lived there, when we didn't also go to Disney World the same trip, and I discovered the joy of waking up on a cool Florida morning, plucking an orange off the tree, and jamming a straw in it to get my morning orange juice. The spur-of-the-moment weekend camping trip to Kitty Hawk with Mgrant goes on the good-vacations list somewhere a little further down, but worth mentioning in passing.