MY EYE!!! MY EYE!!! Something is going on with my eyes. I've been wearing contact lenses for the last several years and...... I've been slipping on the maintenance part. Well, now it's time to pay the band. The pain had been brewing for a day or two.

It started with the feeling that I had a grain of sand in my eye. It quickly progressed to downright terrifying, I mean unbelievable. Any sort of light absolutely killed me. I didn't have any health insurance, but I had to go get checked out. I actually had to wait until the sun went down to go to the hospital.

So I go out and it's snowing, I like really cannot see. The first cab I hail wouldn't take me to the Westside; he said the roads were too bad. That was crap; he was just being a jerk. I get another cab to take me to the hospital. He takes me to the wrong place; the right place is a couple of blocks over. I am in unbelievable pain, it's snowing, I'm in the wrong place AND I can't see. I am a sitting duck.

I finally make it to the right place and am quickly diagnosed with ????? I am prescribed an ointment sent on my way.

I call my manager at the Harley-Davidson Cafe and inform him that I will not be able work the following day. It's the first time in my life that I have ever called in sick.

I had many friends in my room at night in the form of bats without wings.....RATS!!! Or mice, they are all the same to me. Get this I had a reading light up on my fancy loft bed. Well, it wasn't really all that fancy. The light cord ran down to the floor. One night I woke up and saw 3 or 4 mice scurrying. One was literally running down the cord of the light, another on top of the TV and another on the floor. I was officially freaked out. I mean, in one sense, it was really cool because it was clear that I was doing for my future. They added character. I guess.

I finally found a place to live in Manhattan!! I moved into a 3 bedroom apartment with 3 other people. There was a Korean girl and Chinese guy; they were a couple, a Jewish girl and I. We were like the United Nations.

My room was so small it was unbelievable. It was the size of a walk-in closet with the bed built up on a loft. I could barely stand up under the bed and I'm on 5'8". It served its purpose for eleven months. It also had plenty of mice. I would hear little noises at night. At first I didn't know what it was. I soon caught onto their game.

It was rough, bussing tables at a theme restaurant in NYC. The money sucked!!! I was so broke that I had to wash my uniform in the sink. The neighborhood in Hell's Kitchen, where we lived, was another story. Can you say "crackhead city?" Greg couldn't seem to understand that we were "no longer in Kansas". This was "HELL'S KITCHEN, NYC"!!! NOT Virginia Beach, VA!! You don't have to talk "every" crack head. I remember one night on the block a guy thought Greg said something to his girlfriend. I think it was a set-up of some sort. He could tell that we were new in town. I was like "Greg c'mon!! Let's go!!"

Anyway, we both started taking classes at New York Performance Works downtown in Tribeca. I booked my first New York acting job in September; it was a promo/trailer for a pilot. At this point I was sleeping on cushions on my brother's floor in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This is also when I decided that living in Brooklyn was NOT going to work for me. Nothing against the planet Brooklyn it's just working the hours that I do I was spending way too much time on the train. Greg had decided to go back to Virginia to regroup. New York was much more difficult than he expected. Also, I think getting so close on that soap gig kinda got to him.

Meanwhile, at work I was having some "issues" with my pay. I confronted the GM about it a couple of times and the second time he said he was thinking about promoting me from a busser to a server. Hmmm...I was very skeptical. I knew I was a good worker and I thought he was going to keep me through the Summer and then fire me when business slowed down. I'm in New York, now I don't trust anyone!! Lo and behold Scott Young was true to his word and one of the worst jobs I ever had turned into the best job I ever had. Waiting tables was quite a challenge for me. I didn't know how to balance a tray of drinks very well and I had NEVER had a drink of alcohol in my entire life. I had alot to learn, but I had so much fun being there. I met so many people that I really liked; it was a very good time. Thank you Harley-Davidson Cafe management & staff.

Okay, this is the deal. Greg and I have been searching for jobs since we arrived in NYC two weeks ago. We haven't been very successful, thus far. On Friday we applied at a "TGI Fridays" in mid-town Manhattan. The gentleman we spoke to, 'Rocco' was very encouraging. He said that it didn't matter that we didn't have experience as waiters because "we train all of our staff anyway." Cool!!! He told us to go to another location and see another 'Rocco' and he would take care of us. The first mistake we made was to think that this would actually work and the second was to stop looking elsewhere for employment. Today, Monday, we show up to see 'Rocco' and he totally dissed us, New York style. Welcome to the big city kids!! I just sat there and laughed because he was so rude to us.

Afterwards Greg had an appointment with a photographer for headshots and I decided to go back to the Harley-Davidson Cafe, alone, where we had inquired twice about employment. The two previous times we were there I felt the GM, Scott Young, liked us but couldn't do much with us since we didn't have experience. I walk in and see Scott and I think he was surprised to see me AGAIN, so I told him my situation. I said "Scott we'll do anything". He says "I know". I say "No, you don't know. We'll do ANYTHING". He sees that I am serious and just looks at me for a moment. He motions for me to hold on a second and disappears downstairs. A second later he returns and says to "come in tomorrow @ 4:30pm, wear all black." YES!!! We finally got jobs, both of us. Did I mention that we were hired as bussers?

It's time!!! The moment of truth is here. We had finished a year and a half with our private teacher and we were leaving. Our friend Dalbe Markman had set us up with two girls who were willing to let us stay with them in New York on a temporary basis. We traveled to NYC by Greyhound. While we were waiting for the bus to leave I felt like I had been released from prison. I just didn't feel like I was going to get what I wanted if I stayed in Virginia Beach. We sat at the very back of the bus 3 seats across for the 6+hr journey. I turned to Greg to see if he was feeling the same. He wasn't. As I was getting ready to speak I saw that he was crying his heart out. He was leaving a girlfriend and close friends and it's just hard. He was fine moments later. NEW YORK, NEW YORK!!! We arrive. Greg and I actually had to share a bed for 4 months!! The shower was in the kitchen!!! This apartment was a trip, it was in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan (46th bet. 9th & 10th). I only had two-hundred dollars to my name. In New York City!!! We hit the ground running, I starting auditioning right away mostly for commercials. Within 3 weeks Greg almost booked a role on "All My Children", he got down to the last 5 guys who tested at the network. It was an interesting time and I wanna thank Lindsay Dickon & Shaunda Bradley for letting us stay with them and Dalbe Markman for setting it all up.

I made my decision to move today. I am really going to do it. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The longer I stay in Virginia Beach the more time I put between now and obtaining my goals. Again I get a nudge from talk radio. I was on my way back from a long trip to North Carolina for an audition and I was listening to an interview with Sandra Bullock. Sandra was talking about her journey and how things had worked for her and she said "..........and then I moved to New York." Right at that point I answered the radio and said "I'm moving too!!!" I got home that night and called Greg and he was thinking the same thing. The big question was how we would make this happen. We had a mutual friend, Dalbe Markman, who had friends in New York who were willing to let two strangers come to stay with them. I put in my two weeks notice at both of my jobs. That night I lay not able to believe what I had just done. I guess I had to move now.

In early January Greg and I made the trip up to NYC. We didn't really know what to expect, we just knew that someone in New York was interested in us. We both did monologues and they were pretty bad, but she wanted to sign us anyway. I guess she saw potential in us, she gave both of us contracts and we were on our way back home to Virginia Beach. We were so excited that we don't even remember the trip back home. We really felt as though we were on our way and we were!! The kicker was that she wanted us to move to New York within 2 weeks. What!!! We knew we couldn't get there that soon, but we were working on it. In the couple of months that followed we both got a few calls for auditions in New York. It was a taste of things to come.