Author: Stacy Horn

I said I wasn’t going to do it but it seems I can’t resist competing. This year’s Lap Swim Contest began last week. There are two contests really.

1. First, second, and third place awards are given to the men and women who swim the most laps between July 6th and August 7th. These are given out at each pool, and also to the men and women who swim the most laps of all the pools.

2. Anyone who swims 25 miles or more by August 28 gets a tshirt.

The first year I did it I won third place at my pool, the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, and I won second place my second year, which was last year. I can’t win first place at my pool because the best female swimmer in the city, Anna Jardine, swims at my pool. But that’s okay. There’s a dinner party at the end of the summer for all the winners and for everyone who swam 25 miles, and it’s a lot of fun.

I would at least like to beat my own personal best, but I could only swim two days last week and I know I’m going to have to miss more days between now and August 7th. Plus, I am definitely slowing down. Last night I swam as hard as I could and I swam 236 laps (224 is two miles). When I gave it my all last year I’d manage 240 – 244 laps, and once 250 but that was a fluke and I think they gave us an extra minute or two. So, we shall see.

A wedding I passed by while taking a break during the hackathon last weekend.

My rug is coming back from being cleaned today. Backstory: I sprayed it with Febreze and had a horrible allergic reaction, endless coughing, red and swollen eyes. I found an interesting post about Febreze on a site that also had a page listing the best plants for cleaning the air. I went through their list and researched it against another site which listed which plants are toxic to cats. So here are the best plants for cleaning the air that are also safe for cats:

Boston Fern
Areca Palm
Bamboo Palm or Reed Palm
Ficus alii
Lady Palm
Mums
Spider Plant

I found a cheap spider plant at Home Depot yesterday. I’m also going to look for a Boston Fern and an Areca Palm, and that should do it for me.

A child must have dropped their stuffed animal. Someone came along and put it up in a tree, where it would be safe, and hopefully where the parents will spot it.

I haven’t posted in a few days because I was participating in my first hackathon, a virtual reality hackathon produced by LoNyLa/TimeWave and sponsored by NYVR, NYC Media Lab, Littlstar and Samsung Studio. It was hosted by my alma mater, the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU, so it felt like coming home to me. Thank you Dakota Powell and everyone listed above for an amazing event!

Here are two of my teammates, Jack Wilkinson and Karthik Swaminathan, looking very serious. Probably because we had two days to build a prototype so it was all code, code, code. OR, they were thinking, ‘take the picture already.’ More teammates below.

Jack again, and Saraswathi … I can’t find where I had written down her last name! This is unfortunate because Sara is particularly smart and talented and she is going to rule the world some day so this is going to come back and bite me in the ass.

This is the back of Gary Chan and that is Cindy Bishop, with the cardboard headset on, looking at our fabulous creation, which you can see here. It was a great weekend, now I must do nothing. Except swim two miles tonight.

As if I needed another reason to love him, Jon Stewart bought a farm in New Jersey that will be used as a home for rescued farm animals.

He’ll be running the sanctuary with his wife Tracey, who has a book coming out titled Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better (Lisel Ashlock, Illustrator). Thank you Jon and Tracey and everyone else who does what they can to make the lives of animals better.

Happily, I still come across a few people a day who are polite, and practice basic sidewalk etiquette, but for the vast majority it seems all bets are off. They park themselves in the middle of small Village sidewalks, instead of moving off to the side, making everyone squeeze around them, they walk two or three abreast when there’s no room for that (note: exceptions made for people with animals or children).

There’s one thing that some people do that is beyond the pale. You’ve got people going in two directions on the sidewalk. Sometimes, when you’ve got slow moving people in front of you you need to go around them, like passing a slow car. Except some people will do it whether they have an opening or not. If you don’t get out of their way they slam into you. I had two people slam into me yesterday. Insane. No apology, no nothing. I was already as far over as I could get without going into the street. I mean what is wrong with people like that? How is that okay? I can only guess that they must be having seriously terrible lives.

A bird eating a fish on Roosevelt Island. Poor fish. Doesn’t it look like the bird is eyeing me, thinking, “Don’t try anything. You’re not getting any of this fish.”