Author: Stacy Horn

I’ve been absent because I’ve been preparing and obsessing and terrifying myself about a Tedx talk I did yesterday at Tedx Montclair.

Friday night I was a mess. We did a dress rehearsal and I blanked out twice and dropped four small sections in my talk. ‘It will be okay,’ I thought. ‘I’ll work on those sections when I get home.’ Except I got home and I practiced and practiced and each time I got a little worse. I was blanking out more and dropping more. Finally, I realized I was psyching myself out bigtime and I stopped. ‘I’ll be better in the morning, when I’m rested.’ I was even worse.

I briefly considered calling in sick. “I have a 103 degree temperature!” Of course I couldn’t seriously consider doing that. So I left for my certain doom. We shall see how I did in a few weeks, when the videos come out, but I didn’t blank out! No dropped sections! And the feedback I got seemed genuinely enthusiastic!

Thank you Sue Grady for surprising me and being there. And thank you Amy Gash, my editor, who was also there. It was so great to have friendly faces in the audience.

Thank you Suzy Kass for inviting me to speak, and fellow organizers Kathy Smith and Robin Seidon, for all their help and support. And a BIG thank you to Kathy’s husband Steve, for picking me up and taking me home after the event. I would have been a thousand times more stressed out if I had to get up at some ungodly hour to take a train-bus-bus to get there and back. Instead I had wonderful company (and a pep talk) and here was our other companion for the trips, Joe, the Dance Walk Guru from Brooklyn who was endlessly charming.

Note: Here is more of Joe’s story.

I’m watching a live cam of great dane puppies, who are going to be trained as service dogs. I never see anyone petting them and playing with them, which makes me feel bad. But so far, there’s been a lot of peeing this morning. Their sleeping area is surrounded by pee pads. Cats are a lot easier to toilet train.

Update: A very nice lady in red is loving on the puppies now!

I’m very nervous about my dental appointment this afternoon. I’ve got my Tedx talk this weekend so I can’t look or talk funny. Maybe we won’t actually do any work. We shall see.

Bleecker has taken over the tv spot that Finney used to covet. In fact, that is where Finney is sitting in the banner shot. Come on, Finney. You must assert your tv spot rights.

I felt terrible. He crashed into my window and I’m sure it’s my fault for loving clean windows. He hung out here for a while before flying away, so I’m telling myself he’s fine. He was just stunned.

I tried to look up what kind of bird he is, and he looks kinda vireo (never heard of that) and kinda warbler, but I couldn’t find a bird with that yellow stripe on his head. Oh, I think I found him—maybe he’s a Golden-crowned kinglet!

On Tuesday night I’m participating in a panel about singing in public. Apparently, in addition to talking about singing, actual singing will be involved. I have explained that in order for me to sing in public I need to be surrounded by around 100 people who are hiding me, so we shall see.

My terror aside, this should be pretty cool, and it’s FREE. The other people on the panel are John Brophy, and I’m guessing he will be leading the singing portion of the evening. He’s a KJ working out of Portland, and I’ve read about the kind of work he does (AWESOME).

Also on the panel are Slate culture blogger Aisha Harris and Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield, who also has a new book, Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals Of Love & Karaoke.

The panel is being moderated by Dan Kois, a senior editor in Slate’s culture department, and editor of the Slate Book Review, he also writes for a million impressive newspapers and magazines and websites, and he wrote Facing Future, a book about the late Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.

A sad Halloween sign. This was in the yard with the scary girl on the swing though, so no one cared. They were fixed on the awesome set-up.