Author: Stacy Horn

These are some of the pictures I’ve sent to my friend Jackie as possible candidates to incorporate into a new banner. I like those top two, but I think when they’re shrunk to banner size they’ll be so tiny they’ll lose what I like about them. Maybe those stretching paws are the best solution (referring to an earlier post and picture).

I like Mondays. The start of a new week. Mondays feel like yet another chance to do something right, for something great to happen, like getting presents in the mail. (Come on, aren’t presents in the mail exciting??)

This week I’m working on what I’m calling the “conductor chapter” of my book. My goal is to get a lock on showing what a conductor does and to do it in a page-turner way. I also have to pick the secondary topic of the chapter. I’m pretty much certain it’s going to be the benefits and dangers of singing, and there are dangers, some pretty scary. I was getting anxiety attacks just reading about them. Seriously, I had to keep putting the Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia down. It was freaking me out.

Aha! I just got email from the conductor of our choir. His answer to a question I asked him has given me an idea how to make this chapter a page turner. Money. Money and art.

And there was yet another photo shoot on Perry Street! This time the model was a guy.

I am under strict instructions from my vet to get Finney’s weight down. I’ve got him on 300 calories a day (we’re going to go lower as we go along) AND daily exercise. He’s bored with the laser pointer, so I’ve been trying to get him to chase cat toys.

He actually likes balled up pieces of paper best, and that cardboard tube thing inside paper towel rolls which I cut up into smaller-sized tube pieces.

I’m reading a book called The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain and it’s good news for us middle-agers. I just finished a section about one of the biggest and longest studies of the brain.

“In four of the six categories tested–vocabulary, verbal memory, spatial orientation and … inductive reasoning–people performed best, on average, between the ages of forty to sixty-five.”

Of course one big one that young people did the best on, and it is a big one, was processing speed. But speed isn’t everything. Needless to say, the results are causing science to take a new look at the midlife brain. This and that study that says we start to get happier at 50.

This is a fountain you walk through. Water is cascading around that glass circle. I tried to take a shot from within, but it didn’t really convey it. It was pretty nice.

My choir is having an all-day retreat today to work intensely on the pieces we’re going to perform this season. I’m a little nervous because I’ve asked our director to let everyone know I’m writing a book about the choir and that I want to talk to anyone who wants to talk to me about singing.

I don’t know why I’m nervous. It’s not like they’re going to stone me. I think I’m scared because there’s a nine year old kid inside of me who is afraid someone is going to say, “Oh yeah? What makes you think you’re the best person to write this book??”

This guy was across the street when I was at the bank yesterday.