Author: Stacy Horn

I’ve been thrown into the past! I spilled orange juice on my laptop and now I’m on an old Mac, with an ancient version of Instant Messenger running in the background, hearing sounds I haven’t heard since I was in love with this guy and my heart would pound whenever I heard that door-opening sound effect it made every time he appeared.

I remember how terrified I was to switch from this operating system to my new computer and OS X, it was so completely different. But it was wonderfully, unendingly better. I don’t like being back here. I’ve just been saying on Echo how I want to pick a subject for my next book that puts me in a whole new world for a while. Living in Durham for a few months showed me that I would like that (although I did get terribly homesick, I love New York so much).

Change change change change change. Love it, hate it. That guy will never again come through that tiny IM door, even though my heart still pounds.

Maybe the problem isn’t change so much, it’s that we are not in charge of when or how it comes about.

What should I write about next? If I get the chance to write again? I’m saying that to appease the gods of change, knowing how they like to mess with me. The bastards.

Please behold the lovely, long magnificence that is Finney. Don’t you want to curl up beside heem??

Okay. Gray hair. There’s this article in the Times about not dying your hair and just letting it go gray. It’s in response to a recent book about the subject. (How is it possible that there is enough to say about this subject to fill a book?) The author argues that we dye our hair thinking it looks better, but it really doesn’t, you can always tell, it looks artificial and like you’re trying too hard. The author also argues that you don’t have to be preternaturally gorgeous like Anderson Cooper or Meryl Streep to look good going gray.

I agree that if you get a bad dye job, and go too dark (or too light) you do end up looking older, and even a little pathetic and sad. I recently had to fix my hair after someone colored my bangs my actual natural brown, because it looked weird and fake and aging.

I went back to what I normally do. I had the colorist do highlights instead, which leaves some gray, which looks more natural, and the highlights were a mix of a brown that’s lighter than my natural color and caramel. So, between the gray, the lighter brown and the caramel, it looks really nice. No one is going to tell me that all gray looks better than this. Actually, I’m not all gray, not even close. I just have three patches. And letting those three isolated patches remain is not more flattering than this arrangement of highlights.

That was probably more than anyone would ever want to know about my thoughts about going gray and my hair.

I live a block away from where they used to shoot the outside shots for Carrie’s apartment. There’s a regular tour and people line up to take pictures of themselves and their friends sitting on Carrie’s stoop. I just passed these people a few minutes ago. There were a couple of cute outfits in the crowd, I noticed.

Did I ever tell my Sex and the City story? I probably did. Well, here it is AGAIN. When the show was on the air they filmed many times in my neighborhood. Unlike most film crews, they were always very nice. A friend said that was because they knew they’d have to keep coming back to the same neighborhood. Film crews can be incredibly rude. I would guess they’d say people on the street can be incredibly rude, and that’s probably true, too.

Once, when they were filming a scene with Carrie and Big, the crowd started interacting with the characters. “Don’t do it, Carrie!” “You can do better than this guy!” They had just wrecked the scene, but instead of yelling at them, Chris Noth turned around and started argung with them, in character. I couldn’t hear him myself, or I don’t remember what he said, but he was cracking the crowd up. The crowd and him went back and forth for a minute or two, it was a lot of fun for those of us watching. There was a wonderful spirit on the street afterwards. It was a lovely warm night and I walked home happy.

I was so glad to read that the Sex and the City movie is finally going to happen!! It will be so nice to see all the girls again.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think this puppy is the cutest animal of all time. Finney? Buddy? I still love you most of course. And should you learn to do something this painfully adorable I will reconsider my position.

[Video removed because the link no longer works.]

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this. I heard back from my editor about my first draft. As far as I can tell she loves it, wants changes, and I love her changes. Aside from saying, “Stacy, the book is perfect, you are perfect,” this is as good as it gets. The changes are not huge, structural, re-do changes, which would have been a less happy thing to hear. But more along the lines of, “more of this, less of that” type changes, and a request for one more paranormal story, which means more research which I love. I figure I have two to three more months of work to do and then I will have a book! So, I’m happy. I have a meeting tomorrow with her and her assistant, and then it’s back to work. I’m considering today the last day of my vacation.

This picture is of a sign above a school playground. It reminded me of the playground at St. Philip Neri’s, where boys are girls were also segregated. I had a nice memory of the time I leaned over the painted white line which separated us and while the nuns weren’t looking snuck a kiss with a boy I liked.