Category: Uncategorized

The streets all around my block (but not MY block) have been decorated. It looks really pretty. Who did this?? This is Waverly something. (I’ve lived here 30 years and I still don’t have the streets straight.)

Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky (every once in a while I must chant to show the universe that I recognize my luck in living here and having a rent stabilized apartment that supports my writing, blogging, cat-loving life-style).

I’ve just started working on one of the chapters I’ve been looking forward to writing most. It’s going to focus on EVP (electronic voice phenomena, audio recordings of the dead). The Duke guys didn’t actually work on EVP, in fact they disdained it, but it fits in the story and I don’t want to say how or why. It’s a surprise! Anyway, I just can’t get enough of EVP. I’m not convinced these are actual recordings of the dead, (sorry). I’m one of those people who believes this is it, but if those voices are not dead people, what are they? Those answers could be even more interesting, no? I just re-read the chapter about sound in Diane Ackerman’s book, A Natural History of the Senses, which is so good by the way I must BEG you to read it. Please read it. I BEG YOU.

Weirdly, my beliefs don’t make the recordings any less scary. And I could be wrong, is the thing. Speak to me, Jacob Marley! I need to find the best audio experts in the country and see if they will help me understand the issues.

Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, (that I get to write this chapter).

I put up my little, desk-sized Christmas tree. We’ll see how long those ornaments last. The cats broke their first within seconds. There was a little kitty high-fiving action, but they stopped when they saw me looking.

Meanwhile, I’ve been splurging somewhat lately in the beauty area. I have to recommend this new place I went to to get my brows done. Christine Chin. Christine read me the riot act about my brows, then went to work and I love the results. I have to go back in a month, because she’s changed the line and I need to grow out certain spots. She also made promises about what she could do for me with a facial and I believe her. So when I go back to get my brows done I’m going for the facial, too. Yes, this is why the terrorists hate us, I know. And, I just realized that with this paragraph I probably lost any male readers I might have had left.

Had a lovely dinner out last night with Hadley, Angus and Jonathan. They are the people who help Echo out with technical stuff. I almost never get to see them in person. Our exchanges are mostly like this:

ME: [X] is BROKEN. Help!!
Hadley or Jonathan or Angus: Oh yes, I see what’s wrong. No problem, we’ll fix it!!
ME: My heroes!! (Okay, I don’t say that but I think it.)

I just noticed that you can see the book, “Life After Death” on my shelf. I just finished “Phone Calls From the Dead,” yesterday. Death, death, death. (It’s research for my book!) And, speaking of terrorists, there was a time when you would have seen the World Trade Center in the distance in this view from my window. Oh God. Remember the smell? I just remembered that you could smell the fires burning downtown for months. Months. I had forgotten that.

The roses crashed, and I didn’t have the heart to just throw them away so I put the petals in a bowl. I just realized that this picture, next to ones I took when I first got them, is like this sad cycle of life and death. Isn’t this bowl of petals urn-like?

Yesterday I had one of those days. One thing after another went wrong, among them, Echo’s web server crashing. I had to go down to where we have the server co-located to manually fsck (showing off one of the few unix commands I remember after all these years). I get there and can’t get the keyboard to work. I don’t know what to do. There’s a couple of guys working there on their servers so I go over and ask them if they have a keyboard I can borrow. One guy says “yes,” before I even finish asking the question. He finds a keyboard, brings it over and plugs it in for me, then he gives me a bunch of cables that will make my life easier in the future, tells me what they are for and how to use them, and finally he tells me to keep the keyboard. Because of him I was able to bring the web server that this blog runs on (among other things) back up.

The guy’s name is George Sukkarieh. A happy ending thanks to George Sukkarieh. Thank you, George!! That was way beyond nice of you.

I own this painting by my friend Jonathan Herbert. I want to take it out of the frame I spent a fortune on, because it cuts it off on the left a little, and as you can see, there is no room for any cut-off there.

My undergraduate degree is in fine arts. I wonder what happened to many of my fellow Museum School graduates. Too many years have gone by to remember most of their names, alas. At least one became famous–Nan Goldin. Her work was stunning even then. My one-time roommate Linda Dennis did a painting of a purse I would love to own. I wish it had occurred to me to buy it.

I always wanted to be a writer more, and holy shit, here I am, writing for a living. Who says the universe hates me??

I’m so sad that our performances are over! That’s it. Done. That pleasure is no more. Until next year. Thank GOD for next year. That’s me in my new top. I also bought a new necklace and earrings to go with it. Pretty, no? I love the whole outfit.

I still haven’t decorated for the holidays. The cats are bugging me. “It’s like toys grow on trees during the holidays,” they say. Then, “Wait a minute. Toys do grow on trees during the holidays!”

Merry merry
Merry merry
Just lining up the picture
with these lines!