Category: Uncategorized

20 pound Finney is the fattest cat in New York who doesn’t have diabetes. I thought I detected the beginning of the signs (my last two cats were diabetic) but no. Thank God. That gets expensive. So now he has to go on a diet. The vet said to get him down to between 274 and 240 calories a day. He’s at 300 now. Right. No problem. 26 – 60 calories less. Who can fine tune their cat’s diet like that??

This picture is my start at the ghost photography business. I had the night flash option on and he moved. So, that’s the trick.

Other good news yesterday:
the world was hit with an asteroid 4,800 years ago,
causing a mega-tsunamis, and we weren’t there.

This time.

Remember a while back when I had the picture of the guy levitating and it looked so real? Well, in a 1939 Journal for the Society for Psychical Research, they had an article showing how pictures like this are done/faked. The person here has actually jumped, not levitated. You take the picture when they’re on the downside of the jump, and if they put their toes up and arms down it looks like they are levitating. It doesn’t look like a jump.

Doesn’t it look like this guy is just hovering there?

Today, as a reward for all my housecleaning this weekend, I am having a spa day. It’s just a day I occasionally designate as a pampering day. Among other things, I’m going to a salon to get highlights, and later I will lay around and read things like People Magazine. While eating Cheetos.

Okay, not Cheetos.

What I did this weekend.

– Took everything off the shelves and dusted them if they were books, or washed them if they are washable.
– Organized all my choir music scores.
– Took everything out of the cabinets, washed down, and threw out expired canned food (it’s a post 9/11 thing, even having canned food in the house). Washed down front of cabinets.
– Cleaned out refrigerator.
– Washed down every inch of the bathroom, walls, shower curtain, etc., went through all the products and threw out what I’m not using.
– Cleared off desk, butcher-wax polished, and then went through all the items on desk, cleaned, washed, polished, and then organized desk.
– Washed windows and screens.
– Took everything out of all drawers, washed down, organized and put back.
– Moved all furniture than can be moved and cleaned underneath.
– Woolite cleaned my desk chair.
– Windexed all pictures.
– Cleaned and scoured coffee maker and Briter water pitcher thing.
– Took all blankets and stuff to laundry.
– Pulled out ladder and dusted all the high-up places.
– Organized wires and cables underneath desk.
– Put away summer clothes, and pulled out winter clothes
– Found a nice box for all my extra books (Restless, Waiting and Cyberville). They were in four or five different piles around the place, I wanted them all in one spot.
– Still to do, organize a “to-read” shelf, which means admitting which books I’m not going to get to and getting rid of them.
– Vacuumed and dusted the place to within an inch of its life.

That’s Buddy on the couch, doing his part to un-do all that I have done. That’s okay little dude. Shed, kitty, shed! That’s what vacuums are for.

Someone in there paid $11,000 for a photograph of Madonna. It was a great shot, taken in 1990 by Herb Ritts, but still. The bid for the snowglobe shot I love was $3,900 when I left.

I’m telling you though, I saw more great haircuts, earrings, outfits in there–some women really know how to put it together. Men too, but I was looking for tips. I was happy with my outfit, which was a white tshirt and jeans, with a nice jacket over it and lots and lots of pearls. I swear it worked.

I’m meeting my friend Marianne at an auction to benefit Aperture in a couple of hours. I have no money to bid, alas, but if I did I would bid on this photograph by Walter Martin and Paloma Mu’oz. Isn’t it wonderful and sad?

Look at their work! I’m embarrassed to admit that I never heard of them, which doesn’t say anything about them, of course. There was a time when I used to go to galleries all the time, but it’s been years and years. Now I only go from time-to-time. Oh God, I’m going through their recent works. They are stunning.

Okay, now I not only want a husband I want a rich husband who will buy me art.

(Kidding.)

(I mean I would love an art-giving husband, but it’s not a requirement.)