Stacy Horn

It is simply not possible for there to be a cleaner apartment in all Manhattan. Mine is the cleanest. Period. The cleanest among millions. Actually I think I read somewhere that there are 470,000 rental units in Manhattan. That can’t be right. It sounds too small. Yeah, totally not right. It’s 2.14 million as of 2008. Bottomline: my apartment is very clean.

I bought myself a couple of bunches of daffodils as a reward. Finney is in the shot because of the in-house “a cat must be in every shot” rule.

Using the computer’s camera, I took this shot while drinking my morning coffee. Buddy is so sweet.

Howard is stopping by in a minute to return some books. He and Sandra Newman wrote a book called Read This Next, where they suggest, well, just what the title says, what to read next.

They came by one day to ask for recommendations and I lent them all my favorite books. They used a bunch of my suggestions, but one they didn’t was a book of short stories by Graham Greene called A Sense of Reality. Maybe they aren’t Greene’s best, but I love those stories! Why didn’t they use them? I think they’re this wonderful, mostly undiscovered find.

Meanwhile, I learned of this via a tweet: What Happens When You Get Sucked Out of a Plane. Predictably, nothing good.

Spring Cleaning Status Report: One small thing to do and I’m done for the day!

Normally I work from the back (the bedroom) to the front (the living room) which leaves all the big jobs for last. But this year I decided to do the opposite. I figured this way all the big jobs would be done first, I’d get them over with, and it would be smooth sailing from here. That might have been a mistake. I’m exhausted.

Yay about no government shutdown! This way the second my camera comes back to the shop I can run down to the Library of Congress and snap snap snap away!

Yes, I know there are more important reasons to be glad about this. Okay, back to cleaning. (I lied. I’m going to sit for a while with my coffee, browsing the internet and posting on Echo.)

But I have no camera to take a before picture. It doesn’t matter, I’m very neat so few people would see the difference between the before and after anyway. It’s going to take three days and on Wednesday I’m getting a new haircut and color as a reward to myself. This time I’m going short! I’ll use the computer’s camera to get a picture.

I went to a book reading last night. The author was Harold Goldberg, the first person to review my first book! A kindness I will never forget. The book is: All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture. The bad grammar is from a computer games in-joke.

I didn’t know these games have been around for fifty years. The earliest one I remember is Pong. From what he read it seems fascinating. I know there’s this whole world of gamers and creators, but I know nothing about it and it looks like it’s all in here.

I also need to tell the story of my recent Jeans Shopping Trauma. Why is it so hard to find a decent pair of jeans?? But I think I found them, in the most unlikely style (for me).

That’s my niece Nicole in the center, and her cousin (my nephew) Greg on the left and her brother (also my nephew) Chris on the right. (My niece Ellie is not in the shot because she wasn’t born yet!)

Aren’t they all so adorable?? The two boys look a little nervous, and Nicole is protecting them. I’m not sure what year that was taken, but they’re all grown up now. Nicole is 24 (studying nursing), Chris is 21 (finishing up school? political science? wants to work in a foreign country) and Greg is 20 (in school, serious musician). I am the aunt from hell, truth be told. I only see them once or twice a year. But they are wonderful, my loss! Karen, who comments here from time to time is the mother of Nicole and Chris.