Stacy Horn

No more pictures of me for weeks, I promise. But I had to take a billion shots just to get two that were remotely acceptable. God I’ve gotten so old and jowly. Notice the strategic hand (and hair) placement.  I should include one of the rejects just so you see what I really look like, but I can’t. I’m only human.  I’ll stick with the illusion.

I went all out for my author photo for my book Waiting For My Cats to Die, and hired a make-up artist and one of the best photographers money can buy. Marion Ettlinger can make anyone look like a rock star. But then for the next couple of years I had to deal with the inevitable look of disappointment when people met me and I wasn’t that glamorous in person. For my next author photo I kept my glasses on and didn’t wear any makeup except what I use in real life (almost nothing, lipstick and a little concealer under my eyes).

But here are the three shots I considered for Waiting. They were taken in 2000, I believe it was, and I went with the last one below.

This was was a little too va-va-va-voom.  Plus my bangs look funny.

Something was off about my face.  Those shoes are cute, though!  Do I still own those??

The winner!  Reminder:  I didn’t look like this then and I certainly don’t look like this now!

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.)