Stacy Horn

I need a break from writing so I’ve decided this weekend will be my spring cleaning weekend. I love spring cleaning. Not only will my apartment be freshly, wonderfully clean and organized by the time I’m done, but I give myself various rewards at the end. For instance, I’ll go through all my clothes and figure out what I don’t wear, doesn’t fit and take them down to the local church thrift shop. My reward: one piece of replacement clothing!

In addition to all the usual stuff, my desk is getting a makeover. It’s not bad as far as messy desks go, and after reading that Times article that was very convincing that some clutter is better than excessive organizing the object isn’t so much to clear it. For instance, those two piles on the left? I need them, and according to the Times, a few piles like that can be a good thing. Nonetheless, there must be someway to make it all look better, even with the clutter. So this is my before shot.

I was talking to Chris yesterday about the perfection of our pet’s bellys. There is nothing more vulnerable and sweet and endearing than a cat (dog, etc.) belly. Here is Finn’s.

In other news, I’ve got a birthday coming up and I find a video of me on the Charlie Rose show from 1994. 13 YEARS AGO. If you’re curious about what I looked and sounded like when I was still a sweet young thing, go here. Christ. I was still in my 30’s. This was just before Mosaic, which became Netscape, which became everything we have now, when Gore was calling the internet the Information Superhighway. God I loved and still love that man.

Please give it another go Al Gore. PLEASE run again.

There is no relation between the title of this post and this picture. I just like to have a picture in my post every day, and this is today’s. It’s across the street from one of the movie theatres I go to and I call it the “I Quit, Give me a Burger and a Cupcake and Take Me Now Cafe.”

Nadine, a reader of this blog, is visiting NYC with a friend this week and I wanted to say hi! Apparently they brought the president with them, so thank you for the all-day gridlock, Nadine and friend!! (Kidding.) But it’s also their BIRTHDAYS.

Speaking of which, I prefer the cupcakes at the Cupcake Cafe on 18th between 5th and 6th, and a great place to eat lunch is on that block, City Bakery. So if you have time, you could go to those places one day, but you should definitely get birthday cupcakes at the Cupcake Cafe.

I took this picture at the movies last week, when I saw Year of the Dog, which I didn’t really enjoy, I’m sorry to say. I’d love to recommend it, and if anyone was the audience for this movie I was, but it made me feel bad.

So here I am, on what is supposed to be a lovely day in the 70’s, planning my day and I’m thinking movies. What is wrong with me?? But the guys who made Shaun of the Dead, one of my favorite movies, have a new movie out called Hot Fuzz, and really, there are so many others to see as well, and I must catch up. It’s my job. Okay, it’s not my job.

I’m in a good mood because I’m working on a chapter about the haunting of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Harlem. At one point I thought I might be writing a book about this, so all the research is already done. I’ve edited what I have down to only the best parts, and it’s a killer chapter, and, because I had already done all the research, it feels like I got a chapter for free.

It’s pretty outside my window right now, if you like grey, which I do. Rain rain rain is imminent. I rarely have anything substantial to say, it seems. I do think about things, a lot actually, but then I write all the time and by the time I get here I’m down to: “I like grey.” (“Fire bad, tree pretty.” The cool kids will know this reference!)

I wrote that at around 7 a.m. I think, and it’s 4:20 in the afternoon now.

My birthday is still a month and a half away, but I like to get all my ducks in a row and I’ve already started preparing. I scheduled a hair appointment for a few weeks before. I’m going short again. That’s the main thing. Then there will be brow appointments and pedicures, it’s nuts I know, but it gives me a nice regenerative feeling. What the hell?

Right now we’re arguing on Echo about should Virginia Tech have “locked down” the school after the first murder. I’m on the side that says we only know that the first murders were a warning sign after the fact, there was no way to know that at the time, and how do you lock down a campus anyway, and given that the killer was a student, what would that have accomplished? He could have ended up locked down somewhere with a different set of victims. But I’m all for learning what we can from the experience, and perhaps coming up with the best ways to send crucial information to all students quickly for the future (but again, in this case, that same information would have been sent to the killer).