Stacy Horn

I have decidedly mixed feelings about the holidays, but there are some things I like, and certain traditions persist.

1. My winter cleaning. (Done.)
2. Buying flowers in Christmas colors. (Red or white)
3. Playing holiday music. (The best part–that Snoopy and the Red Baron Christmas song! Amahl and the Night Visitors!)
4. The Grace Church Choral Society holiday concert.
5. Christmas decorations. (Sparkly things and colored lights!)

I’ve always fantasized about spending Christmas in New Orleans but once again, I will not be doing that this year.

Does anyone else have fantasies about what you’d do for Christmas if you could do anything you wanted?

This is one of the Ralph Lauren stores at Bleeker and Perry, where I am very very very lucky to live. I still can’t get over how Bleeker Street has changed. I have to say, even though I can’t afford to shop in any of these stores I love having them here. They are very pretty and I enjoy looking at the things in the windows. Don’t you love the holiday look here?

Cynthia Rowley, across the street, is into this amazing shade of blue right now, and it’s running through everything in the window and the store. Alas, although the Marc Jacobs stores make a big effort with their windows, they are usually not a success.

Pretty
holiday
windows.
Thank you,
talented
window
decorators.

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.