Stacy Horn

Missing Photo! A photograph was here! Don’t know where it went!

It’s so hot I can’t sit at my desk, even though the air conditioner hasn’t been turned off in three days. That’s my desk, with the curtains drawn, also for three days straight. The only place that’s bearable is on the couch, in front of the air conditioner. It’s insane.

I’m so glad I got past my reluctance to change and upgrade things. I’m sitting comfortably on my couch with my Powerbook, on a wireless network, with my digital camera, which took the picture of my desk, which I uploaded in seconds to my blog (can’t upgrade the blog software, alas, but that’s a $$$ issue) and I’ve got my HDTV running the non-stop, hell-in-a-handbasket news, oh! It’s one of the PC guy and MAC guy commercials! I love these. AND! I just got email from my British editor congratulating me on my publication day (for the UK paperback)!

Life is good. For a moment here and there. Fuck. IT’S A TRICK. Isn’t it? The universe is messing with me.

Update, 3:25PM. Finney joins me on the couch. Rumsfield is on CNN, so I have to turn the channel. Ugh. Jennifer Lopez on another channel, can’t stand her. Oh good, Rumsfield’s gone. Back on CNN. Hello little Finney. Thank you for joining me on the couch.

This is Gaither Pratt and Hubert Pearce. Gaither was a scientist, and pretty much the second-in-command at the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory. Hubert Pearce was the best ESP subject they ever found. Look at them. They are 22 and 27 in this photo. So serious. They’re just starting out in their lives. Both wanted to become ministers at one point. Gaither changed his mind, but Hubert did go on to become a Methodist minister in Arkansas.

And both are now dead. I can never meet them. But I’ve been writing about what they were like for the past month or so. It’s insane when you think about it. I’ve been searching through various archives to find film footage of them, but so far I haven’t turned anything up. But I am in touch with their children, who have been helping. I was just emailing with Gaither’s daughter Ellen last night. And I have talked to a bunch of people who knew them. But still. It’s weird. Luckily, there are a lot of records, tons of letters. I can immerse myself in the correspondence and get a feel for what they were like, and their relationships with other people.

I rescheduled my library visit yesterday. It was just too hot. It would have made an enjoyable thing not fun. I want to go when I can enjoy myself. But this weather is getting to me. I’m doing another fun thing tonight, I’m being interviewed on a BBC show about the cold case book, but right now I’m dreading getting on the subway and going uptown. I’m going to get there early to give myself a chance to cool down before the interview.

The second a fort is provided, a cat jumps in to occupy it.

So today I’m going up to the American Society for Psychical Research to use their library. Normally this would be a nice thing, going up to a library (I love libraries) and then taking a nice long walk home. But New York and other places are about to be burned off the face of the earth and I don’t want to go out there! Oh God, the subway. What fresh hell will that be like??

Well, who knows what wonderful surprises I will find in the library so I will concentrate on that.

I’m going to leave the air conditioner on for the cats, even though they’re begging us to conserve. I don’t have the heart to turn it off in this kind of heat, though. I don’t want them to suffer.

My friends pointed out that there’s a Popeye’s next to my gym and how messed up is that?

First, what is a Popeye’s, and second, I never actually noticed what’s next to my gym. So, this morning I looked. Yup, there’s a thing called Popeye’s, and they sell fried chicken.

Not a temptation for me. (I’m vegetarian.)

My gym is on 14th Street, and 14th Street as you can see is not pretty.

So yeah, I went to the gym this morning.

It was all I could do to work up the energy so I’m not doing another thing today.

Before going to the gym I went to the Greenmarket with Howard, and we ran into our friend

Anne!
YAY!!
(We haven’t seen much of Anne lately.)
(Hi Anne!!)

Procedure done! Thank God I no longer have that hanging over me, or any other medical procedure. I’m drinking coffee with half and half, the way it should be drunk, (is the grammar correct there, because that doesn’t seem quite right) and I am done done done. My hand is bruised from the needle that fed me the drugs to make the procedure bearable, but again, I am done. I am begging the medical establishment to come up with a better way, however. I don’t have to do this again for five years, you can do it in five years, I just know you can.

Meanwhile, I can get back to ghosts and more particularly ghost cats. Don’t you think life after death would be better with cats? The man to the left is expelling ectoplasm which looks like a sheet, but what’s more interesting is the ghost cat at his feet. I would be terrified to see the ghost of a person, but not the ghost of a cat.

I’m intimidated by the chapter I will be beginning soon. A lot of key things happen, but the thing that is scaring me the most is, I have to learn statistics enough to make a decision about what went on in the lab, and I have to make it exciting. I have an idea how to do that, which I think I can pull off, so the scarier thing is getting a handle on the math, which I’ve never been good at.