So yesterday I did an interview on WHDD Radio, our local NPR station and ...yadda, yadda, yadda ... now I have my own radio show. That's right. My own show. The producer called me a short while after my interview and said that they loved my "energy," how it was not too much energy, nor too little, but just the right amount of energy. Then she told me this idea they had for a show and asked me if I'd be interested. I told her that the subject matter of that idea is a passion of mine (it really is but I probably would have said so anyway, since having my own show happens to be one of my big plans.)

So now I have my own radio show. It will only be broadcast in a rather small area of Northwestern Connecticut and NY State, but you will be able to listen to it online and I plan to post it as a podcast right here on my blog each week. Plus, if the show is good enough, I am told, it wilI be offered up to all the NPR stations!

I was offered the show yesterday and, having a lot of what they like to call "energy," I have already come up with a name, format and many ideas for the show. Here it is:

The show will be called, "In House." It's about interesting people and their homes - or interesting homes and their people (I'm a real-estate junkie). I will visit the homes of artists, writers and other colorful characters and interview them about their habitats. So in a sense, each show will have a different host or hostess and I will be the self-invited guest. I also want to interview people who live in interesting and unusual homes and plan to ask them all sorts of interesting and unusual questions. So stay tuned. I pick up my recording equipment tomorrow! Also, let me know if you have any ideas for the show.

Yesterday I learned how to use the recording equipment for my new NPR radio show, In House.. Marshall Miles of WHDD patiently showed me how to use the digital recorder and the editing equipment. He made it all look so easy. I admit it was hard to pay attention as I kept daydreaming about all the fascinating people I was going to interview, and how quickly the word was going to spread about In House and its insightful host, Ann Leary. I thought about how I now need to fashion a radio voice and how I no longer need to worry about my hair. I was sent home with my recorder and microphones and later, I tried to interview my daughter as she drove us to dinner, but I couldn't even get the recorder to record.

Today I tried to conduct my first interview for my forthcoming NPR radio show, In House. I interviewed my friend John Favreau – not that John Favreau (he's actually a Jon). This one. I interviewed him because he’s a friend and I wanted to do a trial run. And he has a cool house. We taped half of the interview and the second half, which, of course was the best, didn’t record because I pushed the wrong button. Then I got home and managed to copy the interview onto the computer and I have to say, I’m not sure I’m ready for NPR, or rather, not sure if NPR is ready for me. People like Terry Gross and Krista Tippett and Faith Middleton all have soothing radio voices. I have the voice of a loud barnyard animal who has somehow learned to form words. I had two microphones – one for me, and one for John. When I wasn’t honking and braying inane questions into my microphone, I was breathing HEAVILY into it while John eloquently answered my dull queries into his. I’d load a snippet of it onto this blog if I knew how, just because it’s so laughable. The whole time John is speaking, you can hear this steady breathing sound – it’s like the slow steady breathing of a sex maniac in the background.
Okay, so I will remember to move the mike away from my mouth when I’m not speaking into it, and I will try to cultivate a soothing radio voice.

Well, I have completed the first two interviews for my new radio show, In House. How were they? They sucked. The people I interviewed - writer/director Richard LaGravanese and author Dani Shapiro - were great. But I'm no Barbara Walters. My only hope now is to learn how to dub over my sputtering, childish voice with a quieter, more intelligent sounding one.

Have some great interviews lined up so hopefully I'll improve. I keep repeating the same things over and over in my head. Must listen when the subject of the interview is speaking. Must not speak over subject, nor guffaw and honk and snort while they are speaking. Must remember to turn the microphone ON, instead of allowing subject to spill her heart to dead air.

I'm the only radio show host who has a blooper reel before she has a real reel.

I have spent the past 24 hours in a fit of frustration and agitation that has me seriously, seriously unwound. I'm not kidding, I fear for my sanity. I have been trying to edit one single solitary interview for my forthcoming NPR show, IN HOUSE. I spent 18 hours on it yesterday.

I'm not cut out for this type of work. This is the work of patient people who are meticulous and painstaking; people with sensitive ears and delicate fingers, not people who pound at keyboards with oversized digits (I have man hands - there now you know) and grind their teeth and curse and wince at the sound of their own voice.

There is steam coming out of my ears right now. It only has to be perfect - why is that so hard?

How have my friends been able to bear the preposterous sounds blasting from my flapping piehole all these years? I have the most affected, pretentious, aggravating voice... how could I not have known? Now I have to listen to it over and over and over again. I was in the WHDD studio today and Marshall Miles and Jill Goodman were kindly trying to help. At one point Marshall tried to edit this part where my voice modulated and trilled over a series of stammers.

"I'm not sure what that is, a stammer or a stutter," Marshall said, "and I'm not sure I can fix it."

His words about fixing my voice made me recall, with mounting panic, the speech therapy classes I was required to take as a small child. I'm speech impaired! Somehow, I forgot to mention this when Jill offered me my own radio show, so dazzled was I at my own fantastical ideas about cleaning out Terry Gross's old desk and sending her on her way.

Must relax. It's just a show. Just a radio show. Just my own radio show.

So, I've been a little busy, these past 24 hours. Yesterday I had three interviews - two in which I was the interviewer for my new radio show, IN HOUSE, and one in which I was being interviewed about my book, Outtakes from a Marriage. I've gotten so caught up in this radio thing that I was a little confused when the other radio hosts asked me questions about my book.

"What's that you say?" I wanted to ask, "Am I to understand that I have written some sort of ...book?"

My first IN HOUSE interview of the day was with dynamic accessories design duo Richard Lambertson and John Truex who described the way they started their business in their Chelsea loft, with animal skins and patterns and orders strewn everywhere. Then I visited the home of the great film director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus) who described the way he watched the Nazis remove his parents from his childhood Bohemian home and how he ended up in his beloved country home in Connecticut.

The day before, I visited the home of bestselling (mega-selling) author Jane Green. Jane's charming book, The Beach House, is about a Nantucket house that brings people together, and in real life, it was actually a beach house that united Jane with her partner Ian Warburg.

So when will you be able to listen to IN HOUSE? Possibly later today! We are working out a few last-minute glitches but you should be able to hear my interview with Richard LaGravanese later today. I will post a link so you can hear the whole broadcast here on my website!

In my first IN HOUSE episode, screenwriter/director Richard LaGravanese (The Fisher King, Bridges of Madison Country, Freedom Writers) discusses the way the offbeat zaniness of his home’s previous owners added to its appeal for him. “They were going through a divorce,” Richard recalls, “and they would mix up a pitcher of martinis and decide to paint a room, but would only paint parts of the room. They’d paint around the sofa….they painted the fireplace purple…”
Richard’s charming antique Connecticut home – the first he’s ever owned – is a far cry from the series of drafty apartments he inhabited as a child in Brooklyn and he discusses the important role the home workspace plays in the life of a writer.

So tune in! I'm going to send updates to my mailing list so if you haven't added your name, just go to my home page and click on "Mailing List" and sign up to hear about future broadcasts!

Well, dear World Wide Web, the day has finally arrived. You may listen to my new radio program IN HOUSE now! Just click on this link to hear it. Okay, well you click on that link and you're brought to a page that tells you all about how great the show is, and then you click on a link called "listen". Then, alas, you must click on an arrow next to my name and then an arrow in the top left hand corner AND THEN you may listen to my show. Trust me, it's easier than it sounds, all the clicking takes about a nanosecond. Hopefully, the radio webpage will be simplified soon.

But please give me your honest feedback. I'm editing future shows and would love to hear what you like or don't like about the first show. Thanks!

Well, if you're in Northwestern, CT this afternoon, tune into 91.9 WHDD-FM radio at 2:00 to to hear my interview with author Dani Shapiro (Black & White, Family History, Slow Motion). Or, once it airs, you can click on the link above, or on my home page here on my website and listen to it any time. Dani has an original letter written by Sylvia Plath just a month before she committed suicide, and Dani reads it aloud during the interview. She's fascinating - Dani, I mean, and she has a lovely voice - so tune in!

I am terribly sorry that you've been unable to hear my IN HOUSE radio interview
with author Dani Shapiro, as there has been a problem with the link to the radio site. Problem should be resolved today. If you live in Northwestern CT, you might have heard it as it was broadcast on Saturday, but otherwise you should be able to hear it here soon.

In the meantime, we have arrived at our vacation home. It's not really our home. We rent it. But I LOVE it here and have spent the past 24 hours trying to think of ways that we could live here. It's just my favorite house in the world. It's been owned by the same family, I think, since they stepped off the Mayflower and paddled out to this lovely island (they seem like sturdy stock, these owners, if they bear any resemblance to their cousins who live next door.) We could never afford to buy this house, but nonetheless, I have been fantasizing about all sorts of way that I could come to own it. I could seduce the owner, I suppose, and marry into the property, but then I'd have to give up him:

He looks so nice with a tan, maybe the owner would marry both of us. I think that's legal in Massachusetts.

Here are the girls rowing around the harbor, right in front of the house.

Here's the view from my window this morning:

Oh please, dear landlord sir, please let us spend the rest of our days here. What could you possibly want with this haunted old place. Only we love it enough to be its rightful heirs. We will devote our lives to its upkeep. We will take in orphans and raise them here. We will commit ourselves to the preservation of the house, its beach, its clams and crabs. We will carefully separate our recyclables! PLEASE!!!!!!!

Okay, so we've sorted out the glitches (I think), on my IN HOUSE webpage. So check it out. It's here.

There's a box on the left and if you click on "shows" you should be able to listen to my first two shows. There is also a listing of upcoming shows. So skedaddle on over there for a look see! Seriously, I'm interested in feedback on the website and on the shows themselves so please feel free to comment or email. I can take it.

Well, it's Saturday again, which means that it's time for another episode of my radio show, IN HOUSE. If you're in Northwestern Connecticut you may tune it to WHDD 91.9FM at 2:00 to hear it broadcast. If you're in other parts of the world, you can still hear it at 2:00 by going here and clicking "Listen Live" at 2:00. Otherwise, you may go here, any time after the broadcast to hear the podcast on my website.

This week's interview is with Richard Lambertson and John Truex, the cofounders and owners of LAMBERTSON/TRUEX, the luxury accessories company that makes beautiful handbags, wallets, shoes, etc.. Richard owns a beautiful shop in Warren, CT called PRIVET, and while visiting the shop one day, I happened to see, spread out upon a gorgeous French antique table, a photo layout of their home that was for an upcoming feature of ELLE Decor magazine. I immediately asked Richard if I could interview him for my show, because I am very interested in how two stylish and design-minded people could collaborate on something like a home interior - and not want to throttle each other to death somewhere along the way.

Richard, John and I met in their beautiful old stone house and sipped iced green tea and talked about relationships, design, work, rest and what to do when your partner wants to hang a portrait of Yaz above the fireplace. So join us!

Somebody at WHDD radio goofed and aired the wrong show today so unfortunately you will now have to wait two more weeks to hear the charming Lambertson/Truexes.

It'll be worth the wait, I promise.

Well, if you're in Northwestern, CT tomorrow(8/16), tune into WHDD-FM Radio 91.9 at 2:00 to to hear my interview with bestselling author Jane Green, whose wonderful new book The Beach House is currently on the New York Times best seller list. If you're not in Connecticut, you can listen to it after it airs, anytime, by going to my radio page here on my website.

Jane Green is hysterical. I told Jane that it's my dream to someday be in a subway, or walking down a beach and see somebody reading my book. I told Jane that I thought this must happen to her all the time because her books have sold MILLIONS and she admitted that it happens, and when it does, she will sometimes approach the reader to introduce herself, Jane Green, the author. You have to listen to the interview to hear how funny she is describing people's startled responses to this.

That's Jane's Doberman in the photo above. I think he's called Boris, but anyway, I immediately adored him because he's one of those dogs who "smiles" when they greet you. It's not really a smile, the way we humans smile, but more of a grimace. It's a sign of submission, one of our dogs does this, so I recognized it as a friendly greeting but thought of the fear it would strike in the heart of anyone who might dare intrude on that lovely household. That dog has some serious pearly whites!

It's a really fun interview - try to catch it!

Some of you might recall that two weeks ago there was a little mix-up and although I had announced that my IN HOUSE Radio Interview with Richard Lambertson and John Truex was going to air that weekend, it did not air. This was due to a mistake that I am now humble enough to admit was partially my fault. There was some miscommunication about which show should air when.

Anyway, now we're running like a finely tuned instrument and the Lambertson/Truex show will run tomorrow, August 23rd at 2:00 PM. Again, if you're in Northwestern Connecticut, you can hear it as it's broadcast live by listeing to WHDD 91.9 FM on your radio. If you live anywhere else in the world, you can still hear it broadcast live by going to the WHDD 91.9 FM site and clicking "Listen Live." Otherwise, you can go to my IN HOUSE radio page, here, and listen to it anytime afterword.

You're going to love this show. First, these men are charming, funny and smart. Their stunning home is being featured in an upcoming issue of ELLE Decor and you'll feel like you're sitting right there in their beautiful sunroom with us. So tune in!

I have already received several emails (and even a few phone calls) about how much people enjoyed today's IN HOUSE show. I have also received inquiries about their website which I feel like an idiot for not having posted already. So here's the link to their site.

This beautiful image is a still from Milos Forman's film, Loves of a Blonde, which was made in 1965 in Czechoslovakia and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. You might be more familiar with Mr. Forman's American films which include One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ragtime, Amadeus, Hair, The People vs. Larry Flynt among many others.

I know it's only Monday, but I have to start raving about this Saturday's IN HOUSE Radio program, because in it, I interview Milos Forman. The man is so fascinating and sexy and charming (his wife Martina is too young and beautiful to be jealous) that I could listen to him tell stories all day. I visited their home a few weeks ago and we talked about his Bohemian childhood, the loss of his parents to the Nazis, the film school he attended in Prague, the logistics of shooting Cuckoo's Nest in a real mental hospital with real patients as extras ...I could go on and on. TUNE IN! Saturday, August 30th at 2:00(ET). If you live in northwestern CT, it's WHDD 91.9FM. Otherwise, click here to hear it after the broadcast, anytime, anywhere.

Today, at 2:00 PM(ET) tune into WHDD-91.9FM to listen to my IN HOUSE interview with Milos Forman. You can listen to to it as it's broadcast by clicking on the WHDD link above, or anytime after the interview by clicking here.

Here's a shot of Milos standing next to what appears to be a giant Oscar:

He won the Oscar for this:

And this:

And was robbed for films like this:

And began his career with films like this:

Join my discussion with the engaging and brilliant Mr. Forman this Saturday at 2:00 on IN HOUSE.

Okay, so once again I urge you to not miss today's episode of IN HOUSE Radio. You can hear it if you live in northwestern CT on WHDD 91.9FM. Or go to www.robinhoodradio.com to listen to it as it's broadcast. Or, click here later, if you missed it and it should be downloaded onto my website.

I interviewed Carole Peck for today's show. She owns the very popular Good News Cafe here in Woodbury, CT and she has authored several great cookbooks. She also has these wonderful French culinary tours that she conducts, with her charming French husband Bernard Jarrier at their villa in France.

Carole's a collector. I don't usually do photos for my show but Carole was kind enough to allow me to take some pictures. There's no way to describe Carole's treasures with words alone. In her house you will find fine French tableware and antique silver:

You will also find body parts:

Taxidermy:

Antique toys, Bernard's beautiful artwork, rocking horses, religious relics and a very gassy French Bulldog named Tattoo.

Here's Carole's kitchen:

She does all her cooking on this stove:

It's just a really fun interview. The interview is actually interrupted at one point by the outrageous flatulence of the cheerful and unabashed Tattoo, so I mean, this is as close to Howard Stern as you're going to get on public radio. Tune in!

Yesterday I had a wonderful interview with playwright A.R. “Pete” Gurney for my radio show, IN HOUSE.

I have to admit, I’m getting better at interviewing people. For one thing, I didn’t stop taping once. Usually a phone goes off, or I forget what we were talking about and we have to stop and start again. It just makes the editing so much easier if you do it all in one shot. Also, I was careful to limit my use of the word wow to once every five minutes or so. If you listen to the Milos Forman interview, I use the word as a constant refrain. “Wow,” I say after Milos describes his childhood home. A minute later I follow up another short recollection with “WOW!” then offer the rejoinder “WOW!” to something wildly entertaining he says a moment later, and follow it up with, “wow! Wow!” I’m like some kind of sickly alley cat yowling in response to everything the poor man says. You’d think I’d come up with some other kind of exclamation. Maybe, “Yowza!” Or “Getouttahere!” Or something! Of course, a real journalist/interviewer would have an intelligent follow-up question tucked up her sleeve, or have a snippet of insight to offer the conversation. Wow.

But, like I said, I think I’m improving, and doing my own editing really helps. I have been known to do and say embarrassingly inappropriate things – such as the time I tried to help Moby with his music career – so it’s quite wonderful that in radio land, you can edit out all your own gaffes.

But I think the real reason yesterday’s interview was so easy is because Pete Gurney is so fascinating, and smart and entertaining and charming. It was just a delightful conversation about writing and the theater and actors and directors and children and dogs. There was really nothing to edit at all! Log on here next Saturday and I’ll detail, once again, how you can listen to WHDD 91.9FM anywhere in the world.

Also, don't forget to watch my dear husband:

tonight on Fashion Rocks.

For twelve years now, I have been driving past the house belonging to choreographers Moses Pendleton and Cynthia Quinn. It's a rather aged white Victorian set slightly back from the road. Across the street is an old carriage barn. I've known that Moses and Cynthia use the property as the headquarters for MOMIX, his world-famous dance company, but when you drive by, it just looks like any great old New England house that hasn't been "done." There are usually a few cars parked in the driveway. There's a bit of lawn out front. Yesterday, I entered the Pendleton house, because I had scheduled an interview with Moses for my NPR show, IN HOUSE, and I don't think I'll ever be quite the same again.

Entering the home of Moses Pendleton is like entering another dimension. I walked into that house under the delusion that I'm a rather creative free-spirit, but when I walked out, four hours later, I felt like a prim school marm with a dull mind, an austere sense of style and a death-grip adherence to social norms. Moses's house is filled with beauty and decay, He gives shabby chic a whole new meaning. In the living room, decades-old wallpaper is peeling from the walls, but the color of the paper has aged and now it looks like the whole room is draped in a sort of heavenly gauze. Dried sunflower stalks ten feet tall hang above the beautiful winding staircase and now, drained of color, they look like they could be made of porcelain. Sunflowers, fresh and in varying states of decay, are everywhere because Moses is a gardener, an avid lover of nature and plants - especially flowers. And most especially sunflowers. This is their dining room:

I wish I had taken photos of every inch of that house but I wasn't sure if it was okay, and it was so dreamlike, I wasn't sure I could even capture the feeling of the place with my camera.

Moses is currently choreographing a show called "Botanica" which is about ....well, I have four hours of audio tape of what it's about, but basically it's about what Moses calls his "garden of earthly delights." The dancers were all rehearsing in the barn and I got to see a few of the pieces, and they were astonishingly beautiful. The dancers were trees, and pods and blossoming plants and through their movements, the whole barn seemed actually to be alive with the elements of wind and light and sexual energy and birth. And I got a tour of Moses's garden, which is his inspiration. The centerpiece of the garden is a giant sunburst of Marigolds - "Mary's Gold" - as Moses described them. Here you can catch a glimpse through the arbor of Morning Glories:

My photo doesn't do it justice. Moses is also a photographer, so maybe he will let me put some of his photos of his garden on my blog. Moses sees hues of yellow and gold and amber as energizing sources of life. He loves the ritual of the New England garden with it's cycles of fertility and growth and decline and eventually decay and then rebirth. We watched the sun lower over the marigolds and then it was time to go and when I left the Pendleton-Quinn house, it felt like I was going indoors after being out on a bright lake or on a snowy, sunlit mountainside. Everything seemed dull and dark. It was like being snowblind, but I was flowerblind - completely dazzled by the brilliant energy of Moses Pendleton.

I just received an email from Phil Holland, who went to Bennington with me, though somehow I didn't know him. Phil is a good friend of Moses Pendleton. He saw my previous post and sent me the photo above, The photo was taken from the roof of the house. Those are large Adirondack chairs in the center of the circle so that will give you an idea of the scale of the garden. The sunflowers are in the foreground. From this perspective it looks like something from Chariots of the Gods.

Yesterday Moses read me a poem written by Mr. Holland about a storm on September 11, 2002. I recalled the storm vividly when Moses read it. It was a beautiful, clear day, the first anniversary of the attacks, and in the middle of the memorial service in NY, this storm blew in out of nowhere. Up here in CT, the wind was so intense that trees were uprooted. Anyway, Moses said he told Phil Holland about the storm and then Phil whipped up this poem, but the poem was so beautiful and the imagery was so detailed and evocative that I actually suspected that perhaps Moses had written it himself and that he used the name Phil Holland when he wrote stuff! So now I know that Phil Holland lives! He lives in Greece, not in Moses's mind!

If you're in or near the Sharon, CT area, this afternoon at 2:00, tune into 91.9FM, WHDD, to listen to my IN HOUSE interview with Playwright A.R. Gurney. If you don't live in the area, you may still hear it as it's broadcast, by going to robinhoodradio.com, and clicking on the "Listen Live" link. If you miss it, I'll have it downloaded here on my site, sometime later today.

A.R “Pete” Gurney has written the critically acclaimed plays, Scenes From American Life, Children, The Middle Ages, The Dining Room, Love Letters, Sylvia, and many others. His most recent play, Buffalo Gal has just completed its very successful Off-Broadway run, and I saw the show and loved it and recently had the wonderful opportunity to interview Pete in the place he wrote it—his Roxbury, Connecticut home.

Pete Gurney is not a tortured playwright. He is one of the most gracious, charming, cheerful and intelligent men I have ever met. It's hard to be in his presence without smiling. He smiles all the time. We discussed his years at the Yale Drama School, the shows he wrote and produced while he was a Naval Officer during the Korean war (his audience was literally captive – they were on an aircraft carrier), and why he has always preferered to work at home, with his dog and family around him, when he writes. Tune in to hear one of our great American playwrights discuss what is happening to the theater in the electronic age; and the huge sacrifices actors, directors and writers often make to be able to do live theater.

Here's somebody I encountered at Moses Pendleton's house yesterday:

Here's Moses himself, tending to one of his sunflowers.

Denis and I got to watch MOMIX, Moses's dance company, rehearsing for their upcoming show, "Botanica," yesterday. There was a piece called Nightcrawlers in which the dancers used black ductwork tubing (stuff you would find at Home Depot) as extensions of their bodies and they became strangely erotic earthworms that pulsed and undulated and intertwined themselves with each other in a most beautiful and entrancing way. I've already ordered our tickets for the debut show of "Botanica" at the Warner Theater in January. Meanwhile, their company will be touring in London and throughout the US during October. Click here for details.

Today we're in sunny California. As we were flying in, I recalled the first time Denis and I ever came to LA. We were young. Denis was a comic, I, a waitress. Denis won a stand-up comedy contest sponsored by Budweiser, and we got to stay at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. It was winter and even though it was only about fifty degrees, we splashed around in the pool like kids and then took a city bus all the way to the beach in Santa Monica, which took all day. We were so excited! Denis was going to perform at the Improv! In LA!

This time we've flown in for the Emmys, older, wiser, but still dazzled, as we always are, by this bright city with its colorful architecture, friendly people and impossibly clean streets.

This time it's HBO, not Budweiser footing the bill, so we're staying in Santa Monica. Here's the view from our window:

There's the Santa Monica pier:

Here's Denis reading a script, poolside. I just had to say it, it's so Lucy Ricardo. "There's my dear husband, reading a motion picture script, poolside!"

I have spent the entire day trying to edit my four hours of digital Moses Pendleton into a concise half-hour for my radio show, IN HOUSE.

Why, you might ask, did you interview the man for four hours, when you have a half-hour show? The answer is, because a half hour is just not enough for a man whose kitchen looks like this:

Whose office looks like this:

And whose hallway looks like this:

Moses is a little preoccupied with sunflowers and marigolds and the interview is all about how he is attempting to bring the garden into the theater in his new show, "Botanica." I have recorded a rehearsal but how do I bring the eroticism and beauty of the musical arrangements and choreography of Moses Pendleton and Cynthia Quinn to radio?

I've decided to make it an hour long. There'll be a part I the first week, followed by Part II the second. The problem is, Moses has a lot of energy. So do I. So does his Jack Russell Terrier, Mojito, who opens and closes all the doors to the house with his paws. The three of us just got ourselves whipped into a frenzy of excitement during our conversation and often veered way off-topic, and eventually I would have to suggest we take a moment and collect ourselves, and he would respond like this:
Download file

Anyway, it won't be this Saturday's show, but will most likely be on next Saturday. So stay tuned. This Saturday will be a surprise (to you and me).

Due to my schedule, I've had to broadcast reruns of IN HOUSE the past two Saturdays, but tomorrow, tune in for an all-new IN HOUSE interview with my guest, the brilliant and wildly eccentric dancer/choreographer Moses Pendleton, who directs the word-famous dance company, MOMIX

I got to sit in on a few rehearsals of Botanica, Momix's exciting new show and I used the music from the show throughout the interview, making it, I think, one of the most enjoyable shows I've done. Well, Moses made it enjoyable too, of course. If you're into gardening, New England, the environment, dance, Van Gogh, sex, love, skiing, John Keats, bees, the psychological effects of color on mood, music or the creative process - if one or all of these things appeals to you - you'll love tomorrow's show.

And, on another, equally exciting note, I'm going home today. I don't know if it's a HIPA violation to name your physician, but I'll risk it in order to thank my surgeon Dr. Jamal Rahaman and his wonderful team of residents here at Mt. Sinai hospital. I'm told the surgeons don't always have great bedside manner, but that's not the case with Dr. Rahaman, who is not just a great doctor, but also a great man.

Also, at the risk of forgetting some names (I'm sure I will) I'd like to thank the nursing and support staff on my floor who include Michael Quizon, Mary "Jennie" Del Prabo, Cheryl Parks, Debbie Johnson, Lucy Jumelez, Antoinette De Los Reyes ...oh, I know I'm forgetting names. Some of the most helpful people helped me when I was least lucid, but if you're a nurse, I thank you, on behalf of all patients everywhere, for the work you do. Listening to the way some patients here talk to hospital staff makes me think that the word "patient" when describing somebody under nursing care, is an almost laughable misnomer. The nurses I've met this week have taught me much about patience, compassion, tolerance and grace under pressure.