This American Life -- Live!

Thursday night, the DH and I went to see This American Life -- Live! at a movie theater. The show is on NPR, which makes it a radio show, and the premise is that they pick a theme each week and provide several stories on that theme. The radio program has been around for years and years and they started a TV series on Showtime two years ago. I haven't seen the TV show, but I love the radio broadcast. I get the podcast download and listen to it at the gym. It makes the time go by quickly and I have a hard time being in my car at just the right time on Saturdays to hear it when it's on.

They record in front of a live audience on accasion and started broadcasting the live feed to movie theaters last year. Basically, you get to watch them record the whole show, from the comfort of your movie theater seat. I'd heard about it and really looked forward to seeing it.

The fact that I can't sit comfortably yet for more than an hour put a damper on my enjoyment, but other than that, it was great. We really enjoyed the whole thing. The show we saw will be on the radio May 7th, so anyone out there can hear most of what we saw.

More than anything, this whetted my appetite to watch the This American Life TV series. I'm putting it in my Netflix queue now.

On Being Ill

I'm generally a very healthy person with very few issues. Getting really sick is very unusual for me and certainly not something I really know how to react to. The process has helped me learn a few things about myself.

• I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, but that may be a bad thing. It kept me from going to the hospital the first time I had a problem with my gall bladder and delayed my inevitable trip to the ER.


• I have never been a fan of drugs (legal or illegal) and have really never taken anything more than Advil for most of my adult life. As a result, the pain killing drugs worked really well, but I didn't have any fringe benefits from the heavy doses of drugs. The feelings I got that were not just pain killing, were rather uncomfortable (like the room spinning), so I'm pretty sure there will never be at risk of abuse.


• I'm not very good at sitting around. I'm used to having a pretty full schedule and have had a really hard time taking it easy. I do OK on vacation, but that's with activities planned too.


• Anesthesea does a number on me. I was unable to focus on much of anything for three or four days, so I couldn't even read effectively for a while.

What a Week!

Last week at this time I was feeling quite overwhelmed by the thought of our Women's Conference coming up and getting all that done. The good news is that everything went very well. Our theme was "Rise Above it All" with hot air balloon decorations. We ended up having over 130 people show up and the classes were very well attended and people seemed to have a really nice time. We had worried because it was the day before Easter that many women would have other conflicts, but there were plenty of others who made up for those who couldn't come.

On Sunday, we had a really nice Easter dinner. I even made homemade rolls. Everything about it turned out nicely. Then later that evening, life took a bit of a left turn. My stomach started hurting and progressively got worse during the night. I called in sick to work, but tried to ignore the pain. It really was so bad I had to do something about it though. By Monday afternoon, I was scheduled for surgery to have my gall bladder romoved. Apparently, I had a gall stone the size of a boulder (the big marble in a marbles game) and I could choose to wait until it attacked again or just get it removed immediately. I chose the latter.

I had laproscopic surgery, with four small incisions. Then they super-glued me back together. It's all supposed to make for a "quick" recovery. I'm feeling a bit peeked still, but doing quite well. I decided not to take the Vicodin today and I'm managing with just a little discomfort. At this point, the most annoying part is that I can't seem to concentrate on much, so I'm not getting any good reading or video watching done. I have it on good authority that it's a common side effect of the anesthesia. I'm hoping that's worn off by tomorrow.

I'll check in later and let you know how it is on day 4.

Expiration Date

The DH and I spent a couple of hours enjoying an indie film last night. Expiration Date is a wonderfully entertaining little movie filmed mostly in Seattle. We loved seeing places we recognized (like the troll, gassworks park, and Ballard) and loved the characters in the movie. It's especially good that all this entertainment didn't include anyting lewd or really even much in the way of inuendo. I think that's the mark of a great script. I'm not sure the young kids would be interested in the movie, but you wouldn't have to turn it off if they were around.

The story is about a man whose father and grandfather were both killed by milk trucks on their 25th birthdays. As a result, our main character believes he will expire at the hands of a milk truck on his 25th birthday as well. The movie basically chronicles the week leading up to his birthday and there is a lot of comedy and drama intertwined in those few days.

We both give it two thumbs up and recommend it for everyone.