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So each year everybody on staff at Channel 16 submits what they feel is their best story of the year to the Telly Awards, which ” honors the very best film & video productions, groundbreaking online video content, and outstanding local, regional, & cable TV commercials and programs, ” unquote.

Don, our Station Manager, played it perfectly yesterday. We were all in a small office, while the TV Production students were working on their show out in Master Control. Don said, sadly, “Well, we heard from the Telly folks today, and unfortunately, none of us got anything.”  Then he brightened and pointed to me. “Except for you. You got a Bronze Telly. Congratulations!”

Okay, Don, you got me.

This was special to me for two reasons: the most obvious is, this was my third year submitting, and secondly, this year I ignored all suggestions and went with my gut on which story I should submit:

Calling this state of affairs unreal is almost an understatement; outside of the accolades of my peers, there has been no notable impact on my life. My oatmeal tastes the same this morning, I did a video shoot for one of our staffers who came down with bronchitis, and I’ll still grumble my way to the Mystery Cafe show tonight: all as usual. I did, at least, sleep very well last night, which is uncommon enough.

And when you get right down to it, that “accolades from your peers” stuff is pretty darned nice.

March 24, 2012
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 1 Comment

I wish I could say I’d forgotten how tiring this work during the day, rehearse at night thing is, but honestly, my memories of life during my days as God’s Gift to Theatre (and self-delusion) are primarily of exhaustion and the crankiness borne of same. And desperation. And fulfillment, And drugs. And really good sex. Ah, good times, good times.

…

What? I’m sorry, what was I saying? Oh, yes. At this point we’re a little less than a week from opening Shadowlands, a play which is my – perhaps temporary, perhaps not – return to the Legitimate Stage. An old friend from the aforementioned Full Metal Theatre days called me up last November and asked me to come out of retirement – again – for the show (he did this almost five years ago with one of my dream roles, Van Helsing in Dracula). I had been chafing badly at the murder mystery dinner theater I normally do on Saturdays, where I am something of a big fish in a small pond. I’m doing shows I have been doing for damn near twenty years. It’s not truly acting anymore, more an exercise in timing, and worst of all, by my reckoning, for an often drunken audience who regards you as a sort of low-rent 3-D TV, something that can be talked over or to, as one does in one’s very own living room.

Nothing is worse than drunks when you are, yourself, not drunk.

So. This is not a stellar role, a main character. I guess it could be referred to as a featured role, as unlike the other actors who are not in the four main roles, I only play the one character. (Fine by me, I’ve certainly done my time in the utility player capacity). But I do also have to move set pieces.

Ah, there’s the rub.

Shadowlands began life as a BBC teleplay, which was then adapted to a stage play (and eventually the Anthony Hopkins/Debra Winger movie); the stage version retains the sweep of the teleplay, moving from pub to Oxford to Lewis’ study to Greece to hospital room and all points in-between. Usually this is done with lights and scrims and the like, but this theater has no fly space to bring curtains and the like in and out. Instead what we have are five screens – well, they are referred to as screens, but what they are is full-size replicas of the monolith from 2001 on casters., with different visual elements on either side. When the scale model was shown at first rehearsal, it was emphasized that it was important that this not “become a show about screen-moving”.

It quickly became a show about screen-moving.

No small amount of frustration there, but the last few rehearsals have been more about winnowing down the amount of screen-moving (especially once it finally sank in that it was impossible to have a scene occur while the screens were put in place – the damned things are the opposite of silent), and last night – a week before we open – we finally got back down to the business of working on the bits between the screen moves. You know, acting.

It was the most satisfying rehearsal I’d had since the beginning or the process, since the screens starting rolling in from the depths of the shop.

So back again tonight, still trying to figure out how to best come on and be the comic relief after the death scene, which is hard to ignore and always leaves me in tears (“That’s alright, I’m an actor… I can use this!”) . I guess I’m succeeding, because the dead woman sat in the house the other night and I heard her laugh.

You see, this is why I love the theatre… I get to truthfully say things like “The dead woman sat in the house the other night and I heard her laugh.”

January 20, 2012
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 4 Comments

The light is beginning to fade on the last day of 2011 as I write this. I’ve had an awe-inspiring two weeks off at the end of this year, and believe me, I have taken to this like a pig to mud.  The fact I can’t sleep for a consistent stretch of time at night? Big deal. The day is mine to nap away. About the most useful thing I’ve done is drive to the grocery store.

Oh, not that it’s been dull, heavens no. I reached another crisis point with my hillbilly teeth (pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before, but both my mother and her mother had full sets of dentures before they were 30), and was hoping to use those two weeks to have all sorts of dental horrors visited upon myself. No such luck, as my first appointment came, and it was discovered my blood pressure was way, way, too high. As in go to your doctor right now high.

How long had it been that high? Who knows? As one of the millions of Americans without insurance, that’s not a question I can answer. My last checkup was (mumble mumble) years ago (HINT: it is a double digit number). I’ve been blessed with relatively good health in that time, possibly karmic repayment for having spent most of my childhood in hospitals.

In any case, after a week of medication, my pressure is down to acceptable levels, and some anti-cholesterol drugs have been added to my breakfast. I joked on Twitter that since my daily pill intake quadrupled overnight, my breakfasts are now very filling.

Bad thing, of course, is my dentist then went on her holiday vacation, and the horrors begin the day after I return to work, and start rehearsals for a show that opens in late January. Sigh.

But let’s talk about some good things, okay? Back in October, I came into a little money. Great considering how much the dental adventure is going to take (remember, no insurance. And in my experience, dental insurance ain’t all that great, anyway). I had enough left over to do something I’d wanted to do for a long time: buy a TV made this decade.

Timing couldn’t have been better, really. Those fancy-pants LCD HDTVs have been getting cheaper and cheaper. I found one at a price point I could tolerate – so good, in fact that I bought a Blu-Ray player, too – and though I hear things about “Buyer’s Remorse” I have to report that is a totally alien concept to me.

In other words: Holy. Crap.

I’m not a complete idiot. The first thing that was watched on this new TV was Dancing With The Stars. I shake my head sadly to admit this, but my wife is addicted to reality TV. Using ethical ju-jitsu, though, I managed to use that to my advantage.

(A brief side-trip: During her Thanksgiving break, she indulged in her once-yearly watching of “her soaps” and related to me, with great relish, how one actress whom she had long considered the epitome of loveliness was, in fact, a wretched creature of acne scars and layers of pancake makeup)

Needless to say, this has rekindled my too-long dormant love of movie-watching. I had meant to watch many more during this long break, but hey, you know… napping. Getting the crap scared out of me by doctor folks. And God help me if I should get in the way of Dancing With The Stars.

The God Help Me part is especially cogent when you consider the first full-length movie I sat through in Blu-Ray was Green Lantern. I, along with several million other people,  hadn’t seen it in the theaters. Now, admittedly, as it was my first HD movie experience, there probably some halo effect, but: I thought it was okay. Not terrible. I watched the extended version, which apparently put back a lot of Act One character development absent from the theatrical version. Flawed, to be sure – the worst offense being that each and every character is a dick. I came closest to identifying with Tomar Re, and when your most sympathetic character is a dude with a talking fish head, there are problems.

I didn’t keep a real record of where I went from there, but I’m pretty sure the next stop was a Blu-Ray Scott Pilgrim or Punisher: War Zone I picked up used from various local outlets. The Criterion Blu of Seven Samurai was a probable improvement over the movie’s opening day condition. One of the things I definitely put days aside for on the break was the HD extended versions of the Lord of the Ring movies which were simply stunning.

I’ve been relying on a lot of foreign films these days:

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is a kung fu film noir directed by Tsui Hark and starring Andy Lau as the title character, who is freed from prison by the Dowager Empress on the eve of her coronation because people are spontaneously combusting. Why was Dee sent to prison, why, for treason against the Empress, of course. Interesting, convoluted story, but the HD transfer does, sadly, render (heh) the CGI even more obvious.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is one I’d heard a lot about, and saved it for Christmas Eve. It’s very odd and completely novel, but promises more than it finally delivers. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, though.

The Last Circus I found disappointing. When a box is splashed with verbiage like “Cult Status Assured!” and “The Most Insane Movie I Have Ever Seen” you are expecting some high weirdness. I won’t argue that some of the stuff is indeed weird, but… it wasn’t what I was expecting. Hell, I’m not even sure what I was expecting. There are parts I am still chewing over in my head.

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen was another sad disappointment. It’s a sort of sequel to the Bruce Lee Fist of Fury (in the US, The Chinese Connection), or better the Jet Li remake Fist of Legend (mainly because Chen survives in that version). Chen Zhen does return after fighting in France, taking on the Japanese occupying Shanghai again. At least, when the plot allows him to. Donnie Yen is our current Asian martial arts superstar, and it seems that director Andrew Lau is trying to see how much movie he can put between fight scenes. That Chen steals a movie costume and thus fights as what is undeniably Kato from The Green Hornet is… I’ll be kind and say it’s an odd choice.

I also recorded a couple of podcasts with The Daily Grindhouse site, only one of which is currently available, about the really, really good zero-budget action movie spoof, Lethal Force. That one, I can recommend. The other Blu-Ray I got because Geoff was so effuse in his praise was Intruder, which is a slasher, and I hate slashers. Intruder, alas, did not change my mind. Oh, and this trailer is spoiler-iffic. You been warned.

And now I’ve been informed that the downstairs bathroom is broken and we are down to one bathroom with two houseguests for the weekend. Good thing I’m on blood pressure medication. Too bad that medicine makes me pee a lot.

But – let’s be positive. That also means that in one week, I’ve lost ten pounds in water weight.

So Happy New Year, everybody. Here’s hoping 2012 is a good one, all our problems can be solved with pills, and the Fifth World is a definite improvement.

December 31, 2011
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Well, that was a very, very busy September. Busy enough that, in a pattern that goes back – well, the rest of my life – once my body caught the slightest whiff of any time off, it declared, “Aha! Well, here’s the physical collapse you’ve been putting off all summer.” The fact that the body started it two days early didn’t help matters much. The Saturday night show was achieved largely by dint of Dayquil and chutzpah. The show must go on, you know.

So Sunday? I was pretty sick Sunday. I took Nyquil that night (alright, store brand whatever) and woke up a couple of times the next morning, dehydrated as hell. Drank some water, went back to bed. All in all, I slept some 14 hours, and felt better for it. Which is good, as I was behind in everything, Work, The Secret Project. All behind.

Yes, I am involved in a Secret Project. I can’t tell you anything about it, because it’s Secret. Duh. Don’t be silly.

Oh, the Huge Manatee!

This is entirely different from my other project, which is trying to get Animal Planet or possibly Nickelodeon or Disney interested in my new TV reality show, Those Fucking Cats. The show was conceived when I began wondering how our cats were gaining entrance into my bedroom, although the door was closed. Turns out the younger cat, Tubby (who was named Eva until she ballooned to the size of a manatee) was simply hurling her bulk against the door until the latch mechanism gave way, allowing the older Hideous Mutant Cat (named Nicodemus, with polydactyl claws and a propensity for eating plastic wrap) to get inside, knock everything off every level surface, and – I swear to you – leaving one of those extra claws embedded in the mattress exactly where I will sit down. Those Fucking Cats.

I bought a new doorknob to replace the ancient one Tubby had managed to jimmy and tried to replace it Sunday before I completely collapsed – this after a couple of nights of barricading myself inside my bedroom, using a suitcase and a wooden table. And let me tell you, there is something beyond annoying about hearing a small thump thump THUMP against your door at midnight as a confused furry manatee tries to gain entrance to its new kitty wonderland) Anyway, the doorknob I bought had a defective latch mechanism anyway, so I didn’t have a door so much as a slab of hinged wood with a hole in it. I gave up and let the little monsters sleep in the room with me Monday night. They are, at least, fast learners, and have figured out that when you jump on the fat guy in the bed, he tends to wake up screaming, thrashing, and hurling whatever is on top of him against the nearest wall. So I slept pretty well that night.

The next day I felt much better, went to work, got a little caught up, returned the doorknob and got a new one, went grocery shopping, and replaced the doorknob to the dismay of Those Fucking Cats. Ta Dah!

So. I’m trying to ramp back up on The Secret Project. Met my work deadline. I’m no longer running audio for City Council meetings, and I have to say that’s sort of like missing episodes of a soap opera you only had on in the background anyway. I’ll miss the catchphrases and the extra money, but that was one of the things that contributed to the collapse.

Also, I’m likely cutting back to only one show a week with my murder mystery dinner theater; the owner made an odd decision, earlier in the year, to do not one, but two of those twofer deals, Living Social and Groupon. Just one of them would have been bad enough, but oy. Both assured her there wouldn’t be that many sold – and of course there were – and certain other assurances were made. The best screw-up was when the Groupon salesman, in the comments for our offer, contradicted Groupon’s own terms of service, and told customers that the Groupon covered gratuity and the like. So we got to tell several hundred people that he was lying.

Parallel to all this, I was reading a webcomic by Kevin Church and Paul Salvi called [The Line], which is about a restaurant, and in their current storyline, they are dealing with the fact that their owner/chef, an autistic cocaine addict, has entered into an agreement with a similar outfit (the arc starts here).  [The Line] has kept my boss sane in the intervening month, because the stories about the entitled louts who feel they are entitled to everything because they clicked on a two-for-one coupon are all true. I am sort of used to dealing with people who have never seen an actual theatrical performance before. These folks however – I’m not sure they have ever dined anywhere more upwardly mobile than Denny’s.

Now, to be sure, most of the folks were decent sorts who enjoyed the show, and only some of them treated the show as if it were the TV in their family room, and it was perfectly all right to have a conversation at normal volume with the person across the table. We always gotten those. But we were getting a lot more of them.

Well, by doing shows on Friday and Saturdays, were able to move most of them through, and now the coupons have expired. (Best thing so far: “I have this Groupon, and it expired yesterday. Can I use it in November?”) This means we’re likely slipping back to one show a week, and this – like not doing City Council – means less money.

Hence, I need to get back up to speed on The Secret Project. And remember, call up Animal Planet and demand to know why they’re not showing Those Fucking Cats.

There, I can produce 1000 words of bitching and moaning, just like anybody else.

October 6, 2011
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Life’s Rich Pageant has been rather more pageant-ly of late. Enough so that I became certain the month of June was cursed. Not Total Catastrophe-style cursed, but certainly here-let-me-fuck-with-you-some-more cursed.

We’ve already covered the Wife’s annual visit to the hospital. Four days after her return, the house’s AC cratered. At first it seemed to be an electrical problem. I found out my wife had continued to pay out money to a Home Warranty outfit that I considered to be on the level of a pyramid scheme, but she’d paid the money, so let’s use them. Received an e-mail detailing the contractor’s contact info, and was assured they would call me for an appointment in 24 hours. When they didn’t, I called them – it was now Friday afternoon. Was given an appointment the following Monday, because, sorry, they’re not open on weekends.

This seemed appropriate.

This was – naturally – during a period of 100 degrees + days in H-town. We elected to stay in a hotel for the weekend. Come Monday, the electrician came and told us that yeah, he would have assumed it was an electrical problem too, but it was actually something with the unit itself, and he would put in the call to the AC tech. When the 24 hour period had passed – once again – I call the AC guy myself, and was told the earliest he could get there was Thursday. By this time, we were staying with a neighbor.

He came, and it turned out to be something which – if I only knew a tiny bit more about AC technology, I could have remedied myself. But when he found out how long we had been without AC, he was shocked and refused to charge us anything. So guess whose business card is up on my refrigerator now?

The shows on the weekends have been the usual parades of petty annoyances. I hate drunks, I hate performing for drunks, and I hate performing for people who consider me the cheap version of 3D TV. Why the hell you shell out that much money to have a conversation is beyond me. The absolute nadir came when I found out a table full of drunks – who, of course, knew they were improving the show with their shouted bon mots – when I found out one of the drunkest and loudest was a pregnant woman. Pregnant, and rapidly approaching what my pal Dave refers to as “puke-ass drunk”. It is one of the few instances in my life where I found the phrase “Jesus wept” to be appropriate.

This week, there are no shows, which is good on every level but the financial. This Sunday is the 4th of July parade (held on the 3rd, yeah, I know), which is going to involve me hauling my porcine semi-crippled butt out to the parade site at Noon and spending the next seven hours, in the sun, setting up for a live broadcast of the blessed event. This will be the first time for a new “improved” parade route, and the scuttlebutt is there are markedly fewer participant registered for this year – but that only affects the actual run time, not the set-up time. I’m looking forward to at least a nine-hour day. Likely more.

So I guess it was important that I write this today in case I don’t survive.

An old friend who works at one of the bigger cinemas in Houston told me that Ip Man 2 actually played there for a week with absolutely no advertising or promotion of any kind, though he – Bruce Lee fanatic that he is – would have watched it had he known the subject matter. I find that sad, even if I do think the first Ip Man was better. But this also started nagging me on another matter. Ever since the trailer for Yuen Woo Ping’s movie True Legend showed up on the Apple movie trailers site, I had been looking forward to it:

…and I was beginning to fear that it had suffered the same fate.  So I rushed over to Amazon, found the DVD and ordered it. I received it at the very beginning of the AC debacle, and was surprised to learn that it was a Region 3 disc. That really shouldn’t have surprised me, since I didn’t recall any announcement of an R1 release, but there you have it. While sequestered at the hotel and the neighbors house, I was cut off from my region-free players.

So finally I did get to see it and… what a disappointment.

The narrative is pretty scattered, and really feels like three different movies. The first is the truly impressive opening, as our protagonist rescues a prince from barbarians. Huge fight scenes with lots of guys.

Then our hero retires from military life to concentrate on his wu shu. His adopted brother shows up to clean up some family business – Hero’s father killed brother’s parents for being evil practitioners of the Five Venom Fist, then Hero married the sister. Brother had mastered the Five Venom Fist, and sewn “dark gold armor” into his skin to make himself invulnerable. Hero is defeated, goes into hiding, and is taught superior fighting skills by “The God of Wu Shu”, who turns out to be a figment of his imagination.

All that is the major portion of the movie, and that sounds like a typical kung fu plot. But it comes to a tragic end with about 25 minutes left to go… and then we enter the third movie.

You see, True Legend is supposedly the story of Beggar So, the guy who originated the Drunken Fist style of fighting. Where this ends up is So, now an alcoholic wreck dragging his son around China, is taught the drunken style by yet another figment of his imagination, just before he finds himself involved in a deadly competition with foreign fighters, more by accident than anything else.

But this is where I enter “Oh come on” territory. No, not when the God of Wu Shu is shown running over the tops of tall grass, holding a drunken monk at arm’s length like a cackling Olympic torch. That I willingly accept. It’s the big fight-for-our-honor-against-foreign-devils conclusion.

It seems that the last four major Chinese martial arts films that I have seen – Jet Li’s Fearless, Ip Man, Ip Man 2 and now True Legend – end with this conceit, and frankly I was kinda tired of it by the end of Ip Man 2. I’m beginning to wonder if this  is now a mandated part of Mainland China cinema. At least this one has multiple wrestlers, and the ring is surrounded by a pit filled with hungry tigers. Ha! Take that, Donnie Yen, you wuss!

As I said, disappointed. There are many parts of the movie that are great, but the overall structure is too disjointed in an effort to be epic. Michelle Yeoh is criminally wasted in a small role. Interesting to see David Carradine in a career-lapping role yelling “Kill that Chinaman!”. Jay Chou as the God of Wu Shu is outstanding; he is likely the only reason I will ever watch the Green Hornet movie.

June 30, 2011
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Yeah, so much for trying to at least blog once a week, eh? Last week was especially contrary to that little initiative.

Let us start off the week with two School Board meetings, on Monday and Tuesday evening. These were promised to be short; but then, upon entering the building Monday, the first thing asked was, “Are you available Thursday evening?” Monday was welcoming the new Superintendent, and that was short. Tuesday was installing two newly re-elected trustees, and the election of a new President and Vice President. This was also supposed to be short, but an acrimonious closed session put it into overtime. Sadly, all the drama was after the closed session, during which the station went to a live broadcast of the Economic Development Committee, which was nowhere near as dramatic.

All, well, we broadcast the recorded meetings until there’s a new one, so the reading of prepared statements and openly aired bitterness still got its screen time.

Wednesday was my single night off, then, and even then, that was spoken for; the graduation for my wife’s school was that Saturday. My wife, for those who don’t know, runs a school for children with reading difficulties. It runs from K-12 and every one, at least one student graduates and goes ont o college, which is pretty amazing considering most of these kids were ready to drop out due to frustration. You can’t say the public schools have failed them out of malice or anything, it’s just that they do not have the resources to handle these students in the way they need to be taught. So that’s my wife’s job.

A standard feature of each of these graduation ceremonies has been a slide of the graduate, photos taken from baby pics through elementary up to the present, all accompanied by music. Usually “Let Them Be Little” by Billy Dean. What this means is every year my wife sidling up to me asking me to pleeeeeeeeeeease do the slide show (or, more accurately to “help her do the slide show” which translates to “pleeeeeeeeeeease do the slide show”), which means every year I ask her to find somebody else to do it and that somebody then flakes out and I wind up learning how to use Power Point yet again.

By Wednesday, I had finally gotten all the photos I was promised and had given up on the CD being found and actually fucking buying “Let Them Be Little” from Amazon MP3, which is going to screw up my recommendations for months. Oh, but wait, when I got my new computer, I declined to give Microsoft any more money and went with Open Office for all my office-type needs. Well, Open Office does also have a Power Point-type program called Impress that takes a little getting used to; I couldn’t figure out how to just have a solid black background, which I prefer for this sort of thing, but it did have a very nice blue notebook background that was appropriate. After a few hours, I had the photos all timed out properly, and exported it to a Power Point format. Yay, that’s done.

Except the next day I took it to work on a flash drive and tried it out, and… saw the first slide, heard no music, and then… nothing. This was the definition of Not Good.

Well, no, actually the definition of Not Good was the text I received from my wife an hour into the day, asking me to pick her up and take her to the Emergency Room.

My wife is a brittle diabetic, prone to wild fluctuations in her blood sugars. Well, that’s what she’s defined as now, before she was just a diabetic. She had been minding herself, doing everything she should have, but the swings were getting more extreme. When she got up, her fasting sugars were 58. When she called me at 10am, they were over 500.

So it was time for what is starting to look like an annual event: put Lisa in the hospital and try to stabilize her sugars. Ha ha, good luck with that.

So not only did I have a joint School Board/City Council meeting that night, but I was also trying to communicate to her staff (which had been reluctant to do anything for the graduation but were now in charge of it) where things were and how they needed to be done, deal with a wife who was freaking out because she wasn’t going to be there for her babies, and figure out how to fix the slide show.

I felt really, really bad about not being in the hospital with her, but there was stuff that needed to be done, and I wasn’t contributing anything other than holding down a chair. As I set up the mikes for the meeting that night, I kept reminding myself that she was with people who had the training and tools to help her, and I didn’t have either.

That meeting actually only ran ten minutes over, and I got home by 10pm, trying to fix the slide show and finally get to bed. Turns out you can’t have an MP3 sound file when you save an Impress slide show into Power Point format – it has to be a WAV file. So a quick conversion later, I finally have sound again. But now the timing is off. DAMN. After a couple of tweaks – and having to listen to that damned song over and over again, I finally get it to an acceptable level of sync. Not as perfect as it was before, but acceptable.

Friday morning – drop off the kid for his last day of school (yes, he’s dyslexic and goes to Mom’s school), along with a present for a departing teacher and a flash drive with the slide show on it. Go back in 20 minutes because they need Lisa’s keys. Go back in two more hours because it’s a short, and find out two guys from Church have come and troubleshot the whole projector/slideshow/ music thing. Bless you guys. Drop by the hospital,find out that my wife is now radioactive. They gave her a stress test, and shot her up with radioactive tracers. Then I go to get some rest because I have a show that night.

The graduation goes off with the usual number of hitches, not the least of which is the graduate’s mother arriving 45 minutes late. After prying my son from the post-graduation buffet (deviled ham sammiches, yummmmmm), it’s back to the hospital. Not much in way of news. Back home, sleep. Do the show Saturday.

On Sunday, they decide to send her home, as she could have irregular sugars at home just as well as at the hospital. Her heart, thyroid, gall bladder, all were in good shape. She has ulcers from taking so much ibuprofen for joint pain and leg/foot cramps, and two of her medications have an ingredient that retards her body’s ability to absorb potassium, hence the cramps. Life style changes have been called for, and a new goal: keeping the sugars to around 200.

So after waiting in her room for an hour and a half for a wheelchair to take her down (and Mary, her favorite nurse, finally grabbing a wheelchair and pushing her down to the lobby herself), I then spend another hour waiting on prescriptions. Monday I spend a couple of hours at a supermarket weaving in and around people piling their carts with bratwursts and steaks for the Memorial Day cookout that they somehow hadn’t gotten the meat for, yet.

So three day weekend, bah, phooey. There was no such thing.

And just to twist the knife: no, we still have no insurance. And generic Prevacid? $100 a bottle. As the song says, “It’s sick, the price of medicine.”

This week: nothing. No meetings, no punishing deadlines. Hell, I don’t even have shows this weekend. I have resorted to pinching myself just to make sure I’m still alive. There is a constant, nagging sensation that I’ve forgotten something, but two different calendars tell me otherwise.

June 1, 2011
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment