WALL-Eby Angie
26 Jun 2008
10:06 pm2
Congratulations to Jon! He learned today that he is being officially hired by Pixar! Huzzah! Hooray! We’re so thrilled!
We found out the good news when we met Jon at the Pixar campus tonight, where he had invited us to a sneak preview of WALL-E. The new short before the film was bizzare, but cute – and then WALL-E started. I spent the first two minutes laughing: if you know musical theatre, you’ll probably do the same.
It was fantastic. Definitely a favorite of mine already. I think that, deep down, WALL-E is a story about what it really means to be “alive” – whether we’re talking about a robot or a human, a plant or a planet. It’s also, interestingly, about agency. Mostly, though, it’s about love. This is Pixar’s first actual love story, and it was adorable. It’s not as quotable as other Disney movies (for obvious reasons), but there were still some great lines it it. On the other hand, so much is conveyed without any words at all that I was amazed. I even – I’ll admit it – cried. Honest to goodness, tears streaming down my cheeks, right near the end; and I didn’t even realize it until the credits started.
Anyway, it’s wonderful, and I highly recommend that everyone should go see it! Today! Take a date and hold hands. Take your kids – they’ll love it. Go by yourself and just enjoy it. Don’t miss it!
Follow-up CT Scanby Angie
19 Jun 2008
9:06 pm1
A couple of weeks after my CT Scan in February, I got a call from Dr. Murphy to inform me of the results: No major clots, but there is some clotting in the artificial conduit that was added to my circulatory plumbing last May. He is certain now that I need to begin a Coumadin regimen – I expect to start after I meet with him in July. Interestingly, the CT scan also identified two little “swollen patches” on the surface of my heart that completely baffle Dr. Murphy and his colleagues. They don’t think the spots are problematic, but he wanted a follow-up CT scan in a couple of months to check on them again – if they’re changing at all, there might cause for concern.
So! Today was the fateful day and I made my way once again to LPCH: to the eternally long waiting room in the basement, and to the tiny, hot unit that houses the CT machine right in the midst of a bunch of construction. In fact, the construction cramped things to such a degree that the nurse who placed the IV in my ankle had to sit on the floor to do so, while I sat in a rolling desk chair and tried to hold still. Luckily, it only too two pokes this time. Once the IV was in, I had to lie flat on the scanning table, be hooked up to an EKG machine, and hold my breath for 7-, 15-, and 20-second intervals, as the radiologist directed. When they injected the dye – oh, my stars! It’s hard to describe… I felt overwhelmingly hot and suffocated, but the sensation was all coming from the inside out. It was very bizzare. In any case, I lived through it!
Now it’s back to waiting for results. Blah.
Google’s Complimentby Angie
16 Jun 2008
10:06 am3
So, just for fun, I was playing around on some search engines to see what kind of search terms it would take to find our blog. When I typed “angie & jim” to Google, an RSS feed for our blog posts came up as the third result. When you use Google, it has a link after each of the possibilities to search for “similar pages” so, I decided to click on that and see what Google considered “similar” to our blog.
What was the top result? Check this out:
A Happy Storyby Angie
12 Jun 2008
9:06 am6
Once upon a time, beyond the stormy mountains but this side of tomorrow, there lived a king and queen with five lovely daughters. All five grew up into beautiful ladies; when our story begins, two were already wed to handsome princes. Four of the five princesses lived within a day’s ride of their parents palace, but the second princess and her husband made their home far, far away, on the boarders of the great sea.
A great celebration was soon to take place, to honor the queen’s birthday (who, due to a fairy gift, only looked younger and more beautiful every year), but the youngest and loveliest princess noticed that her queen mother seemed very sad. This was because a dragon had attacked the kingdom of her second daughter several weeks before and, though the prince had defeated the dragon, the queen wished desperately to visit her daughter and help with repairing and restoring the kingdom.
The youngest princess had a magic mirror that could speak to another mirror at her sister princess’s castle. She called and told her sister that she wanted to use her magic to send their queen mother to the kingdom on the shores of the great sea to visit. What a wonderful surprise! The arrangements were soon made: The queen would be traveling in a great coach pulled by magical winged rabbits, who could fly the great distance in an hour. They would land in a forest of oak trees, where all such magical transportation landed: it was called the Oakland Hare-port.
Well, the great day of conveyance arrived and the queen kissed her husband, the king, and began her journey. The second princess and her handsome prince also set out from their castle in a carriage to meet the queen and bring her home from the hare-port. While the magnificent horses jogged along, the carriage passed the hovel of an evil, iron-nosed witch. This witch had been glad when the dragon attacked the kingdom because she hated the prince and princess. When the prince had defeated the dragon, the witch was disappointed, but at midnight she had sneaked to the dragon’s body and magically stolen his power to breathe fire, which spark was still alive, deep inside.
When the iron-nosed witch saw the royal carriage passing by, she grabbed her broomstick and rushed outside, mounted, and began to fly alongside. She made herself invisible to the prince and princess and planned to breathe hot fire on their horses so the steeds would overheat and fall down dead. That way, the royal couple would never reach their queen mother! The prince, however, was very wise and a good horseman. As the invisible witch began to breathe out her fire, the prince saw the horses shiver and begin to sweat. With her next big breath, he notice their wild eyes and tossing manes. As the witch prepared to take her largest and hottest breath of all, the prince suddenly steered the horses off the road and pulled the carriage to a stop, so he could tend to them and find out what was wrong. The witch, meantime, could not stop her broom very quickly and was so angry that she didn’t notice where she was going. She flew right into a sign-post and burst into a million pieces. The fire-breathing magic burst out of her as well, and landed in a little red brick oven in a village in the oak forest.
The wise prince and his princess waited for half an hour to let the horses cool down and rest, and brought them water from a magic well nearby to drink and be refreshed. Then they resumed their journey and arrived just in time to meet the beautiful queen at the hare-port, who hadn’t had to wait very long at all. A great feast was held in the oak forest, where they ate pizza cooked in the red brick oven. Finally, the royal family returned to their castle and there they are all living still, happily ever after.
Post-Op Appointmentby Angie
10 Jun 2008
5:06 pm1
Jim took a half day off work to drive with me to Stanford today for my post-op appointment with Dr. Jacobson. Everything looks good! The last of the bandages are off and now I can drive and swim and all sorts of fun stuff!
She did say, however, that the one thing I shouldn’t do is sit-ups: not for another month. I think I can live with that. 🙂
Love & Sympathy for the Chapman Familyby Angie
9 Jun 2008
7:06 pm0
Many of you know that one of our favorite music artists is Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman. You may not know that in addition to being an incredibly talented musician, he is also a wonderful husband and father. In fact, after having two sons and a daughter of their own, he and his wife, Mary Beth, adopted three more daughters from China.
We just learned that last week the youngest of those three, five-year-old Maria Sue, was killed in an accident last Wednesday. Our heartfelt love and sympathy go out to that wonderful family. I know this must be a terribly difficult time for them, and they will all be in our prayers.
Here is a sweet video of Steven and Maria washing dishes together, including music and dancing! If washing dishes were this much fun at our house, there would never be a dirty dish left in the sink 🙂 (for those of you who checked out the links above, it is the same as the second video in the mlive.com article).
Recovering from surgeryby Angie
2 Jun 2008
2:06 pm1
Thank you, everybody, for your prayers and well-wishes for us since my surgery. I am doing very well and hope to be back to normal in a couple more weeks. I have been very well taken care of: My wonderful, adorable, thoughtful husband has been at my beck and call as much as possible since I got home from the hospital. He and Jon spent a large portion of their Memorial weekend entertaining me (playing “Secret of Mana”
with me for hours on end). 
My mother-in-law, Kathy, visited for a week to keep our house running smoothly. I received phone calls and visits from wonderful friends in my ward and from family members all over the country (thanks, Audrey!). I even had my own pet therapist on hand: Jaquie wisely stayed off my lap, but spent long hours curled up next to me on the couch or my bed.
Getting around the house is still a little difficult because of the incision (for those ladies who have had a C-section, you probably know what I mean), and I can’t carry very much or drive yet, but I’m certainly improving. My doctor called when she received the lab results on the cysts they removed to report that everything was benign – hooray!! My post-op appointment is next Tuesday, so if there is anything else interesting to relate, I’ll keep the blog posted.