So, cptmoll and I went to that live This American Life show last Thursday. It was pretty excellent. No, I still haven't forgiven Ira for moving the show to New York (and judging by the hissing from other parts of the audience, I'm not the only one), but he can still put together an entertaining program.

I actually liked Sarah Vowell's segment the least—the humor seemed a bit labored, or maybe it was a little too much like stuff I've already heard from her. David Rakoff and Dan Savage were both splendid, though. And I did enjoy the preview clips from the soon-to-premiere TV series, although I'm still not totally won over to the idea. But as I don't have Showtime and don't plan to get it, it doesn't really matter to me.

I was also thrilled to discover, after we got into our seats and perused the program, that the house band was to be Mates of State, whom I adore but had never gotten to see live yet. They only performed like five songs, but it was still pretty awesome. They did, after all, include their cover of Phantom Planet's "California" (aka the theme song to The O.C.). TAL does always have excellent music at its live shows. (And when Ira mentioned having seen Quasi play at the Empty Bottle, my respect for his musical taste only increased.)

So, definitely worth it. I had a most excellent time and cptmoll gave me some useful career advice. Then Friday leahrosmerta did a wonderfully generous thing and bought me some yarn, which is so pretty that I just can't resist showing it off. It's a skein of Schaefer Anne, which is a sock yarn I've really been wanting to try (I've seen it cited by many sock knitters as their favorite sock yarn) but haven't been able to get. It's this lovely purple-navy-teal kind of mix:



It's part mohair and if you squint you can see in the picture how it fuzzes out. I've started on a lace knee-high and I'm liking how it's knitting up so far. I'm going to be making up the calf decreases as I go along, though, so we shall see how that works out. I hope there will be beautiful pictures of the finished project in a few weeks...or months. Before summer starts, anyway.