One Glorious Day, 12 Fun-Filled Hours with LiveWell HD

I started my experiment with a channel I'm familiar with: the lifestyle channel LiveWell HD. Twelve half-hour "how to better your life" shows cycle 24 hours a day. Here's what I saw for 12 hours yesterday.

At 6AM, Mexico: One Plate at a Time was all about seafood (yum!). Chef Rick Bayless cut from locations in Mexico to his home and restaurant kitchens in Chicago, where he prepared pescado zaraneado ("tossed fish"), smoked oysters (my favorite!) and ceviche. That got me stoked going into the talk show Everyday Living, where Spencer Christian and Janelle Wang interview a lady named Megan who refashioned T-shirts into other clothing items and accessories (with just two cuts she turned a T-shirt into a halter top--wow!). Then there were segments on how to salvage makeup, how to make Caesar salad-style steak sandwiches and a chat with Dr. Tina Seeling about her book What I Wish I Knew at 20 (one of those "live your dream life"-type books).

I was still on a high going into My Green House, where the five-member Green Team (like Capatain Planet's Planeteers, only funnier) showed a homeowner named Kathy how to conserve water in her home. I got a couple of tips an apartment dweller like me can use: Take shorter showers and keep a pitcher of water in the fridge to keep from running the kitchen faucet. The block ended with Advice for Life, where Dr. Rick the psychotherapist and Marcia the life coach advised, among others, three women dealing with their boyfriends' porn-watching habits. One woman said she was afraid of "interfering" with her man's "development"; I wanted to scream, "The porn's interfering with his development--DUMP THE GUY!" Then it was the syndicated Recipe.TV and some infomercials. I was still floating on those shows--and they were old reruns!

At 11AM it was time for the travel show Motion, where Jeff Aiello explored the island of Maui in Hawaii. He learned paddleboarding from an expert--after a beach workout that looked like fun and hard work (can I do it on the beach near Lake Michigan?). Save My Planet, the other eco-friendly show, featured Rush University Medical Center (I forgot where), a "green" hospital that recycles and conserves water on a grand scale; the World Food Program helping people in Myanmar after a cyclone hit a year ago; and an eco-resort in Costa Rica. About this time my energy was waning; I saw the tech program Gotta Know but I only remember segments on fitness gear and cool gadgets for young guys.

Interest peaked again when Mary Talks Money came on (money will do that). The subject was teaching kids about money, and the segment that stood out was about Zoe Damacela, a 17-year-old with her own fashion design business earning thousands of dollars--all because her mother taught her to earn her own money for the things she wanted. Now that was inspiring! (If a teenager can do it, so can a fiftysomething like me!) Unfortunately, my energy sagged again through spring fashion on the style show Mirror/Mirror and a two-room makeover on the homemaking show Home with Lisa Quinn.

I tried going out to shop to get my energy back up, skipping infomercials and coming home just in time for the syndicated Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures, which was about elephants in Thailand. That was at 2:30PM; at three I started to feel saggy again through the 3PM-6PM block of Say Ahh! (about treatments for obesity), the healthy cooking show Let's Dish (cooking "tall" vegetables like leeks and butternut squash) and different episodes of Mexico: One Plate at a Time (about tamales), Everyday Living, My Green House and Advice for Life. But it was okay--they were old reruns, too. Must be for the summer.

I still liked what I saw, though. LiveWell HD is one of my favorite channels and the most inspiring (non-Christian) channel I watch. Next week, I'll be watching a channel I hardly watch--and I'll get to bed early the night before to prevent sagging energy!