CoffeeBear.net » home http://coffeebear.net Mon, 14 May 2012 02:58:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= Random Thoughts http://coffeebear.net/2007/11/01/random-thoughts/ http://coffeebear.net/2007/11/01/random-thoughts/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:47:47 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/archives/2007/11/01/random-thoughts/ I’ve been bad about posting anything here, so here’s a collection of random thoughts that have occurred to me since my last posting.

  • For several years I carried a PDA to keep track of appointments, jot down notes and to have important phone numbers/addresses handy. I started off with a Handspring Visor Platinum, later switched over to a Sonly Clie for a color screen and rechargeable battery. Eventually the Clie started giving me problems so I started leaving it at home more & more. Instead I carried around my “paper brain”, a 3x5 spiral bound notebook. It worked alright but pages kept getting ripped whenever people needed scrap paper. Over time it became a ragged shadow of its former self and needed replacement. A couple of weeks back I finally did replace it; this time I picked up a Moleskine or as I’ve taken to call it “my snobby paper brain”. The Moleskine was about 3 times as expensive as my old “paper brain” and I’ve read numerous articles online from devotees of these notebooks. Those articles had aroused my curiosity. I find the paper to be very smooth and pleasant to write upon, though I do need to find a pen/ink to use which doesn’t bleed through so much. I’ve been writing…
    • character ideas for games I’m playing
    • dreams I’ve had
    • things I need to get done
    • grocery lists

    … and little things like that. It’s stuff which if I ever developed the more interesting bits could end up here, but for the most part is too mundane to make me want to post it.

  • I used a print out of a Windows BSOD and a black robe I still have from several years ago to be the Blue Screen of Death for my office’s Halloween festivities. The costume netted me third place and a $10 Target gift card. Whee!
  • We were down about a third in the number of kids coming by the house last night for Halloween. Maybe the massive number of kids last year was them checking us out since it was our first year there. Or maybe something else happened, but I thought we gave out good candy and we were stocked up to give more this year. Heck, we had an entire bag left unopened after we stopped for the night. Ah well, it’ll make the office happy as I’ll bring all the candy to work to get rid of it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s candy I like (saltwater taffy to be specific) but it’s a 5lb bag and I don’t need all those calories.

Update: I forgot to mention when I someday fill up my current Moleskine, I do plan to buy another one but next time will get the grid paper version vs the ruled paper version I have now. I think the grid will be more conducive to sketching than the lines, while still having something there to keep my written words running straight across the page.

Also I meant to talk about the new light fixture I finally got installed in our upstairs hallway. When we moved into the house, there was a floresent light in the hallway. But the bulb was never plugged into the fixture as there’s no switch for it1. So we bought a simple light fixture with a built-in switch. I got the old fixture taken down but in doing so found that the screws to hold the new fixture wouldn’t fit into the electrical box in the wall. I bought a new electrical box, but when I took out the old one I got another surprise. The old box was screwed into scraps of wood to kind of clamp the box to the drywall and as soon as I had the screws out of them… the bits of wood fell down inside the wall. *insert swearing here* Putting in the new light got put off for a while… basically until I had a chat with my father-in-law. He told me what kind of electrical box to buy and the next weekend I had the light installed.

1 Technically, there is a switch at the bottom of the stairs but turning it off kills all power to the upstairs.

Random Thoughts © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2007/11/01/random-thoughts/feed/ 0 Up in Smoke http://coffeebear.net/2006/07/25/up-in-smoke/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/07/25/up-in-smoke/#comments Tue, 25 Jul 2006 22:14:42 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/archives/2006/07/25/up-in-smoke/ It was another long, dull morning at the office. Fortunately, the afternoon proved to be quite a bit more interesting. While I was examining an issue reported by one of our beta users; I heard some shouting about a fire from one end of the building. Popping my head up like a good, office gopher; I saw some people rushing about, the overhead lights that was were off and the safety lights were on. Shortly after that I was told a fan in one of the bathrooms had caught on fire, burning/melting some of the plastic of the fan. There was only a little bit of smoke right then and the fire had been put out so I went back to work. Then the smoke got worse and I stood with some co-workers near an exit with the door open to the outside for fresh air. We stayed inside as it had also just started to rain. A few minutes later, we heard sirens and were told to either go to the top floor of the building or outside. I opted to stand outside. After we were out there for something like 20 minutes; we were told to go home for the day. Which was a sweet 90 minutes early, but I had a fearsome headache presumably from the chemical fumes off the burning plastic. What a day.

Up in Smoke © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/07/25/up-in-smoke/feed/ 6 Trying to lose my business? (Part 2) http://coffeebear.net/2006/06/26/trying-to-lose-my-business-part-2/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/06/26/trying-to-lose-my-business-part-2/#comments Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:15:09 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=447 Perhaps I am old-fashioned but I feel when you say you are going to do something, then you should do it. Case in point, this morning I dropped the car off at the dealership to get that shifting problem fixed. I dropped it off at approximately 7:45 AM CST (-06:00 GMT). My appointment to have them look at my car was for 9:30 AM CST (-06:00 GMT). When I dropped the car off, they told me they would call me back when the car was done or if it would require parts/maintenance not covered by the warranty.

It is now after 4:00 PM CST (-06:00 GMT) and have I heard one peep out of them? Nope. Feeling more than a little indignant at this turn of events, I tried calling them. I got a hold of a receptionist who asked me a couple of questions; presumably to route my call to the correct portion of their service dept. Then I was put on hold…

For all of 60 seconds. *Grrrr* After which I got transferred to some nameless persons voicemail. *Grrrr^2*

I was polite and left a message simply asking them to call me back with an update. I even went so far as to give them both my work and home numbers again. And to tell them when I would be leaving work, so they would have a better chance of catching me. Not that I have seen any sign that they’ve tried calling, but I am still trying to be nice and give them the benefit of the doubt. Now, I’m waiting again for them to call me back.

Update: About 10 minutes after I called the dealership, they called me back to say the car was fixed. All the repairs fell under the warranty, so I didn’t have to pay a dime. For those curious as to what was wrong:

  • The brake light switch (what they call the sensor for the ASL) was bad.
  • Additionally when they checked the car with their diagnostic software; it reported there was a problem with one of the engine coolant temperature sensors. So they replaced that as well (again this was under warranty).

Am I pleased with the customer service I received? Not especially but now that we have the car back (and particularly since they didn’t charge us for any of the parts/labor); I’m not quite as upset about it as I had been. Would I buy another VW from this dealer? It’s a bit too early to say. Their sales and finance departments are great, but the so-so treatment from the service department makes me feel hesistant to say yes.

Trying to lose my business? (Part 2) © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/06/26/trying-to-lose-my-business-part-2/feed/ 2 Trying to lose my business? http://coffeebear.net/2006/06/20/trying-to-lose-my-business/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/06/20/trying-to-lose-my-business/#comments Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:00:13 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=445 Back in April, we bought a new car from Carousel Motors. And until yesterday, it’s been great. I let me explain…

Yesterday, I went home for my lunch hour. When my time was up, I went down to the car to get back to work. The car unlocked and started up without any problems. What was a problem is the ASL light turned on and stayed on. Normally, this light turns off once you press down on the brake pedal. It’s there to prevent you from shifting into gear without having the brake pressed to avoid accidents. Except now, my foot was on the brake and I was still stuck in park. I fiddled around with it for a bit, but couldn’t get aything to happen1. I rushed back inside, called by boss and worked the rest of the from home via the corporate VPN.

After work, I called the dealership but found out the service department closed an hour before I called. I talked to the salesman who sold us the car and he suggested calling the VW roadside assistance 800# to have them tow the car out. I called them up, waiting on hold for several minutes and then got to talk to *mumble, mumble #1*. He had me go out ot my car and try several things to get the car out of park. I was just nearing the end of his instructions when the battery in my phone died. *grumpf*

I tromped back up into the apartment and called back on a wired phone. Again I had to wait several minutes and then I got to talk to *mumble, mumble #2*. I explained what was wrong and what I’d done so far. He gave me the complete instructions and I wrote them down. Then I set down my phone and ran outside to try them. Success! I could now get my car out of park! Before I ran back inside to relate my success, I turned off the car and tried starting/shifting normally. No luck, that was still screwy. I went back inside, picked up the phone and… And nothing, all I got was dead air. *double grumf*

I called the roadside assistance a third time and once again had to wait several minutes for the privilege of talking to *unidentified pissy man*. This guy never gave me his name. I told him everything that I’d been through and the resuylts of their procedure for getting the car out of park. I asked if I was supposed to be ok now, or if I still needed to get it to the dealership? He grumpily answered that “of course I needed to get it to the dealership.” All this around, though not entirely their fault, was not exactly making my evening any better.

Today, I called the dealership and their receptionist was waaaaaaay to gorram happy for 7:45 AM. Fortunately, she quickly transfered me to their service department. And they answered the phone with a “Good Afternoon”. While time is relative and there was a period in my youth where I always used “Good Morning” as a greeting that was high school for crying out loud. Still, she could have just been tired by the early hour of the day, so I didn’t go off on her. I explained my problem and that the roadside assistance people had given me a procedure to get the car out of park. She said since I could technically drive it; their first opening to have somebody look at the car is next Monday. I made the appointment, but it left me feeling very disappointed. I think if this is the average level of customer service I get from them then when we replace our other car, it’s not going to be another Volkswagen. As much as I like driving the car and as good as their sales department is; if the rest of their team is lacking in customer service then it’s not worth it.

Or I could just be grumpy from having to handle all this so flippin’ early in the morning.

1 Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. All I did appeared to make things worse. After my fiddling with it, the EPC light came on. Though after following the instructions from roadside assistance that light went back out.

Trying to lose my business? © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/06/20/trying-to-lose-my-business/feed/ 5 Update on the Nibble http://coffeebear.net/2006/05/30/update-on-the-nibble/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/05/30/update-on-the-nibble/#comments Tue, 30 May 2006 17:35:59 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=438 Unlike the majority of Amercians, I did not head back to the office after the Memorial day weekend. Well, not back to my office anyways. Instead, I whipped out my interview suit1 and went to a job interview. It was a really good thing that I left early to get there as I got slightly lost. I stopped at a coffee shop and got directions. Yes ladies, men can and will ask for directions when we know we’re lost2.

After getting the directions sorted out (I missed overshot the street I needed to turn onto by 1 block), I arrived at the company’s office3. The building looked surprisingly new, though it was a bit warm inside. Though that could have been a combination of me being nervous and me having “suited up”. I had to fill out some paperwork (boilerplate HR background check authorization forms) and then waited a bit for my interview. Shortly, my interviewer showed up and took me back to his office. We went over my resume a bit, though it turned out his copy of my resume was missing the information about me being a UofI graduate. Fortunately, I had prepared for that eventuality by having multiple copies of my most current and most generic4 and I gave one of these copies to him. We discussed what sorts of things I do for my current employer, what I did during my college days and so forth.

But we also got off topic several times dicussing a variety of side issues: my Japan trip, Mindbridge, working for companies who close their local offices, being a non-traditional college student and so on. While I do not have an overbudence of interviews under my belt; this one felt like it went extremely well. I really felt like I made a connection with the interviewer5. As it turns out, the company is looking for 1 person for their computer operations department and 1 for their data warehouse. According the interviewer, the operations position is a bit lower than what I’m really looking for in a starting salary but he thinks I could be a good fit for the other position as well. He went on to say the company really needs to get these positions filled quickly before their busy season hits and I should hear something back in a couple of weeks.

Since the interview went so well and the only reason I was on time for it was the helpful coffee shop; I went back to have myself a little snack6. The shop is called the “Coffee Talk Cafe”. When I got there after my interview, the only people in it were the staff. The lady behind the counter was very friendly and we chatted for a bit. She wished me all kinds of good luck on my interview, while she rang me up. I got a toffee nut latte and a orange/pineapple muffin. I ate in the shop and so they nuked up the muffin, putting a little butter on top. It was divine. Yum, yum. *smile* It took them a little bit to make the latte and when the lady brought it over we chatted a bit more. Apparently, I resemble the lady’s brother and in my suit look very “professor-ish”. I left a little bit after that and am now home chilling out. I’ll br browsing the online want ads in a little bit (looking for other nibbles) but right now I feel really good about today and the interview I had.

1 Okay, it’s really my only suit.
2 We just don’t think we’re as lost as you think we do.
3 Per my long standing habit, I will not be discussing who they were.
4 Given time and available brainpower, I prefer to customize my resume for the company & job I am applying for.
5 Did I mention this person is also the hiring manager? Oh well if I hadn’t yet; I have now.
6 To be prefectly honest, this was my breakfast. I was feeling too nervous prior to the interview to want to eat anything.

Update on the Nibble © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/05/30/update-on-the-nibble/feed/ 2 Banana, Crackers and Gatorade… Oh my! http://coffeebear.net/2006/05/14/banana-crackers-and-gatorade-oh-my/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/05/14/banana-crackers-and-gatorade-oh-my/#comments Mon, 15 May 2006 04:06:19 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=434 Well, I finally feel like I am at least partly back from the dead. But really, that’s getting ahead of myself; allow me to backtrack a bit.

2005. May. 7th. Ariesna and I were joined in wedded bliss. Unfortunately with her just finishing her degree and paying for a wedding money was tight so we didn’t have the cash to go some place exotic and we couldn’t really afford to spend more than a night away. So I picked a B&B just a few hours drive away. A helpful friend had recommended it as the most romantic B&B in the area. After the ceremony & reception, we drove out and enjoyed our one night there.

2006. Ariesna and I went back to the same B&B for an entire weekend. We ate out at a couple of nice restaurants, did a little shopping and hit up an art museum while we were there. It was a grand time, but by the end of it we were both tired. We got home, chilled for a while and eventually went to bed. Blissful slumber was interrupted at 4:30 AM by me waking up feeling like I was choking and/or drowning. I ran into the bathroom and spent the next 15 minutes or so kneeling in front of the porcelain throne. After getting myself cleaned up, I tried going back to bed but woke up a while later with the same problem. Again, I eventually got cleaned up and tried going back to bed. Later, I got the intense fun of making a trip to the doctor on what was supposed to be the last day of my vacation. I got weighed1, poked, prodded and a q-tip was shoved down my throat2. The doctor confirmed I had the flu combined with a sinus infection. However he was worried that I was severely dehydrated and wanted to put me on an IV to get some fluids in me. Alas after much poking (in both arms), they realized I was too dehydrated for the needle to go in properly. Eventually, they gave up on the IV and let Ariesna take me home. Though they did tell her to keep pushing fluids down me and recommended she get me to drink 2 liters of gatorade that day and keep pushing the fluids at me the next. She did so, continually waking me up from some of the best sleep I’ve ever had to drink, drink drink. And I don’t even like gatorade! *sigh* I mean the fruit punch version isn’t too bad but the rest.… yeck.

Anyhoo, I ended up spending the entire week home sick and now the night before I finally go back to the office I am feeling much better. I’m just not at 100% yet. My sinuses throb (and continually drain down my throat) and on top of that I’ve got an evening cough3 which feels like it’s going to rip my throat in half. But I’m still taking the anti-biotics the doctor prescribed and I’m hoping when the pills are gone so will be the last of my health problems.

Oh yeah, if you’re wondering about the title on this post that’s pretty much all the food I’ve eaten in the last week. It’s been thrilling. :(

1 No, I’m not repeating what that lying hunk of metal claimed was my weight.
2 Apparently, that’s part of the test for strep throat. Only nobody warned me in advance. Incidentally, the test came back negative but it has a 15% chance of failure.
3 It only happens after 5. No idea on why that is, but there you have it.

Banana, Crackers and Gatorade… Oh my! © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/05/14/banana-crackers-and-gatorade-oh-my/feed/ 0 Employment Woes http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/28/employment-woes/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/28/employment-woes/#comments Fri, 28 Apr 2006 18:37:04 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=433 Wednesday morning, my supervisor pulled me aside to tell me since management wants to go into beta just before I take 2 days of vacation. And since one of those vacation days conflicts with a week long Microsoft training course I was signed up for they are pulling me out of the class. I wasn’t happy about it. She wasn’t either but the decision came down from on high.

Wednesday afternoon, a co-worker and myself had to drive 4 hours to my current employer’s home office. Instead of heading straight to the hotel, we stopped along the way to get dinner. We ended up hitting the hotel around 8 PM. When we checked in there was a message asking us to call our supervisor. Neither one of us liked the sound of that. We tried calling her back but got her answering machine. We left a message and I went to my own room. I had been laying down for just about an hour and was thinking of hitting up the hotel’s hottub when the room phone rang. I picked it up and it was my supervisor. She was calling to tell me the company had decided to close our office once the lease runs out. Apparently, there’s going to be some sort of transition plan if you want to move out by the home office and continue working for the company. But as I told a co-worker, I’d rather slit my wrists then move to keep working for this company. So I’ve got somewhere between 4 — 8 months to find a different job1. Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night and I wasn’t feeling motivated for teaching the next day.

Thursday, I went into the office. I chatted with a few people and they were all sympathetic (and wanting to know what we were going to do). Then I checked on the classroom and it wasn’t setup correctly, so I got to do some last minute running around to get it fixed. Then I taught, trying not to put them to sleep. The two big problems with the class were that it had to be put together at the last minute and I had 3 different groups of people attending the class. Each group having a different, non-overlapping skill set; making it impossible not to be too basic for one part of the class while being totally over the head of a different part. *sigh* Still some people seemed to get something out of the class and nobody actually snored through it.

Thursday night, we drove home.

Friday, I went into my soonish-to-be-closed office and while it was a dark humor going around; most people seemed happier than I’ve seen them for some time. Maybe good things will come of this moronic decision. Who knows? I just know that I’m going to be much more motivated to find a different job (I’d been half-heartedly looking already) and the company’s customers who pay support fees are going to get seriously pissed off2.

So if any of my readers are in the Eastern Iowa area and are hiring, maybe you could let me know?

1 We’ve got some kind of extension on the lease so it’s anybody’s guess when exactly our office will be closed, but we do know it will happen sometime between September and December.
2 From what I understand the majority of the company’s best help desk personnel are in my office. So the customers will have to wait longer to get somebody to talk to them about their issue(s) and then wait even longer for that person to fix their issue(s).

Employment Woes © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/28/employment-woes/feed/ 1 Daaaaang, that’s loaded! http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/26/daaaaang-thats-loaded/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/26/daaaaang-thats-loaded/#comments Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:44:09 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=432 Today, I have to travel to my company’s home office to teach a class. The day before I’m supposed to drive over I find I’ve got a voice mail. As I do 99.9999% of my job either via emails, IMs or F2F, this in itself was extremely odd. Then I listened to the message and found out it was a sales manager from dealership where we bought the new car.

It turns out that they want to borrow the car for a bit to have to their insurance people look it over (since it was on the lot at the time of the tornados hitting Iowa City). I thought this more than a little odd. As I was busy getting ready for my trip to the home office, I kind of blew off the message. Then this morning, I got another call from the dealership asking for the car again. I called the guy back and explained that I’m driving out of town today. He said it should really only take about 20 minutes and they’d give the car a wash while they had it. He also said they’d bring a loaner by for me, just in case.

I agreed to let him do it and then immediately got a tad nervous about it. I checked their website and found him on it. A little bit later our receptionist called and said a guy from the dealership was here. I went up to the front desk and the only person around was a scrawny looking kid. But he was wearing a sweatshirt with the dealership’s name & logo on it. Then he held out a key to him and we walked to the parking lot. The key was to a 2005 Volkswagen Passat. The stationwagon version. With a dealer’s plate in the back window, a sales sticker on the same. I felt a lot better about giving him my key and took him to my car. He drove off, and I hopped into the Passat for a quick peek.

Oh my God! The wagon is fully loaded with all the goodies Volkswagen has to offer. Now I feel slightly cheated in that I won’t get to drive this puppy for my trip. Don’t get me wrong, I love our new car and our new car does have more gadgets in it than any car I’ve ever owned. But still, that Passat sitting outside if so dang plush and luxurious. I could definitely enjoy driving that card. :D Oh well, at least I’m getting a free car wash. Though, now that I think about it; I’m wondering if I should have asked them to top off the gas tank. With gas at $2.84/gallon, that would have been a nice bit of savings for me. *shrug* That’s probably being a little greedy and they’ve been good to me already.

Daaaaang, that’s loaded! © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/26/daaaaang-thats-loaded/feed/ 0 Real Life Recap http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/20/real-life-recap/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/20/real-life-recap/#comments Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:57:03 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=430 I’ve not been posting anything for a while because… Well, I just have not felt like it which is not to say I haven’t had anything to talk about. Today, I decided to update the world at large about what I have been upto in my little slice of it.

  • We survived the tornados and hail that hit our area a week ago. Our apartment and cars were not even get damaged by the storm. Below are a few links to some of the stores online about what happened.
  • Last weekend, we replaced Ariesna’s car (1992 Ford Escort, aka Ghost) with a 2002 Volkswagen Golf (aka Grace, aka Gracie). The really odd part about getting the new car? Even though it’s a replacement for Ghost; Ariesna has been letting me drive it the most. Apparently, this is at least partly due to the amount door dings her old car suffered through in her office’s parking lot but it still seems strange to me. Then today, the dealership called me back asking me to come in and sign a new finance contract on the car. Why? Because they found me another offer which would drop the interest rate by 1.25 points! Now that’s what I call service. So a big thanks goes out to Carousel Motors for the excellent service.
  • Last weekend, Ariesna and I looked at a house. But it was too expensive for the amount of work required to make it a home we’d want to live (namely a musty basement and some bad remodeling in the family room, dining room and kitchen). We showed up about 15 minutes early for the showing and the realtor showed up just short of 15 minutes late. He did eventually call to let us know he was running late… 5 minutes after he was supposed to be there. I was initially a bit underwhelmed by the guy. But when he finally got there and let us into the house; he let us do our own looking around without trying to pressure us and listened to the comments we had about the house to get a better idea of what we were interested in.

Real Life Recap © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

]]> http://coffeebear.net/2006/04/20/real-life-recap/feed/ 1 Yeeouch http://coffeebear.net/2006/03/07/yeeouch/ http://coffeebear.net/2006/03/07/yeeouch/#comments Wed, 08 Mar 2006 04:38:50 +0000 Mark http://coffeebear.net/?p=426 Over the weekend, Ariesna and I went to the CPL to check out their latest book sale. She got a bit ahead of me looking around as I was carrying out picks. I was about to move to the next room to catch up to her when it happened. Suddenly I felt a sharp, red-hot pain stabbing into my back. I managed to get over to Ariesna and set the books down, but it was something of a close call. We left the library shortly after that to go home and set me up with a heating pad. A bit of heat, some back pain meds and my back was feeling better. I took the day easy sitting down, reading a book.

I was still mighty tired the next day. Every time I had turned over in my sleep; I was half awakened by pain in my back. But awake eventually I was and into the shower I went. I’d just finished my shower and was drying off when another spasm ripped through my back. This one was much worse and nearly sent me to my knees. Ariesna came back and helped me. Then she called the doctor’s office and made an appointment to get me checked out. I spent the rest of the day lying down on a heating pad.

Monday, the doctor checked me out. He prescribed some pain killers and a muscle relaxant. He also set up an appointment for me to visit a physical therapist. That appointment was earlier today. The therapist was a really nice lady. She had me describe my problem. She then had me go through a series of stretches and movements to help her figure out exactly what is wrong. She told me she believes one of the discs in my spine (in the border area between the lumbar and thoracic) has a small tear.

She immediately moved to reassure me this is not something that will require surgery. I don’t think I was looking at her nervously, so I’m not entirely sure why she leaped to get that bit of information out. Though if I were to guess, I would say most of her patients are considerably older than I am and they do not like even the hint of possible surgery.

Anyway, she instructed me in doing a couple of light exercises designed to ease the tension in my back and which should improved the blood flow along the damaged area. She said these exercises should be enough for my back to heal itself correctly. Provided I keep in mind for my back to heal properly, I have to be extra cautious about it for a couple of months. She recommended I think about the damage like it was a broken bone. Even if I am feeling 100% in a few days or a week, I’m still to take it easy on my back.

Whee, such fun. Ah well, at least I haven’t promised to help anybody moving anytime soon. :p

Yeeouch © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

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