White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Okay, I pulled a muscle in my neck this morning getting out of bed ... now I'm cranky. It hurts to do nearly anything and even sitting in front of the monitor is uncomfortable. Indeed, cranky. Nearly surly! I won't post much else in the hopes that I'll not invoke any karmic blow-back since things are fairly good in the grand scheem of things. No Stasi minions banging on my door, insisting I must wear a square patch colored in the autumnal color of burnt sienna. Other than that, I've been waddling my way through the morass of grey February days ... dreaming of spring.

Technorati Tags:Back Pain

Labels: Back Pain

I have a few things to whine about from the past few days. Some that I can do nothing about, and some that I have a direct impact on. Of course, I will not deal with them other than complaining mostly due to my superior ability to whine. And speaking of whining ... last night at the pool, we were treated to the constant screaming of a toddler being water-boarded. Well, not really. There was the swim instructor, a single child, and the father constantly pushing the horrified boy into the pool to induce him to try to learn to swim. I'm not sure, but I think that the child was not ready to be put in that situation. I'm almost certain that the father was told that he would have to get involved with the child's upbringing and give mom a break. Not so good though. 45 minutes straight - wailing at volume setting 11. Egads.

Speaking of wet, the traffic has been rather disappointing due to the slick conditions. Rain is the culprit here, not snow or ice. There is enough salt laid down that if we did get anything resembling winter weather, we should not have a problem. So much salt. So expensive. None the less, there have been at least two major accidents over as many days on the limited stretch of road I travel. What is with these people!? Nuts with cars I tell ya ... Almond Joy on a roll. I was going to complain that the wood I recently chopped was too wet to burn. Ya know, I should have known better. Now I'm going to have to take all of it out of the brackets and put it outside. And then replace it with the seasoned wood. Gha ... I can be such a noob sometimes. Oh, and on a tagent, the word of the year as determined by Merriam-Webster is "w00t" .... sigh. Thusly, another step in the decline of western culture.

Work has been a real bear over the last few days. First thing when I got in on Tuesday, I was associated with an issue that I had not clue about ... because the name of the responsible party who was SUPPOSED to get the email had the same first name. So, due to a typo (Brazil anyone? Buttle ... Tuttle), I was appointed as the owner. Then, around noon, I return to my sensory deprivation/isolation chamber to find an ominous sticky pad note. I call the number and POW! I get tagged with an Internal Affairs type task. Select 100 (really!) different bugs found in the system, find out who is responsible, why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Nothing says 'I hate you' to a developer like picking at the open sore of poorly tested or written code. This is going to make me a pariah in the group fairly quickly if I do not handle this delicately. A lot of the upper management are focusing on the effort as well (Hammer for review, reason for small bonus). Do I need to tell you that I did not sleep well last night? Oh, and my back still hurts.

Technorati Tags:Work | Swimming | Wood | Children | Back Pain | Parenting | Sleep

Labels: Back Pain, Banalities Work, Children, Parenting, Sleep, Swimming, Wood

Well, I'm going to be quite busy over the next few weeks, so please don't shoot me if I miss commenting on my regular blog reads or skip a few posts ... like I did yesterday. I was a bit laid up you see. I thought it would be a FANTASTIC idea on Sunday afternoon to chop up all that wood that I, as a mendicant lumberjack, pulled out of Gus's yard the previous weekend. So, chop-chop-chop I go and rip-tear-shred go the muscles in my back. The next morning, I could barely get out of bed to shut off the alarm clock. I had to slither out like some sort of spineless slink and whimpered the entire time. I let the Sympathetic Mrs know that I would not be moving that morning and slept from 0730 till 1730 straight! I really needed that, since I have been going into a 'spoon deficit' situation for weeks now. But enough of my surly simpering, what did happen this weekend?

Friday night was a hoot. Alexis decided to rat out her brother to a Mom in the pool changing room. She let this stranger know that Jacob was a player and had a lot of girl friends. Interesting in so much that she is not the type of girl to talk to strangers. I think it was the opportunity to take a swipe at her sibling that compelled her. I need to pay more attention to that since it seems she is developing the 'mean little girl' attribute a bit earlier than expected. Not as noticable as Jake's 'spastic little boy' act, and certainly not as cute. Rapprochement is forthcoming.

Saturday was mostly a wash. The weather was nice, which was a a nice turn of events since we were going to spend two hours driving up to Parsippany and another two on the way back. My artifice in finding a route that was only 65 miles instead of 115 was not as fortuitous as initially thought. The 'short' route took just as long and consumed as much gasoline as the longer, less direct route. In fact, we were treated to a Trademark Jersey traffic construct called the 'CIRCLE' as well as various jug-handles and convoluted left vs right exit ramps. On the upside, there were no traffic accidents (although, the police were as omnipresent as the traffic devices) and the return trip to the Manor was uneventful as it could have been. I was concerned in the first steps of the trip back when we headed down an access road that went from rough to unpaved and then finally to weed-grown. I was having visions of a chain-saw wielding mad-man, but then realized I was in North Jersey and I was the closest being to that description. Soon enough, the Observant Mrs spotted the signs for the on-ramp and we were under-way. On the downside, the children were rather impossible from the moment we arrived till the moment we strapped them into their restraining seats. Not enough exercise, most likely.

Sunday: well, I've already told you the results of that expedition in faulty perspicacity (heh, even I had to look that word up). To start the day, we had Sunday School of course. A new girl, Sam, came in to assist with what ended up being a VERY BUSY morning. As a matter of course, Jake made sure to assault her with hugs at every available opportunity. Shortly after class, I zipped off to the Local Low Price Gas Station (and car wash; they always ask but I'm afraid the POS Super Saturn would melt) to transfer Alexis to the Family Tank V2.0. This is so the Mrs and Alexis can go to the Nutcracker ballet at the Bryn Athen Playhouse. Jake, who found out about this was reasonably upset. Next time, according to him, Alexis would go see a movie with me and he would go to the Ballet with the Mrs. He was the only one comfortable with that arrangement. He can barely sit still through the movie and would only do so after I acquiesced to giving him a full sized package of twizzlers and a promise of McDonalds afterwards. We saw 'Bee Movie'. Horrible. Honestly, just bad. He seemed to enjoy it, but I think it was the twizzlers.

Technorati Tags:Back Pain | Banalities | Sunday School | Fatigue | Injury | Lumberjack | Mundane | Sunday School | Slacker | Sleep | Traffic | Turnpike | Weekend Wood

Labels: Back Pain, Banalities, Fatigue, Injury, Lumberjack, Mundane, Slacker, Sleep, Sunday School, Traffic, Turnpike, Weekend, Wood

Nothing happened on Wednesday. We slept in, went to work, went swimming, TSD and then ate and went back to bed. I love being dull. Oh, I did squeeze in a shower or two ... you know, because a man needs to shower sometimes. Adult TSD class is filling up. We have three new recruits to fill out the ranks. And they are GIRLS! No more locker talk amongst the guys ... we have to be 'gentlemen' now. Sheesh.

In other news, there was ANOTHER accident on the turnpike on Thursday Morning. Nothing but a blip on the news, but I could see when I drove OVER the turnpike, it was backed up to friggen Italy. Apparently a semi hit a delivery truck between 309 and 611 ... and it all fell like dominoes from there. I have not sympathy today because my back-pain has returned. If I'm going to be miserable, so is everyone else!

Technorati Tags:Accident | Traffic | Karate | Children | Turnpike

Labels: Accident, Back Pain, Tang So Doo, Traffic, Turnpike

So, not much to talk about today ... sliding into third base Thursday here. I made it to the Adult TSD class last night, in spite of my massively bruised 'chopping hand'. As I gaze down upon the mutilated appendage dancing over the keyboard, I marvel at the fact that it does not hurt more. Red, white and blue ... well, purple-ish blue. Hopefully, my dedication to not doing what I did to it in the first place will ameliorate the situation before the test on Saturday. Of course, I'm an unabashed recidivist when it comes to matters of personal safety. I'll have to redress that matter before it catches me in the shorts.

Speaking of shorts, last night SUCKED for sleep. I laid awake till nearly 2am ... just unable to nod off. Not sure why, but I am certainly tired enough now. It's been going on all week. I'm going to have to ask the Mrs for a 'night off' where I can just come home and go to bed ... or something like that. This nonsense will certainly impede any progress I hope to make this weekend with various chores and activities about the Manor. And no, I will REFUSE to take medication for this. Perhaps a supplement, but I do not need another raft of pills in my life.

Technorati Tags:Karate | Sleep | Children

Labels: Back Pain, Bed, Children, Injury, Karate, Migraine, Sleep, Tang So Doo

I usually do not post on Fridays ... mostly because I do not feel beholden to actually produce any tangible product on a day that is primarily reserved for meetings in which 'others' do their best to empty their plates onto mine. My primary task is to repel those 'time hobgoblins' at all costs. Today, it seems to have been a moderately light skirmish so I have a few spare moments to yammer about the standard banalities that my life is composed of.

In the Good News column, my upper back feels much better today, but I still feel the grumblings of malcontent in my lower quadrant. I'll try to keep that in mind when I'm attempting to do a flying 360 side-kick/back-fist combo in TSD tonight. Yep, I'm going to be attending class on a Friday. Unusual, but since I was unable to attend on Wednesday (the Mrs had a work obligation) I got permission and will take full advantage of it. Today is 'Dodge Ball' day so I'll be quite interested in what this will involve for the adult class. We have a test in a few weeks so I don't expect it to be anything too radical or extraordinarily dangerous. Of course, since Attila and Ghengis are in the Children's class ... I'll probably be the subject of a sustained attack there. Little buggers, they have a penchant for making me regret teaching them a skill that can be used in offensive maneuvers.

'Speaking' of offensive tools, the Tyrants have nearly mastered their list of 20 words they need to know. They are called 'sight' words, but we are going just a bit beyond that. I spell the word verbally to them and they figure out what the word is. We are also using flash-cards when I'm in the POS SuperSaturn. We'll be stopped at a red light and I'll pull out a card at random and they will tell me what it is. They are still having a bit of a tough time with it/is/in due to the ice-cream vs. igloo 'I' sound ... but I have faith that they will master that fairly quickly. They only have till June of 2008 though! Other words like 'Commie', 'Sycophantic Knuckle-Head', and 'Pyrrhic NutJob' were picked up immediately and used at the most inappropriate times. I'm SO going to be in the Principal's office on a weekly basis.

And, as is my custom when I have too much data rattling about in my head and not enough synapse dedicated to handling it (can you say THRASH?), I feel the urge to post a list. I do have some tasks that have been put on the back-burner due to .... other activities.

Patch hole in bathroom wall(new shower head caused this)
Polyurethane Wood for shelves (killed shelves to punch hole in wall)
Cut said wood for Shelves
Nail up remaining molding
Mow Pastoral Expanse
Rake/Suck-up leaves (mowing should accomplish most of this)
Clean leaves out of SandPit/TwinTowers
Till remainder of Agricultural Sector
Plant garlic

On top of all this, the Tyrants get their 5 yr booster shots this weekend. You know ... the usual stuff: Typhus, Malaria, Flesh-Eating Streptococcus, Phage, Superbug MRSA and Polititus of the brain. Usual stuff; should be a hoot.

Technorati Tags:Needles | TGIF | Karate | Children | Chores

Labels: Back Pain, Banalities, Children, Chores, Injury, Tang So Doo, TGIF

ARGH! For a while there, I thought I would have nothing to yammer about today. Guess again. I have this habitual issue with lower back pain; I've grown accustomed to it. Of late, it has become quite a nuisance. Today, I'm sitting at the terminal and I do one of my trade-mark stretches and ZOT!!! The muscles between my shoulder-blades and neck suddenly go into a frenzy of spasms. I went through this about 2 months ago and it was not an easy problem to get rid of. I cannot understand how something like this can pop up when I do much more vigorous activities (TSD,Swimming) and have no problem. It's obviously an issue with the chair and monitor hight. I'll have to abscond some sort of ergonomic chair or start down the path of oxycontin addiction.

P.S. Like the image? Guaranteed to pull in lots of "lava lamp" traffic, no?

Technorati Tags:Back Pain | Swimming | Karate | Banalities | Injury

Labels: Back Pain, Banalities Work, Lava Lamp