Magic Crunch

Why do things always work like this?

For the last 50 hours or so I've been in agony, barely able to do much of anything. I was barely able to get out of bed. I've been hobbling with a cane. I hobbled into work around 12:30 hoping I'd be OK in the fairly decent chair I have at my desk and gave up in pain around 3:00. Elaine been trying to get me to go to the doctor since yesterday. I've been resisting, saying, "it just needs to pop back and I'll be fine." At 3:30 after giving up at work and an excruciating hobble home, I relented and called the doctor and got an emergency appointment with my doctor's alternate for 4:30 since my doctor is on vacation. At about 4:10 I went to stand up off the chaise and there was an audible crunch that Elaine heard from the other side of the room. I felt a series of small pops in the small of my back. That was it! That's what I've been waiting for for two days. The nerve that was pinched is no longer pinched and I feel infinitely better.

I called back and rescheduled a  non-emergency appointment to talk to my doctor about my back when she returns from her vacation. I'm still sore, the muscles in my back are cramped and spasming from the strain of the last two days and my lower back feels very, very tender, but compared to not being able to walk, sit or stand for any length of time plus stabbing, shooting and searing pains in my hips and down my legs, and the especially fun treat of having my right leg randomly buckle while walking... compared to that I feel amazingly good. It does not hurt to sit here and type this. I can sit up straight and even arch my back a little - that would have been impossible half an hour ago.

And before you say, yes, I realize this is not normal having sciatica to the point of losing muscle control - that's why I'm going to see the doctor about it as soon as she is back.

Nonetheless, right now I am very happy this episode is over!

Fun Weird Stuff From the Weekend

There was more to this weekend that just throwing my back out. There were moments of sublime absurdity, like a girl in the group of people I was chatting with outside the club at the "7 Deadly Sins" party going to pitch a can of Red Bull over her shoulder and over the construction hoarding behind her and not succeeding. The can hit the wood just shy of the top and ricocheted back to bounce off the top of the top-hat of my greed costume. Also in the realm of the sublimely absurd was being approached by someone in the film industry about making some fake money for a TV show because they were impressed with the quality of the fake money on my costume. I'm waiting to hear back about the price I quoted, which may be more than they were expecting, but designing a realistic series of fake banknotes is going to be a fair bit of work (albeit bizarrely fun). Just being asked is fun enough considering the only reason I made my own fake money was I didn't want to use money that looked American like most play money does.

And in other weird news, I was contacted this weekend by a technology columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald doing an article on steampunk. He asked me about my keyboard mod and requested some good high-res photos. I'm not sure when the article is going to run, but hey, I'm getting press in Australia!