Long story short? On Wednesday I did something stupid, something that more than three years of working pack-and-ship taught me not to do. I lifted and twisted, and my lower back went into the most intense spasm I’ve experienced in years. I ended up on the floor of my office grimacing and cursing and quite upset at myself.

I sort of got through the rest of that day by sheer force of will, and figured I’d be okay the next day as long as I took it easy that evening.

Ha! As if!

At about 11:30 Thursday morning, my back got worse. I couldn’t transition from standing to sitting or vice versa without incredible pain. As much as possible I stayed in my chair at my desk, and then slowly made my way home.

Friday morning, I tried to get out of bed. No go. I called work to say I wouldn’t be in, and I stayed in bed or on the living room couch all day and night. It was much the same for most of today, though now I’m more-or-less able to get around and function normally. Bending at the waist is still a no-go, for the most part, at least not without considerable discomfort.

Ah well. I needed the rest and (enforced) relaxation, right? Hopefully I can continue to recover tomorrow so I can be functional at work on Monday…

Saturday? Well, other than the parts early in the morning I only vaguely remember, the day was taken up mostly with trying out the Return Of The King game on the PC, and having Geoffrey over for chit-chat of the idle and not-so-idle variety. (He also took at stabbity-stab at a bit of Enemy Territory.)

Sunday? Well, other than the fair amount of cleaning I got done in the kitchen and dining nook, and a brief visit from Mari (during which the kids and I traumatized her with the first and third episodes of Bottle Fairy), the day was mostly taken up with playing games and taking it easy.

That reminds me. I need to review Bottle Fairy on yonder neglected anime section. Whoopsie.

How are we doing, the kids and I? Not too badly, really. This single-dad thing isn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be. I’m even keeping the house up pretty well.

Who knew, eh?

Long overdue, tonight was Take Down The Xmas Tree night. I set myself that goal for Wendi’s first day in Arizona, figuring that if I accomplish nothing else while she’s gone at least I’ll be able to show that I can keep house on my own. While the kids picked up the living room, I ran a load of dishes, then took on the tree chore.

Wendi had cajoled the children into de-tinseling the tree on Friday, and the ornaments came off over the weekend. Lucky me, I got to unstrand the lights. This wouldn’t have been so bad but for the fact that Wendi had lovingly, carefully wrapped the strands around limbs as well as up and down along the trunk. (I’ll be the first to admit that the tree looked very pretty when lit up. But.)

The job took me forty minutes, folks. I have scratches all up and down my arms, and I smell strongly of pine. Occasionally I considered taking the pruning shears to the light strand that wound along the trunk. Oh yeah, I wanted to. I persevered, though. The tree’s finally gone and we have our living room back. Huzzah.

On Saturday, Lilith and Geoffrey and I travelled north to Seattle. The impetus was a party thrown by the proprietors of the forum called Pool, but as a fringe benefit we were invited to visit some new friends Lil’ and Geoff’ had made online recently. First we stopped there for sandwiches and lots of fun getting-to-know-you conversation, then Lil’ and I took off for the party.

Pooligans, and friends of Pooligans, are some of the nicest, cleverest, most interesting folks to spend an evening with. Jak and Karawynn’s “ReLease” shindig was one of the nicest parties I’ve ever been to, no question about it. I even managed to operate quite far from my normal comfort zone, and yet lightning didn’t strike me dead on the spot. Good times indeed.

Lil’ and I finally started zonking out about half past midnight so we very reluctantly said our goodbyes and exchanged lots of hugs, then trekked back to our hotel room for the night… or morning, if you prefer. After some mild amusement involving the fact that we’d both forgotten to pack toothpaste, we finally conked out.

We hooked back up again with Lil’ and Geoff’s new friends the next day for a tasty brunch (you can not go wrong with eggs, bacon and toast, you just can’t) and another few well-spent hours of chit-chat and comedy. Mind you, at one point early on I pulled a stupid move: I doubled over laughing at a joke, fell over sideways… and conked my head but good on the wood trim part of the armrest on the loveseat I was sitting on.

Ow. Yeah, I gave myself a nice little concussion. The pain went away after about an hour, but I sort of faded in and out of coherence until we were almost home that night. Ow.

Even with the stupid headbanging moment and not enough sleep, it was a fabulous weekend during which I met a number of damned nifty people. Not bad, not bad at all.

So, uh, what have I been up to these last four days? Well, I worked a “normal” shift Friday. I was home Saturday with the kids. I spent the first part of Sunday curled up in bed, not so much sleeping as just sort of recovering. What finally got me moving was hearing some music playing in the living room.

Erica was using the multimedia computer and playing some InuYasha soundtrack cuts. That was enough to bring me out of my torpor and get me into the living room. What woke me the rest of the way up is that the myHTPC display was showing “album art” for the InuYasha directory.

Long story short, I know how album art works now. Hah!

While explaining the feature to Erica, I tested it by navigating to the Nausicaa soundtrack directory (yep, the cover-art JPG showed up just like it was supposed to). While I was there I queued up some of the tracks and told Erica about how those songs are from one of my all-time favorite anime. Okay, mind you I haven’t actually seen an uncut subtitled Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. I own a copy of the hacked up dub called Warriors of the Wind, though. Erica decided she wanted to see it, and have me watch it with her. And that’s exactly what we did. (She liked it. That’s my girl!)

(But wow, it’s been a few years. I’d forgotten just how awful some of those voices and lines really are.)

During the movie I got a call from Dalemar, who outta-the-blue invited me to do some LAN gaming. Mechwarrior 4, to be specific. Who am I to turn down some gaming, eh? It had been far too long since I’d fragged, yes indeed.

So I got together with him, the Ratboy and a couple of their friends to experience… pain, really. I’m not a very good mech builder, and I’m an even worse mech pilot. I had fun, though, and that’s what counts. (Okay, I had an absolute blast. No complaints at all.)

Yesterday didn’t give me much I really want to write about until after about 9pm, when I went over to hang out with Lil’ and Molly for a couple of hours. Good stew, good chit-chat, just what I needed after a day full of tense frustration highlighted by the closest thing to a full-on anxiety attack I’ve had in ages. Whee.

Today was a much mellower day, though the 24 computers Corporate ordered as 2004’s replacement “budget” showed up this afternoon. Guess what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks at work?

I did take another picture, the other day. I couldn’t be bothered to upload it until tonight. Sorry.

Yep, Erica made a bunny out of snow. Ain’t that cute?

So here I am at work, past 8pm on a Friday night. Why? Email stuff, mostly. As in, if I don’t get the email server purges done now I may face a catastrophic failure before Monday. Le sigh.

One of the engineers was kind enough to run me down to Zupan’s and back with some food to keep me going for the evening. While looking for snack chips, I spotted a product that made my eyes bug out… so of course I had to buy and try it.

Is it just me, or do these two words not go together? Of course… these Cheetos are quite tasty, so I suppose I’m making much ado about nada.

Now back to watching the email maintenance run, and run, and run. Have a great evening, all!

UPDATE: Jenn came up with something that makes even less sense… vegetarian bologna. What’s the world coming to, eh?