Ridiculously for a 26 year old who is not obese, I am getting ever worsening back problems. Yesterday I woke up and had horrible shooting pains whnever I moved my left leg in the wrong way. The pain is centered somewhere between my lower back and left hip. It is very hard to locate exactly, it seems to come from deep inside, there's no massage that even touches it. So I went to work and sat through another ridiculous lesson (at my job we have a week of training every year, and after 4 years of the same lessons they are becoming intolerable) with pain shooting through me with every sublte movement. I dosed myself up with Advil which worked mildly, then Motrin (which perhaps worked better or maybe the pain was naturally wearing off). It is so embarrasing to have to gimp around the workplace. There's nothing outwardly wrong, just a weird hesitating half-limp.

Today the pain was better, and now it's almost gone. I realized that this happens everytime around training time and am hesitantly attributing it to the extended period of sitting that I have to endure. Now, my job in general is sitting, but at least I can move around, take a stroll, and just stand up and stretch more. I think I will use my newly-gotten health insurance (first in over 5 years!) to go to a doctor and, even if they can't do anything-which I suspect, at least get some real pain meds (which would be the first time I was taking them for pain :) )

We Are Scientists, huh? Well I guess maybe I'll see someone there. Maybe even someone who'll talk to me. I do have a position for friend that's recently opened. Any takers?

After what seems like weeks and weeks of house guests, visits to family, and best friends leaving (I already miss you, (e:flacidness)), I am finally sitting here typing in an otherwise empty house. Very nice.

Today I did what seems to be my favorite thing to do. I leisurely woke up, had a nice cup of really strong coffee, and surfed the web as I slowly came to life. Next was a bit of cleaning, the dishes, followed by the creation of egg salad. I'm in the process of eating the newly-cooled goop right now...yummy.

I decided I should try out my Christmas gift from (e:paul)'s momma: a big ole crock pot. I looked for a likely recipe in the slow-cook cookbook which was also from mother maria. Then I headed down to the coop for the ingredients. I learned what herb de provincal is from a nice lady there, I think she might have been a volunteer, but alas they didn't have any. She suggested I use a combination of marjoram, thyme, and maybe a dash of tarragon, since garlic and pepper were already ingredients. Hope it works. Then I tramped all the way to the Hodge liquor store for the requisite dry white wine. Not a bad day for a walk at all.

My Chicken Stew Provencal is currently crocking away. It smells good so far.

Now I just need to convincce my sugar daddy that this is what I should do everyday! :)

Haruki Murakamii.

Good read. Just read what I believe is his first novel, A Wild Sheep Chase. I've read a couple others, maybe even posted about them...Wind-up Bird Chronicles was also very good. So far his protagonists are without names. Not that they don't have one in their world, just that it's not ever shared with us. How important is a name anyway? In the Wild Sheep Chase, I don't think anyone has a name: just her, me, he, etc... A world where everyone is a pronoun (it's interesting that even at this level, we still can tell who's a boy and who's a girl).

His main characters are almost always normal, even übernormal. Then somehow through seemingly coincidental events become involved in very strange happenenings indeed. Through it all the main character stumbles, generally using his ordinariness to good advantage. It's the adventure that we all want to have, the once in a lifetime complete removal from mundania (anyone ever read Piers Anthony?).

If you're still not interested then I'll give you one final thought to get excited about: whale penis.

Enjoy, gentle readers, enjoy!

...drink 6 white russians.

When you pull a (e:lilho) from your couch and look back and find her face down on the flo', maybe it's not a good idea to pull her ass up and put her in the car. About three minutes later on Main St. (which, by the way, was just infested with the po-pos last night), (e:lilho) decides she needs to blow chunks. So, I pull over, but there's cops all over, so I start to pull into this parking lot. Suddenly (e:paul) screams and I look in the rear-view and see (e:lilho) slither right on out the car. (e:Paul) is like stop, stop, sarah fell out of the car. (e:Flacidness) is busting a gut so hard he can't even speak. Frieda and me are just like, wtf?!?

So, I guess you know it's a good time when someone is thrown from a moving vehicle, righ?. The best part is that we didn't let a little thing like that stop the party. No, we went right on out, left (e:lilho) to continue her conversation with her inner guts, and danced for a couple hours. Fun times.

(e:paul)'s version: [inlink]paul,3995[/inlink]

My lovely auntie, Lovey, just sent me some lovely pics of her luvalicious daughters. Here they be:


Elizabeth as something halfway between a drunken clown and a rastafarian. But darn cute either way.


Samantha, the cutest baby on earth, sucking joyously on her thumb. Somehow reminds me of Matt...


And the two beauties. Being beautiful and being sisters. Awwww...