The bad news is that I can’t get an epidural until December 16th. The good news is that maybe I don’t need it. I’m no longer in back pain, though the problem has migrated lower into my upper thigh, making me a little gimpy. On the other hand, that’s getting better, too. At this rate, I should be back to normal this weekend. Now I have to start some strength training to prevent a recurrence.
Category Archives: General
Back On The Air
We drove back to CA from Colorado this past weekend, and tried to get in Sunday night, but as we approached the California border, we ran into a jam of people returning from Thanksgiving weekend. It took us an hour to get from Jean to Primm at the border (a few miles), so we gave up and turned around to go back to Vegas, which had cheap rooms on an off-season Sunday night (though infuriatingly, the room at the Luxor was only forty bucks, the “resort fee” took it up to seventy). Add in ten bucks for parking and taxes, and it was a hundred, but still a good deal for a luxury room.
Anyway, we drove home yesterday, getting in mid afternoon. My back is quite a bit better, and the painful spasms are gone, but now the problem has migrated to a pain on the inside of my right thigh when I walk, probably as a result of how I was walking when my back hurt. I’ll be going in for epidurals this week, and starting some kind of physical therapy, which will probably just be standard strength training, which I should have been doing anyway.
Of course, the new problem du jour is a furnace that’s not lighting, which apparently started over the weekend, according to our house sitter. Last time this happened it was a bad igniter, and I’m hoping that’s the problem this time as well, because it’s an easy and cheap fix.
But the fun never ends.
[Late-afternoon update]
As I suspected, it was a bad igniter. These things seem to be like light bulbs, in that they have no predictable life, and can fail at any random time. Of course, in a sense, that’s exactly what they are, in that you’re heating a filament with electricity, except not in vacuum.
Gratitude
I know that posting has been light, but this is the first real vacation we’ve had in a while. We’re in a vacation rental up above Estes Park, within walking distance of the park boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park. We’ve been pretty much house bound since the storm, but it’s OK, because it’s a very nice house, and we do have an all-wheel machine to go down the mountain into town if we want to.
Here is the view from one of the balconies.
That’s the continental divide, inside the park. I think that the pointy mountain to the right is Long’s Peak, the furthest-north fourteener.
But I want to give thanks for my health, which considering all the wear and tear of decades, is still pretty good. My back is slowly recovering, and I’ll probably be back to normal by next week. I’m also grateful to live in what I think is still the greatest country on the planet, warts and all, and despite the desires of some to “fundamentally transform it.”
I’m also grateful for my readers, and all of my friends in the space industry, and the ability to start to accelerate our progress in opening the solar system to humanity in the coming years.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
An Oldie But A Goodie
I love this: A cat watching and reacting to Psycho.
An Eerie Photo
Going Off The Air
I’m flying to DC this afternoon for eight days of space stuff, culminating with a brief talk on space property rights at the International Astronautical Conference a week from tomorrow. I’ll have my laptop, but not sure how much time I’ll have to post. But be good in comments.
Dustbury
RIP, Charles G. Hill. This is sad; he just retweeted me the other day. He had been blogging half a decade longer than I’d been. He was a pioneer.
Knots
This is useful info. I’ve never been great at it.
Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out”
How it changed jazz.
Yes, a classic album. My sister went to music school in Ann Arbor with his son, Chris.
[Afternoon update]
I had not realized that Joe Morello started out as a violinist. How often does someone go from violin to drums?
[Monday-morning update]
The top 100 jazz albums you should own. With a meditation on the art.
[Bumped]
Bodie
An interesting history of a California ghost town. I went there once, back in the eighties. It’s a long drive on a dirt road, down in the desert east of Yosemite.