Arrant Nonsense

Well. My back appears to be better. I can move completely freely again, and it's not spasming on me the way it was before when I'd get out of the car and stuff. I still get some pain in the actual back, so I'm still taking the ibuprofen and icing it, but I'm pretty sure I'm at the tail end of this episode. What would be interesting would be to see x-rays NOW, to see if it's changed any.

MountainCon is sneaking up pretty fast, and I still haven't gotten any clarification on exactly what my panel is going to be called. So I'm just going to do what I already had planned, with a little intro at the beginning of why fanfic is "valuable."

In other MountainCon news, the Ariel Ambulance is going to be there. Yes, the Ambulance from the Firefly ep "Ariel." That's *if* the Hubby and I go down to Vegas and get it...and can then take it back. The logistics are still being ironed out, but the Hubby is willing as long as he gets reimbursed for the gas. Seems silly to me that they don't rent a Uhaul pickup or something and drive it up themselves, or get someone who's coming up here from there to do so, but if someone from here needs to go get it to have it here, so be it.

I think I might actually have stuff for the friend_fic thing. It's just a matter of getting it on the screen. In other news, I did a count the other day, and "Ra Shi Da" was my twentieth Firefly fic. Considering the fact that I started writing Firefly fic about 14 months ago, I think that's kind of cool.

And now, I must clean my messy house. Yay.

And in honor of "Talk Like a Pirate Day," I'm going to answer any phone calls I get today with "Ahoy, me hearties." Yes, I am.

My back hurts more today, but I have more freedom of movement. Go figure. I get to go get it cracked again tomorrow. Whee.

Look! Icons!



Crikey, there's a lot of wank about Steve Irwin's death. Holy cow, people. That being said, you just know that "How did Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin die?" is going to be a Trivial Pursuit question in one of their future editions.

New House tonight! YAY! And the premiere of "Standoff," which I'm only watching because Gina Torres is in it. I refuse to get attached to it. After all, it's on Fox.

I learned something today at customers_suck, which was bolstered by internet research. Brown eggs come from brown chickens. I never knew that before.

I've modified the ScruffDogFic so that it makes better sense. Many thanks to mandylancast for her excellent crit. *hugs*

We went and saw "Lassie" yesterday. It was a lovely movie...but they totally left out my favorite line from the book. Woe.

Today was better than yesterday. For one thing, I only left the house to go to the chiropractor. I didn't have this big elaborate expensive thing I had to do that would cost us dearly if I screwed it up. So that was a shiny thing. My back still hurts, and I still can't touch my knees, but it's minutely better than it was. Yayness.

For another, my S2 Farscape DVDs came today. To my surprise and pleasure, they're four-disc sets instead of the two-disc, double-sided sets I was expecting. I looked at Amazon's reviews, and apparently they had trouble with the two-sided discs, so...here we are. Yay!

In honor of getting them, I made a wallpaper. It's probably not all that, as wallpapers go, but it's mine and I like it and I share it with you. It's snaggable if anyone wants the silly thing.

Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size pic:

1024x768

In other news, the Hubby made it to Colorado in the new plane okay, although it wore him out. Apparently we need to get a GPS for it, stat. He may stay an extra day; he hasn't decided. Depends a lot on what the weather does.

In other other news, the Angel Scriptbook comics I BIN'd on eBay three weeks ago still haven't arrived. *sigh* I'm about ready to give up on eBay for comics. Because, dude. I emailed the seller, but with the holiday weekend, who knows when I'll hear back from him. I hope to hell they didn't get delivered to my front porch while we were at Little Brother's wedding, and then someone took them. Because that would suck.

Okay, I went to the other chiropractor yesterday, and he disapproves of the six-month plan thing that the other one wanted to do. He said that that's a form of "practice management," where you get people to commit to this big long thing and get the money up front, and it's basically a money-making thing. Which is what the Hubby figured. So, I called the first one back and cancelled all the future stuff with the receptionist. Then I got a call back from the doctor later. He was disappointed and said stuff about fixing the "underlying problem"...which I don't ever recall him telling me what that actually is. Heh.

I had slightly more movement last night before I went to bed. This is a good thing. Once I get my "normal" range back, we'll invest in getting my leg tendons lengthened and strengthened. I have another appointment to get my back cracked tomorrow. Today, ibuprofen and ice.

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Da Boy...has been an odd combination of a joy and a trial lately. Having me flat on my back and snappish from pain probably hasn't helped. He was really whiny yesterday, very annoying. I was ready to send him to his room for the rest of the damb day if he kept it up. You know, I never wanted to be one of those parents that parks their kids in front of the television, but if it wasn't for Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder, I think my sanity would have been gone by now.

That being said, he's done a couple of things in the last few days that have made me laugh. The other night, I was discussing with the Hubby what to make him for dinner. "O-A-T-M-E-A-L?" I asked. And then Da Boy said "Does that spell 'oatmeal'?" Hee! This is a kid, BTW, who has evinced negative (as in, he's actually opposed to it) interest in actually learning to read.

Yesterday, at the chiro's office, they had some wooden blocks for kids to play with while their parents get seen to. He set them up and then informed me that he hoped that "Hezbollah rockets wouldn't hit the houses." Which made me go o.O We don't watch much TV news, but I guess it's possible we've been listening to too much talk radio. The Hubby said that he had a rant about that awhile back that Da Boy seemed impressed by; maybe that was it.

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The radio that we've been waiting on for the airplane actually arrived when the Hubby was there, so that's a good. However, when he went to fly the plane, it wouldn't run up to power. Apparently it needed a new cable for the fuel mixture control, which should have arrived this morning. The weather doesn't look too good for his trip home; he may be stuck there an extra couple of days. *sigh* I wish I was there.

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Writing? What is this writing of which you speak? I signed up for the new round of the cya_ficathon; hopefully I'll be able to get something out of it. My prompt for friend_fic hasn't shaken anything loose yet. The ScruffDogFic still sucks.

Bah.

Okay, the dumb thing is completely out of whack. My x-rays are a scary, scary thing. One of my legs is shorter than the other, which throws my lower back off. In addition, the back itself is curving a little bit as well. Then, the upper back curves the other way to compensate. My neck vertebrae, which should have a nice curve, are nearly straight. One of them has a whiplash injury from Lord knows how long ago, so that instead of sitting right on top of the other one like it should, it's pushed backwards. I also have bone spurs in my spine, and several of the foramen (the gaps that the nerves branch out of) in my lower back are almost completely closed up, causing pressure on the nerves. I also have a herniated disk in my L5, which we knew about before this whole thing flared up again.

Whee.

The place I've been going to this week wants to put me on a six-month program. Insurance won't cover it. Which is fine with me, really, because I personally think that insurance should be for catastrophic things and not fairly routine care, which is what I consider this to be. (I won't get started on what I think the current third-party-payer system we have in place right now has done to the medical profession.) So, we're talking upwards of $3K. The chiropractor thinks that the outcome, in the end, will be "good to excellent."

The Hubby is balking. Not over the cost, but because he doesn't think that the program will solve the underlying problem and that I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life--and thus will be putting the chiropractor's kid through college.

He wants me to get a second opinion. And that's fair. So I've cancelled the appointment with the current chiropractor for today and made an appointment with the one I used to go to way back when, like, before I had Da Boy. Yes, it's been over five years since my back has bothered me enough to get it seen to.

Why don't I go to a "regular" doctor, I hear you asking, instead of those quacky chiropractors? Because the last time I did that (admittedly, about fifteen years ago; this is a really ongoing problem for me), they sent me to completely ineffective physical therapy. I'm pretty sure that they would put me on drugs that I'm loath to take and suggest surgery for my herniated disk--and I have this terrible allergy to scalpels guddling around in my back. Chiropractors have been the only effective treatment for the pain, so I go with what works.

The Hubby thinks that the underlying problem is the fact that the tendons in my legs are too short, and thus throw off my balance. I tend to agree with him; I can barely reach the bottoms of my shins when I bend down (when my back is normal; right now I can't even reach my gorram knees), and when I lie on my back and put my legs in the air, I can't really straighten them at all. So, once we get the pain taken care of, he wants me to work with a trainer that will help stretch those tendons. I think that's a good idea.

One chiropractor does a scan of your back, and the other one comes in later, looks at the picture, and stops dead.

"I've never seen one that looked like that before."

Maybe he'll get a paper out of it. *grumbles*

I'm thinking that spending eleven hours in airplanes is a bad idea. *sigh*

I have an appointment with the chiropractor at two. Yay. This is a good thing, because I've been seriously considering bailing out on the Hubby when he goes to get the plane. Sitting in an airplane for several hours, and hanging about while he inspects the thing to make sure it's all up to snuff, when my back feels like this? Not on my Top Five List of Fun Things to Do. Hopefully they'll be able to pop the stupid vertebrae back into place so I can bloody move again.

In other news, the music in this game is hypnotic.

So here's another one!

We finished up with Farscape S1 the other day. All I have to say is:

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

I woke up this morning in severe pain from my back. A massive dose of ibuprofen has been taken; a heating pad is being applied. I hate my stupid back. I can barely walk, and my leg hurts. Dammit.

We're going to Iowa on Tuesday to pick up the airplane. Yay! The radio has been fixed, but hasn't made its way to Iowa yet--hopefully, it will be there by the time we get there. We're planning on a leisurely trip back after the Hubby inspects the plane on Wednesday; he says we're going to get back home on Sunday.

Which means that I won't be able to attend the FanConComm meeting for MountainCon. Gyah. I hope there'll be another one before the actual Con, because I still have no idea what day the panel I'm on is going to be, or what time, or any of that stuff. Speaking of which, I should send off an email to the guy in charge. *does so*

My new crack is Diet Strawberries and Cream Pepsi. ZOMG SO GOOD.

I'm thinking of dropping out of all the icon comms I'm in. I haven't made an icon for a contest in who knows how long, so it seems to me there's no sense in belonging to comms I'm not participating in anymore. I can always rejoin if I get a yen to start up again.

I've scribbled a paragraph in the ScruffDogFic. I have a direction it's heading. And I think my definition of "fluff" is probably different from everyone else's. *evil laughter*