Sciatic - The Nerve of Doom

02.24.2005

For the month of February I've been fighting my body. On the 1st, my back went out. Then it eentually moved to my lower back, then my right hip. My chiropractor's diagnosis is that I probably have a bulging disc. This disc is irritating a mass of muscles in my butt and hip, causing them to eventually contract around the sciatic nerve (which runs the length of the leg). With that diagnosis, I started down the chiropractic road of recovery of spinal adjustments, a really good massage, and lessening my vigor when going to karate and yoga.

I'm gradually getting better, but it's frustrating. Usually when my back goes out, it might be out for a week and then I'm ok. From hearing stories of others, part of the blame for this is due to my resolution of self improvement. While I'm losing weight, my muscles are moving and reforming (to help make me the hulking stud lives deep inside me). With my new excercise regimen, replacing my non-existant one, my body has received a shock. On top of that, karate and yoga have me stretching and kicking in ways that most 400lb bodies aren't accustomed to. The muscles then rebel by contracting to protect what's inside (that damn sciatic nerve). This is probably over simplifying it, but that's the way I understand it.

So, I'm trying to make my body better and it's fighting me. I'm still going to yoga and karate, although there are some excerises and kicks I'm skipping over for now. Maybe I can convince my body to let me win?

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Busy-ness

02.23.2005

Been way too busy to notice if anything is interesting enough in life to mention here. Still alive, if any relatives are checking....

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Focus

02.15.2005

For the past couple of days I've had trouble focusing. Not visually, but mentally. It feels like I've got a lot going on, but if I slow down and think about everything is about normal. My key to life is making it as stress free as possible, but for some reason I feel like some stressful situations are trying to sneak up on me.

Work is most peoples source of stress. I've got work configured to where it usually doesn't cause too much stress. I've got the Montgomery Scott Method of Timing down pretty well ("Do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?") which gratefully allows time to fix most of the problems that tend to creep in. Karate and Yoga are going well, although my body is fighting it by giving birth to a roaming pain - it's my knee, no, now it's my back, wait, it's my hip - I'm just starting to get too damn old.

Then there's all of my little home projects. I think I've had some new lighting fixtures setting in the garage for close to a year now. It would take all of 2 hours to install the 3 fixtures I've got, I just haven't had the gumption to do anything about it. And then, of course, there's still learning the gaming engine for my much thought about wrestling game.

Once my work demo in March has wrapped up (my only foreseeable deadline), maybe it'll be time to take a week of at home and see what all I can catch up on. It worked pretty good last October when I just stayed home and wrapped up chores. Maybe I can wrap up some more?

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Multiple Holiday

02.14.2005

Welcome to Valentine's Day, right smack dab in the middle of National Black History Month.

I wonder what it all means.....

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Who Is Paul Kupperberg?

02.09.2005

I've been buying up original pages of the Vigilante comic series on eBay for a couple of years now. As a page pops up, I'll bid on it, and most of the time I'm crazed enough to bid more than I should and I end up winning it. I keep telling Jerry my goal is to own a significant percentage of the original Vigilante artwork. For a rough estimate, there were 50 issues and 2 annuals published, average in about 25 pages of actual story art per issue, so that would mean there are about 1300 pages made. I've now got (I think) 16 pages from various issues. That would give me a whopping 1.2% of all the original Vigilante artwork in existance.

Yeah, I need help.

Well, the last couple of auctions I've won have all been from the same seller on eBay. After looking at who I've been writing checks to, the address I'm sending the checks to, and paying attention to some of the details about the actual Vigilante series I found out something: I'm buying these from Paul Kupperberg, the actual writer of the series that I'm so enamoured with.

That realization just bonked me on the head. This is the guy whose stories I read and mentally gulped up for years. The comic series I became obsessed with - this is the guy who wrote all that stuff. If not for him, Jerry wouldn't have the fun story he shares of me walking around in a daze after reading the final issue of Vigilante.

Maybe I should just tell Paul what a fan I am? The trick is how to do it without sounding like some type of fanboy stalker.

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