I am back!

It’s been an eventful month and a half, that’s for sure.  As I wrote last time, I ended up aggravating my sciatica in a major way, in a way that involved much more pain than what I was dealing with after the European cruise.  Excruciating pain.  Awful awful pain.  I was basically laid up for a week as I couldn’t stand, sit, or lay down.  If you had offered me a chance to cut off my leg, I would have taken it.  Surprisingly though, during that weekend after the first week of me agonizing trying to find a way to exist without pain, I did find that happy position.  And even more joyous, the pain started ebbing away.  I didn’t dare to hope that it would go away entirely, but I hoped it would recede to a point I could at least drive, go to work, stand, etc.  I worked from home that next week as I was able to sit up, and during that week, it was miraculous how the pain ended up going away.  The next week, I drove back to work.  And during that week, the pain went away entirely.  It was mystifying and a relief.

I’ve since seen a spinal doctor who was only too happy to operate or provide injections, but I deferred and asked for physical therapy at this point.  So I’ve been doing that twice a week the past three weeks.  The exercises have been focused mainly on my core area with a focus on trying to wake up muscles there as well as un-stiffen my back.  It’s working.  So here’s to hoping that I can get back to a decent exercise program as I’m definitely “bulking” up.

There are lots of pictures ahead, and I also wanted to post random videos of stuff that I’ve been obsessed with.  Before the pictures, here’s a performance from this past week’s episode of Glee, which had a disco/Saturday Night Fever theme.  The show has been pretty awful lately, but this was a fun episode mainly due to the musical numbers.  My absolute favorite from the episode was a performance of KC & The Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzsgwTaFBfc

Fantastic, right?

Alright, so this weekend, Larry & I went to LACMA to catch the awesome exhibit called Metropolis II.  It’s this huge structure basically filled with tons of slot cars and a crazy amount of tracks winding their way around skyscraper structures.  It’s fascinating and indulges every little kid’s love of race tracks.  It runs during the weekend only, with it running for one hour on, one hour off until the museum closes.  This video catches the very beginning of a rotation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B20pmHXXOB4

It’s mesmerizing, and you can hear my various utterances as I fall under its spell!  I also took some pictures when we were there –

Metropolis II at LACMA

The exhibit ends at the end of the month so we cut it pretty close.

If you want to see what else we’ve been up to, well, my picasaweb link has a few more albums in it showing pics from the San Francisco trip (thankfully my sciatica relapse didn’t happen until the day we were planning to come back!), Michancy’s visit last weekend, and other randomness.  Hopefully lots of nice weather in the future and opportunities for pictures.

Here’s a sampling of pics:

San Francisco Trip, Day 1, March 2012

Driving Up the California Coast

Arrival into San Francisco

Wandering Around Fisherman’s Wharf

San Francisco Trip, Day 2, March 2012

Going to Alcatraz!

Touring Alcatraz

Biking Across the Golden Gate Bridge

Off to Chinatown & Lombard Street!

San Francisco Trip, Day 3, March 2012

Admittedly, there isn’t many pics here – that would be because I was suffering agonizing sciatic pains.  Yay.  But I had to take some pics of the Transamerica building as we were driving right for it!

That’s enough for now – I’m just glad to finally have gotten back on board with this.  More to come, I’m sure.