Hockey Game Tonight

I know I've been writing a lot about my pinched nerve and my various ailments related to it. Unfortunately, it's just an all encompassing injury that pretty much dominates your thoughts and limits what you do, even when sleeping. Speaking of which, last night my pillow experiment went well. I reverted back to my normal pillows and slept soundly. For the most part I was able to sleep on either side and woke up with less stiffness in my upper back than normal. Hopefully that trend will continue.

Tonight we are going to the Hawks and Blues game at the United Center. Should be a good time. There are only two home games left in the regular season including tonight, but that's ok because my Cub tickets start in mid-April!! Bears, Hawks and Cubs....that's a lot of sports during the year.

Who has two thumbs and has already bought his wife a Christmas gift? THIS guy!

Back at it

Today I decided it was time to get back to running. Yes, my arm and upper back still ache and my pinched nerve is still pinching, but it's been almost 4 weeks since I was at the gym. While my desire was there, I knew I wouldn't be up to speed (pun intended) right away...and I wasn't. As it turned out, I was able to run about 2/3rds of my usual run before calling it. Still, 2 miles isn't bad right? We'll see how the pinched nerve is tomorrow. Oh, I also decided to take a break from the ibuprofen for a day at least. It can't possibly be good to take ibuprofen for a month straight, even at recommended doses.

My chiropractor thinks I strained my pectoral muscle a bit this past weekend as my body compensated for the weak left arm and my scapula muscle. Crap. It was a risk, but our next tournament isn't for a month, so I have time to rest. Just don't tell LL....no complaining!!

It wasn't all bad at the chiropractor though. He said my upper back was actually loosening up a bit and I felt the adjustment working on the vertebrae. If the muscles aren't in spasm or aren't tight, then the vertebrae can be adjusted more easily. So that's positive!

The other news today is that I'm going to go back to my regular pillows tonight and see how I sleep and how I feel in the morning. Chalk it up to experimentation.....

Long day

Looking to head to bed early again tonight. This morning I was up at 6 to get to a church finance council meeting by 7. Just too darn early for me, even though we were in bed by 10 the night before. That meeting was followed up with a physical therapy session, which led to an afternoon in the office with Ricardo while we discussed the future of our business together. There was more discussion when I got home and throughout the day about LL's possible new career direction. And then finally, the day was wrapped up with a condo board meeting. I'm beat. See you tomorrow!

Lots of birthdays coming up

It's a crazy busy birthday time of year. My birthday was last Thursday, I missed Naperville Greg's on 3/11, his wife, Kleveland Kim is 4/2. Joisey Ken's daughter Stella is 4/1, my mom's is 3/30, my sister's is 4/5, Joisey Ken's wife's birthday is 4/16....whew!! It's insane!!

Big things going on around the house too as LL is pondering her career and a possible change. Lots to consider though.....

The shoulder is still uncomfortable. Pushups are pretty much impossible at this point, but I think come Wednesday I'm going to hit the gym and run at least. The nerve seems to be getting better, albeit slowly. The last few nights I was able to sleep on either side for a short period of time. It's not great, but it's something.

Weekend and Catchup

So much to write about!! Let's work backwards:

This weekend was our first softball tournament of the year with my new team which is a combination of our old team and another team. The tournament was in St. Louis at fields which I've played on before and really enjoyed. The league is USSSA, which is also my favorite league, so it was shaping up to be a great weekend. The tournament had 11 teams and was going to be a one day event, which meant a lot of softball.

Unfortunately, with the combination of teams and my advanced age, I'm not guaranteed as much playing time as I would like. I'm not sure what that will mean for the rest of the year, but we'll see how it goes. For this tournament, we had 14 guys and I was told I would be playing a lot of third base. It turned out that I played much more than I think the team manager wanted me to play due to injuries. We had two outfielders and a middle infielder go down (strained quad, strained t-band/groin, and food poisoning of all things) which led to shuffling of people around, so I ended up at third for 4 of the five games.

My pinched nerve didn't have much impact on my playing except that my left arm got tired as the day went on (my tricep still isn't up to snuff yet). We won the first three games 9-1, 8-0 and 14-6. The games were pretty low scoring due to the type of ball and the relative humidity in St. Louis. Unfortunately we lost the next two games against inferior opponents (the two injuries came midway through our third game) 6-5 and 9-8. Yours truly made the last out of the day with the tying run on third base. Ugh. The inning started with the first two guys getting on and then the next two guys made outs, so while I was the last out, I was by no means the only person to not come through that game. Next time!! All in all, we hit lousy as a team and I was no exception. The first two games I was at least .500, but after that it was pretty miserable.

On to pictures!

I told my college roommate, Springfield Sam, that I was going to be coming through town around dinner time if he was free. His whole family was and me found a nice place to eat with a fish fry (it is Lent after all) that was close to the highway called Dublin Pub. It was a great choice! Here's Sam, his wife Diane and his three kids. The place had something called a "horseshoe" which is bread topped with your choice of meat, then slathered in your choice of cheese. They also have pony shoes which are just smaller versions. I went with the all-you-can-eat walleye fish fry though and sweet potato fries. Yum. Nice job Sam! Great to see you guys too!

For my birthday, we got a small group together to go to Sapori Trattoria, our favorite Italian restaurant. They always treat us very nice there and gave us this semi-private room. Naperville Greg and Kleveland Kim are on the left of the picture and Ricardo and Jodi are the right. We had a great meal and good times.








In addition to a free assortment of desserts, the private room and honoring a coupon I forgot to bring, they put my name on the menu!! Very nice.














On the Friday before St. Paddy's Day, we went to Emmit's Pub for the fish fry and some good drinks. Though it's not a fascinating picture by any stretch, I wanted a visual memory of the delicious, delicious fish. Yum.














One of the cool things about Emmit's is that they periodically and randomly have bagpipers show up! Lots of Irish fun!!

Happy Birthday to me!

Yes, today is my birthday! I share it with Rick Harrison from Pawn Stars, though he's a year older than me.

Today I had three people separately sing me the happy birthday song and one person text me it. And on Facebook, over 70 folks wished me a happy birthday, which is pretty good considering I'm friends with about 400 people. Does that mean 330 people should be removed from my friend list? Maybe I'll investigate that......

Aside from the accolades, which should really go to my mother (thanks Ma!!), I have a dinner planned. During the day though, I headed to the batting cages to test out my shoulder and pinched nerve, much to the dismay of both LL and Joisey Ken: LL because she doesn't want me to regress and end up miserable again, while Ken didn't want LL to have to deal with me being miserable. Fortunately everything went just fine, as I expected, so I'm ready for our tournament in St. Louis this weekend! Yep, I'm going down and have high expectations.

After the cages, I had physical therapy and traction. Cages and traction....sounds not good, but it was! Traction really helps my pinched nerve so I'm always excited to have it done. In fact, this time the therapist upped my time from 10 minutes to 15. Sweet.

So all is good, but no blog entry tomorrow. Have a great weekend!!

Just Wednesday Craziness

It was another pretty good day from a pain perspective. Today was a chiropractor day and their traction went much better today than on Monday. They do it a little differently, but seemed to help today. The chiropractor also instructed me on a better way to apply ice to the nerve, which also seemed to work well when I tried it at home. So all in all, a good day.

The day started off a little crazy as I totally forgot about a conference call this morning until I came downstairs to my computer and saw an email about which line on which they should call. Doh! Fortunately it was only a minute or two after the scheduled time so people weren't mad at me. The reason for my delay, other than completely forgetting about the call, was that I decided to make a nice omelet for myself for breakfast and read the sports section. A good way to start the day!!

Lots of pain around the Sutton household this week. In addition to mine pinched nerve, our dog, Molly, who is 13, had to have 5 teeth pulled because they were rotten or whatever. She has terrible teeth and has had 12 pulled in total now I guess. Yikes! So that was yesterday and by today she was back to eating soft food at least. Apparently she'll be back to eating hard food in no time, which seems kind of crazy to me. The vet says she'll be fine, but you never know with a pooch that old.

Breakthrough?

Yesterday started my sessions of chiropractor visits on Monday and Wednesday and physical therapy on Tuesday and Thursday. Yep, four days a week I'm seeing somebody who should be helping my pinched nerve. Today was the PT session. It was going along as my last two had gone, slightly disappointing, until the end when they put me in traction. In traction, you basically lay down on a table and they strap in your head to a machine with a rope.....real medieval times stuff. The machine pulls slowly for a while, stops, and then releases. At then end of my 10 minute session on it this time though, I felt a LOT better! Hardly any pain at all!! So I told the therapist about it and she said they would put me on it for a little longer on Thursday.

My chiropractor is also putting me in traction, but it's a different kind that doesn't seem to work as well. That's ok, the manipulation is still good as he adjusts my C7 vertebrae last before the traction and electric stim. Anyway, things are looking up!

In other news, I was asked by the Chicago Bears to be one of 20 season ticket holders to be on a season ticket holder advisory group! We'll meet six times a year up at Halas Hall in Lake Forest and give our feedback and comments. In September of 2010 I was selected to fill out an application, but was not one of the 11 members chosen. This year one person left and they decided to add 10 more people. I was in that group of 10!! Sweet. The Bears manager in charge really liked what I wrote, but unfortunately I didn't save a copy to share. I'm sure it was awesome though.

Shiny (as in Apple) Sunday

Two big electronic events happened this weekend for our household. First, we both got new iPads on Friday as promised by Apple! Very fun. We're excited to get the necessary parts to use it effectively (cover and keyboard combo for example) and take some classes on using it smartly.

On Saturday, LL's father was upgrading LL's phone software, which was several iterations behind, and got it working well....for about four hours. Then it crashed. There's a simple fix that I knew and forgot about, so in a state of angst, we headed to the Apple Store on Sunday hoping to be able salvage her pictures, contacts and such. Well, that problem was fixed before I even got the car parked after dropping her off. I had a question or two about the iPad, one of which was migrating our contact info and such from our 3g phones to the iPad. That particular function is a little more difficult than it should be, but is very easy from the 4GS phones which are the latest and greatest phones. For a small, ahem, upgrade fee, we could upgrade to the iPhone 4. For twice that fee though, we could get the 4GS. Well, why bother upgrading to outmoded technology?? Plus we got on a new family plan that saves us $80 a month on our cell and data costs, so we breakeven in 5 months. Not bad. And the new phones are way, way,way faster! Very cool.

Unfortunately the Apple Store couldn't help us with everything we needed to do , so we had to go to an ATT store to finish up and do it before they closed. Fortunately there was an ATT store not far away and the people there were really helpful. So it was a busy but expensive weekend for us!

Insane Weekend

It's really even hard to figure out where to start on what happened this weekend.

Thursday and Friday afternoons both started off at the bar with some friends and the NCAA round one games. Did my neck still hurt? Yes, well at least my upper back and tricep hurt, but from about 11 a.m. til 7 or 8 p.m. the pain isn't debilitating. The mornings continue to be not great, but back to the bar information. I already wrote about Thursday and the home made corned beef. Friday was fun as well as I met the same folks at a local pub under new management, George Street Bar (GSB). That was fun and then I headed to The Cubby Bear, where a banker friend of mine had rented out the whole bar, or at least his bank did. It was awesome. Free booze the rest of the afternoon. Plus I ran into other professionals that I knew there! Good stuff.

Then it was off to another bar, yes the third bar of the day, to meet Ricardo and Jodi at Emitt's for their fish fry. Awesome way to end the day.

Saturday LL and I drove out separately to her folks house. LL had to go out early to get our dog Molly to her vet appointment. I took my time and went out later in the afternoon. While I was GOING to start on our taxes, I ended up spending time starting up.....my new iPad!!! Yes, both LL and I got our new iPads delivered on Friday. Good stuff. I'm excited to be using it.

Saturday night we went out for dinner at Jameson's Pub in Joliet, a place my softball teams has gone many times, as has LL and her parents. They were serving up really tasty corned beef and cabbage, so we were pretty happy. After dinner, LL and I went to downtown Joliet to the Rialto, a place we considered having our wedding reception, for a Jim Gaffigan stand up show. But not only did we have tickets, we had VIP tickets, second row, autograph poster, plus a meet and greet and DVD of his last show signed. Very awesome. Here's a pic:

His show was so damn funny. We had a great time.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about Sunday, which was just as crazy and fun!!! By the way, the temperature was in the 70's and 80's all weekend. It was the warmest St. Patrick's Day in Chicago recorded history, smashing the old record by about 10 degrees. Awesome.

Oh, and I had to change the comment sign in from just anyone to you having to be signed in. Too much spam.

Comment system changed

Another painful morning following not enough sleep for me. I keep thinking that "tonight will be the night!" that I get eight hours of sleep, but it hasn't happened yet. This evening I went out and bought one of these:

My hope is that the neck pillow will support my neck in a better position than my conventional pillow and will relieve pressure on my ailing pinched nerve.

Of course I won't know if it's the pillow, my physical therapy, the chiropractor or just time that makes it feel better eventually, but I won't really care then!! As long as I'm feeling better.

Today was the start of the NCAA tournament (after the play in games) and after getting some work done, I headed to a not nearby bar called Norse, where some friends were congregating. The bar doesn't serve food, so they let one of my friends bring in home-made corned beef for sandwiches. How awesome is that?? It ended up actually tasting more like pastrami than corned beef, but was still awesome. So we had a few beers, a few sandwiches, watched some basketball and called it a fun afternoon!

I've removed the word identifier needed for posting comments. It really is just too annoying for the limited amount of spam that I'll get. Enjoy!

Status update

Normally I wouldn't make an entry JUST about an update to my health, but today I am because 1) there's news to update you on and 2) it's late and I'm tired.

This morning started off much the same way the last 10 have started: lots of pain. There's really no reason to expound upon it as it really was the same type of pain and in the same places. This afternoon however, much of the pain had dissipated. Now, it wasn't gone, but much more tolerable. My left arm was still pretty weak, but at least it didn't hurt a ton as well.

That was fortunate because I had a meeting downtown with a client towards the end of the day and was NOT looking forward to wincing and rubbing my arm every ten seconds. After the meeting, I went to the chiropractor to see if he could help speed up the recovery. While I'm not sure if he can, I'm willing to give anything a try. One thing he told me was to switch back to ice instead of heat at this point. He said the heat would feel better initially, but that I would only inflame the area after the heat treatment was done, making it feel worse. Tonight instead of using heat, I used ice and it did seem to feel pretty good. We'll see how it goes from here. Maybe in the morning I'll still use heat to get out of bed and then follow it up with ice.

So I'm doing a bit better, but my left tricep is still weak and actually has been spasming (which doesn't seem to be a word but it should be). Hopefully I'm on the road to recovery!

A little science

Today I headed to Athletico for my first physical therapy session for my pinched nerve. Though I was finally able to sleep through the night for the first time in 10 days, my left arm is noticeably weaker today. These symptoms seem to be consistent with the pinched nerve diagnosis. Maybe my doctor DOES know what he's talking about! From this page, I found some valuable information including this diagram which shows where pain shows up usually from which nerve (as determined by the vertebrae). I'm showing classic C7 pinched nerve issues, while also suffering from some C6 problems.

Apparently it's very typical of a pinched nerve to experience the muscle pain first, which I did right by the C7 location above, and THEN lose strength in your arm, at least in the case of the C7 nerve. Specifically your tricep is engaged by your C7, which explains exactly what's going on with my left arm. Today I couldn't even do a pushup if my life depended on it. Three days ago, it wouldn't have been a problem. Weird.

We decided to head out for dinner as we were both pretty tired and not interested in cooking. Upon the recommendation of some friends with kids, we chose a relatively high end hamburger place called DMK. Burgers there are like $10+ and they have a bunch of good beer. While the burgers are pretty tasty, the buns are not as good as they could be and the environment was not great. Not only was our server pushy, it was louder than hell in that place. With a fake tin-stamped roof and smooth, cement walls, there's nothing to absorb the noise. So even though there weren't that many people in there, it was really, really loud. Not a place we'll be going back to. Our main question was how could someone go there with two kids and then recommend it to someone else??

A look into reality TV

Today I went to my storage facility where we rent a modest little 5'x10' space for seasonal items and extra stuff. However the reason for my visit wasn't to pick up or drop off. Instead, they were having an auction of some units that hadn't been paying their rent. There are at least two shows that I watch about just this type of activity. The buyers on the shows all have resale shops of some kind, or at least most of them do, and this is how they get some of their inventory. The units are just auctioned off one at a time after you get to look at them from the hall (you can't go inside) and it's just an open cry system. Pretty fun!! Unfortunately for me today, there was only one unit up for auction and it looked pretty awful. It was a 5'x5' with some bags of things on the floor and a purse on top. The locker ended up going for $45, but even that seemed excessive to me. There were about 20 people there, which seemed like a lot for a Monday at noon. Still, at least I went and I'll probably go to some other facilities when they have auctions and see what happens. I can always get stuff for my parents to sell at their garage sales!!

Saturday, since I couldn't play softball, we met LL's parents out in the burbs for dinner. We actually ate at Cheddars, a restaurant right down the street from where I would have been playing softball. It was a nice visit. My folks are up at the place in Michigan, their first trip up there since October!

The pinched nerve is still a problem, but now it's mostly a problem in the morning and at night. In the morning it seems logical as I'm mostly stationary while sleeping and any pain medication has worn off by then. It's been pretty rough. Even moving my left arm is rough as the weight of my arm even causes discomfort. The last few days I've been trying to use the heating pad on my back and shoulder before moving out of bed in hopes to make it a little easier. I'm hoping things get better soon. In the afternoon it seems to be not too bad. Tomorrow starts physical therapy.

Hawks vs. Rangers

Last night we headed to our second hockey game of the year. It was an original six matchup between the Blackhawks and the Rangers. Both teams are most likely headed for the playoffs, though the Rangers are a little more secure than the Hawks.

But the night wasn't JUST about the game. First, it was a bobblehead night, which means they were giving away a bobblehead of one of the players and last night it was Dave Bolland. Already on display by LL's desk are Jonathan Toews and Patrick Sharp bobbleheads, so this was going to make a nice addition. The doors opened at 6, so we decided to hit a bar in LL's old neighborhood and not too far from the stadium called The Beer Bistro. They have great burgers, but it was a Friday in Lent, so no meat for me. I dropped LL off and went to find parking. While I found a free spot, she got a table, no small feat at 5 on a Friday with a home hockey game. We were off and running.

When the food came, I had fish tacos, I asked for the check. We ate, paid, and took off, arriving at the stadium with 4 minutes to spare, guaranteeing our additions to our bobblehead collection.

As the game was winding down, the Hawks scored an empty net goal with about a minute left to go up 4-2 and LL and I headed out while most people were cheering. Though the Rangers scored 12 seconds later to make it 4-3, the Hawks held on to win. Meanwhile, LL and I zoomed out of the parking lot which trapped us for 20 minutes after our first game and were home and inside in 20 minutes.

Normally leaving a game early is a no-no for me, but my back muscle was starting to hurt again and I wasn't looking forward to waiting for traffic. The whole night went pretty smoothly though and it was a fun night out.

A little Central America and good ol'USA!

Well, my crazy painful muscle strain pain still exists to some degree, but has also moved to my shoulder, where the pain from my pinched nerve normally manifests itself. That's not fun. For stretches of the day though, the pain if very manageable, so that has to be good right? It doesn't seem like the steroids have really done anything, but who knows.

Part of the solution for my pain involves physical therapy, so I'm going to have to get that set up so I can start next week. The therapy is more like massages and some stretching of the top of my spine, so really no reason to avoid going!

On a more positive note, after my doctor visit yesterday, I took my doctor's recommendation and hit a restaurant near his office (about half way home for LL) called Maya del Sol. It's in Oak Park and it's really good. I mean REALLY good. As you might expect, it's Central American food (not just Mexican) and the combinations are really interesting and tasty. They also have a Kobe beef burger on the menu (which my doctor recommended). In the summer, they have an outdoor area that's supposed to be pretty awesome, so I can see us heading out there for dinner some time and hooking up with some friends that live out that way. An unexpected benefit of visiting the doctor.

After the doctor's visit and before dinner, LL pushed me (via the phone) to get the prescription filled asap. My medical info is kept at Osco, so I used my phone to find the nearest one. Turns out it was right down the street. But which way and how far? Hmmm, cut to Joe looking around the parking lot for the nearest exit and getting his bearings. Oh, there it is right there. Yep, just across the street from the parking lot. Ha! Very easy to head over there, drop of the script, do some grocery shopping, get the medicine and out I go!! Couldn't be easier. I love this country some times!!

Don't you hate when that happens?

Today I was able to see my orthopedic doctor finally. You know that old cliche about how you always start to feel better JUST when it's time for your doctor's appointment? And then you feel stupid because you're feeling better, even though you were miserable the day before? Well, that was sort of me today. When I got to the parking lot of the office, I got out of the car and had yet another bout of pain on the way into the office. Serious, stop for a few seconds, pain. Not good. Then it was a wait in the external waiting area (I was early) and then a wait in an office. During the wait in the office, almost all of the pain just disappeared. I was sooooo pissed. Ok, where exactly was the pain that I had just 30 minutes ago?? Damnit!!

Fortunately after 4 days of God awful pain, I could describe it pretty well. He believes it's further irritation of the pinched nerve in my neck which could cause a muscle to spasm. Or I severely strained a muscle in the area, but either way the treatment is relatively the same: rest and medicine. The medicine is a 6 day pack of steroids. Hopefully I don't have to take any performance enhancing drug tests in the near future. He also wants me to go back to physical therapy to get some work done on the area.

The doc said if it's still a problem in 4 weeks, we'll get an MRI. I told him if it's a problem in two weeks, I'll be camped outside his door....at home. Actually, I'm not even sure I could make it another week with this pain much less 2 or 4.

Even the blue chair couldn't help

It was another tough night sleeping. The pain in my upper back didn't relent despite the ibuprofen and Tylenol swapping on and off. My father mentioned on Sunday and again yesterday that heat works for him as opposed to ice. For me, ice has always been the pain reliever of choice after my normal types of injuries (and they've been many). But after repeated mentions by my dad, LL saying ice is best only during the first 24-36 hours after injury and my desire to try anything that even MIGHT work, I got a heating pad out that my folks had gotten me for Christmas.

It's a cool little pad that's filled with beans or something and you microwave it for 90 seconds and it retains the heat very well. You can even wet down the exterior prior to microwaving and get sort of a damp heat. On top of all of that, it smells like apple sauce!! Awesome. Plus it did offer some relief.

Unfortunately, I could only sleep until about 3, which was about 4 hours of sleep and about when my medicine was wearing off. Since I couldn't fall back asleep and didn't want to disturb LL anymore, I headed to the basement and the blue lazy boy. This chair is what I slept in for a few weeks during my shoulder surgery and it's very comfortable. Unfortunately, it wasn't working for me last night so I headed over to the sofa and slept on my right side. Surprisingly, I got another four hours of sleep.

However, when I woke up and tried to move, the pain was pretty unbearable once again. We're talking about a 9 on a 10 point scale. It was pretty awful. Down the chute when another round of pills and on went the apple sauce wrap. Later on in the morning....or maybe in the afternoon, I actually started to feel some relief. The pain has come down to a 6 now on the pain scale. Hopefully the treatments will continue to have a positive effect. Tomorrow afternoon is my doctor's appointment, so hopefully I'll get a good diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

Painful night and day

Last night was a fitful night of sleep at best. LL proposed that I take some Tylenol, which I normally avoid in favor of ibuprofen, but this time it made sense. Tylenol isn't an anti-inflammatory, which is what I normally need, it just blocks the pain signal going to your noggin. It's the ultimate "mask the pain". But when I'm trying to sleep, it's a valid solution! Even though I had to take more during the night, I was able to get 3-4 hours of sleep a couple of times.

When I woke up, extreme pain again. The pain is really hard to describe. It's sharp pain AND dull pain at the same time. It hurts when I move and when I don't move. The mere presence of the weight of my arm hurts and keeping it in a sling hurts. Just awful.

But there was much work to do including a meeting with an investment adviser with whom I needed to discuss some long-term ideas, writing a document and making some introductions to help a friend. On top of that, my neighbor had waste backing up into their unit and needed help. I would help normally anyway, but she's pregnant and clearly in distress so of course I couldn't turn my back. $400 later, that problem got solved. And all my work got done, at least all the work that I hoped to get done. The muscle is still causing me pain and I'm pondering switching from ice treatments to heat treatments to see what happens. Normally heat doesn't work for me, but clearly this is not a normal injury. No doctor appointment until Wednesday afternoon unfortunately. Ugh.

In such pain!

Friday I hit the gym for my normal weightlifting routine and everything went just fine. Unfortunately, when I woke up Saturday morning, one of those muscles around my scapula in my upper back on my left side was strained. It could have been how I slept that caused the problem as LL said I slept on my left side a lot that night, which is somewhat abnormal for me. The pain, even while taking ibuprofen is pretty intense. It's hard to even sit here at my computer and type. Ugh.

Did it help that I went to play a doubleheader in the dome on Saturday night? Probably not. It didn't impact me too much the first game as I went 4-4 to extend my season average to 10-10. The second game though I went 0-3, though I hit the ball hard the last two at bats, just at people. This morning when I wok up the pain was debilitating.

What made everything worse is that we had house guests for the weekend and I really couldn't hang with them as much as I wanted. Our guests were Elle and Molly from Ann Arbor, friends of LL's for some time who came down to PR for the wedding.

Friday we went out for fish and chips at a local Irish bar, Emmit's, where they filmed one of the opening scenes to Ocean's Eleven. In fact, we sat in the booth in which Clooney recruited Damon. Their fish is actually very good, at least compared to other pubs in the city.

Ok, the back is killing me. Time to stop. Hopefully I'm better tomorrow!

Plateauing numbers

For Christmas, one of the gifts I wanted and which LL bought me, was a digital bathroom scale to the tenths of pounds. Am I somewhat obsessed with my weight to want such a thing? Well, obsessed might be a bit strong, but I certainly do my fair share of monitoring. And yes, I should be concerned about body fat content, I don't have a historical baseline for that figure. Guess I should probably start one.

Anyway, a week ago Saturday I dropped down to 201.6, down from 209 after the holidays. Then it rose to 203.3...and stayed there. It stayed there for one day. Then another day. Then until we left for Florida. Then on Tuesday after we got back I weighed myself again....203.3. Yesterday I ran 3 miles and weighed myself this morning....203.3. Talk about a plateau!! I better check to see if the scale is broken.

I'd like to lose another 8-10 pounds by June, but I'm not sure that's going to happen, even with all the working out I've been doing. We'll see though.