Oh THANK GOODNESS my back is no longer hurting. It still gets sore if I lie in bed the wrong way (oddly enough, not on the side which hurts, but the opposite side, and it hurts because my arm rests because where the hell else is it gonna go...the excitement of being An Old...sigh). This does mean that I'll be able to return to my stretches without worrying that I'll twitch the wrong way and be writhing in pain on the floor.

And yeah, it's the end of the month which of course means Hey Let's Try to Start Next Month Off on A Positive Productive Note again. I say this pretty much in light humor, because I always have the best of intentions when the month starts. I don't always make it all the way to the end for one reason or another, but I've finally grown out of feeling guilty about that. At this point I'm just happy that I'm making the effort and that I'm moving in the right direction with the things I'm working on. The less I let myself sink into that particular mire the better, right?

So, *do* I have any plans for next month? I do! Some may end up being Best Laid Plans, but a lot of them are long-term plans and it's high time I set them in motion. The theme here is pretty much What Am I Waiting For? 

So. Let's get things started, shall we?

A and I just came back yesterday from an overnight stay in the Pacific Grove/Monterey area. It's sort of our Having A Safe Travel Vacation During A Pandemic thing, like our visit to Mendocino last month. It was quite enjoyable and relaxing, though the Aquarium was MUCH more crowded than we'd have liked. Many pictures taken, lots of walking done, many sea otters seen (two at the aquarium, a few out in the bay), a roadside farm stand stopped at, and a LOT of driving done. I've posted many pictures over at my IG.

Now for our usual mundane Sunday stuff: laundry, a few errands and whatnot.

Alas, at some point last week I think I may have overexerted a back muscle or two, as it twitches like a mofo when I'm getting out of bed. Weirdly enough it goes away after about fifteen minutes if I stay upright and it's very centralized, so I'm pretty sure it's not a spinal issue or a nerve issue. A bit of stretching and taking some ibuprofen at the end of the day seems to have calmed it down some. I'll just need to be careful about it for a few more days. Ah, the pleasure of getting older...

Not much else going on...just catching up with emails, cleaning house and getting sushi for lunch. Just your usual mundane Sunday!

Ah, sciatica. Thy name is PAIN IN THE ASS. (Almost literally.) I never know what's going to set it off. I could pick up heavy stuff, brazenly reach for things beyond my grasp, slouch like a slug at my desk for hours at a time, and nothing will hurt it. And then I attempt to crawl out of the back seat of my in-laws' rental car (it's not that there was no leg room--more like the door was relatively small and getting out was akin to climbing out of an Apollo Command Module), and I start feeling that telltale tweak in my lower back. And then the heavy stuff I pick up without thinking, the coffee I left dead center on the kitchen table, the tiring eight-hour slog of a busy workweek, not to mention my comedic and violent attempts at turning over in bed, that starts aggravating it.

Surprisingly, it stopped hurting during the two-hour performance at the Symphony last night. It could be the plush seats and the angle they were at, plus the fact that I wasn't slouching or settling in some weird position. Of course being the guy that I am, I had to prove something (I'm not sure what) by putting the heavy box of my new chair in the trunk of the car, putting the chair together myself, bringing the empty box down and breaking it up for the recycling bin, and doing three loads of laundry today. Somebody tell me that was a good idea? Y/N?

Aside from that...the rest of the week has been kind of quiet. We had a bit of a OMGWTFBBQ NEEDTHISDONENOW issue with a client, which we were able to do in record time--which meant me dropping everything else I was doing and screwing up the turnaround time on those other issues in the process. I made sure I made a bit of noise while doing it--basically saying "sure, we'll do it, but next time out, give us more than just 48 hours to do this huge thing, because you just screwed up the SLAs for everything else." Suffice it to say, my bosses were on my side on that, so that's good.

Writingwise...plugging along with the revision. Currently on Chapter 22 and hoping to get this thing finished soon enough. I know I'll need to go over The Process of Belief at least a few more times before an agent gets to see it, but at this point I think it's in a MUCH better place than it was just a few years ago when I finally finished it. The most it needs is some cleaning of prose and perhaps a few more minor scene rewrites. As said before, as soon as I'm done with this revision go-round, I'll be starting in hot and heavy with Walk in Silence, so expect to see a major uptick in music blog entries and retrospectives!