Week Wasted

My back was still off for most of this week, but I finally found a new desk chair for myself this week after suffering with an 'ergonomic' kneeling task chair for the past year or two. Whether the chair had much to do with it or not, the lingering dull ache in my back is gone. Next week should be a lot more productive.

Carolyn got booked for a a shift tonight, so I've settled in with a two litre bottle of Grolsch (complete with swingtop, and suitable for re-use with homebrew) and a link to some streams of live hockey games for tonight that I hope play out.

If I had the money, I'd much rather be at the NIN concert at Copps Coliseum tonight, but I'm sure I'm not out of chances to see Trent Reznor live just yet.

Amidst my time wasting this week, I set up a web server on my computer. I know I've alluded to change before, but I might actually finally make the switch to Wordpress and move the web page to my own computer. Most of the reason behind this though is to get an early jump on setting up a smoothly running, minimal management playoff hockey pool for this year. If nothing else, at least I'll finally learn PHP in the process.

Its probably not normal to be excited about learning a programming language on a Friday night; but then when the sun sets at 5:30 and there is nothing but snow and rain in the forecast, anything looks like a luau.

I Say Taco, You Say Tuesday; Taco

You know you've let yourself become grossly out of shape when you pull a muscle in your shoulder reaching across your room to hit the snooze button on your alarm clock. Those 8 extra minutes before shoving off to work this morning seemed glorious at the time, but the pull that I felt all day long while moving desks, monitors and CPUs wasn't quite as much to be celebrated.

It was nice to be actually hard at it though after a pretty dry first day back in the working world. Being around the University again has been good to, and has gotten up a little bit of motivation to get my thesis officially done and move on to the grad school application process.

Taco Tuesday today at the Bomber though was more of a disappointment. What used to be something like $3 for a well stuffed taco has become a shell with lettuce that leaves you searching for anything more than a biteful of meat (or beans for those hopping on and off the vegetarian train) for $4.75; the extra cost presumably to help cover last year's Boston Pizza style makeover of the bar. The first thing a student going to a student bar wants after all is a nice wood finish, not cheap food and drink on their student budget. Never mind the loss of the couches and projector on which student requests for movies could be made throughout the afternoon.

Being that I'm working again, I am in no position to complain too much, but I'll be looking for something more fulfilling, and more quickly served with the same $4.75 for the rest of the term; likely some cold barley sandwiches at Kickoffs.

A Fart That Shakes The Nuts

Thursday night was poker night with the guys, and I found that lady luck is still off on a Bahamian vacation or something for me. But when you're playing for laughable $2 buy-ins, the idea is just to sit and drink some beers and have a good time, and in that light I'm a pro comparable to any of the best. Thursday night after the beers however I slept (yes infact slept, not passed out) in a position for which my neck has let me know about it since with some kind of pinched nerve or something. Being stubborn as I am, I refuse to seek an actual diagnosis, instead offering my own prescribed remedies as I see fit. Hot showers, heating pads, stretching, ignoring, and self medicating with alcohol all have provided at least temporary relief, and the ache is slowly going away. Hopefully by morning its to the point where I can sit at the computer for a period beyond a half hour to accomplish some formal writing.

This weekend, instead of coddling my neck like I tried to no avail on Friday, I opted to try not to let it get me down. Last night was board games and beers in what might as well have been called couples night, but thankfully was not quite so contrived. After a humiliation in Pictionary, we moved on to a loose game of Balderdash.

For those of you unfamiliar with the latter, its a game in which real, but obscure words are listed on cards, and those playing attempt to create a definition that matches the true one, or to make the other players believe theirs to be the real one. Invariably, the game degrades to nonsense and badgering within 4 or 5 words. From 'a gay duck' to 'for the cleanest snatch in town' to 'Dave blows goats' the game degrades quickly sober, and exponentially faster when drinking. This leads us to last night's new hall of fame quote with:

balthazar (n.) - a fart that shakes the nuts

Now, the true definition is infact a wine bottle holding 13 quarts, but by the time that came up, its true meaning was beyond all repair forever, with a whole new can of adjectives and adverbs opened up.

Yes, this blog has resorted to toilet humour. I'm shocked I managed to hold out this long.

I also managed to get out of the house for a while this afternoon to nerd out on some more geocaching, but mostly to get some sun. After driving around in the country for a few hours, it was decided that we should hit up the town of Fergus for their Dairy Queen and use of a bathroom, since some of us (clearly not myself) are opposed to using a convenient tree or bush. We ended up coming across a BMW car rally in the parking lot of the new big block store plaza found on the outskirts of every self-respecting town of 5,000 or more these days. Some sharp looking Audis and Porsches were also parked in their midst.

And then, of course, framed in the most perfect of backdrops, your requisite Honda Civic with the hood popped showing off the turbo kit and whatever else thrown in to give the illusion of having the same performance as the lower end of the nicer cars there for the same combined price. Also requisite is the flat grey primer colour with rough patches of some half-assed body work until money on the pimp my ride project ran out.