I strained my back yesterday (lumbago) and was hardly able to move.
So a bit of support while starting to move again was helpful. As it happened I was at my parents house. So my elderly father offered his cane!
Pretty funny I think:
≡ Click to see image ≡
Through some tricks of the wide angle of the smartphone I look gigantic. As if I have acromegaly and my body can't support my 2.80m height.

Although I assure you that I fit exactly in that door behind me. :-)

I'm suffering the repercussions of eating too much chocolate and 'bready' things over Easter - fatigue, heartburn and indigestion. I should know better but I can't resist an Easter egg or a hot cross bun.

But I'm back on my healthy eating plan today and having a quiet day working from home.

(That photo definitely makes you look 10ft tall. I have a photo somewhere on my hard drive where I'm perched on the arm of a sofa whilst others are sitting on it, and my 4ft 11in frame looks gigantic due to some strange shift in perspective through the camera lens.)

I guess the chocolate egg overload is the price we pay for Easter being two days instead of one like in the US.

Getting ready for my last day of work before a short vacation (holiday). Heading to Ebertfest for the rest of the week. This will be the first year that Ebert himself didn't pick all of the movies.

A little annoyed that this is essentially unpaid time off. I just started my job two month's ago and since I haven't accrued enough PTO yet, I had to 'buy' three days of time off.

Octothorpe, how do you 'buy' time off? (HR/vacation etc policies are really interesting to me. maybe because we don't really have them?)

Trying to get my files in order at work - otherwise, there are a lot of hurry up and wait situations.

At home, working on general chores (which never end) and wrapping up craft projects.

Easter was sort of two days this year, because Monday was a state holiday. Spent it doing yard work, raking mostly. Really trying to work up some enthusiasm for gardening this year, but it's slow going.

I have a girlfriend! She had a big Easter shin-dig, and I met the parents and best friends and kids and all that. She lives in the neighborhood (where I also work), so we get to have lots of lunches and coffee dates and such.

needlegrrl, at my (non-profit) company, if you have vacation scheduled before you have enough PTO accrued you submit a PTO purchase request through the HR website and they deduct the equivalent pay for that number of days from your yearly pay and then divide by the number of checks left in the year and deduct that number from each paycheck.

I vowed at one point to never work for a large corporation again but here I am working for the second largest employer in the state (after #1 Walmart).

Octothorpe, we're not going this year due to Impending Baby, but I hope you have a wonderful time! Safe travels and all that.

Congrats on forming babby, your non-animated movie viewing days are probably gone for a while now.

No, babby only watches Paul Cox. It told us so.

Now I'm imagining madamina as being secretly directed by impending babby. Like the vestigial twin in Total Recall.

Which reminds me in turn of how I used to pretend I was an Aliens style exoskeleton when I was carrying my daughter as a baby in a so called Babybjörn. Whatever she'd focus her attention on I'd walk towards.
Fun times.

Catering to the baby fantasies of omnipotence.

Lynn Johnston used to have the For Better or For Worse characters write monthly letters on the website. In one of them Deanna said she watched foreign movies in front of her kids because they wouldn't understand the curse words.

I'm going to Germany on Friday. The Bowie exhibit will have stuff related to his time in Berlin exclusive to this leg of it. I'll also be in Leipzig and Dresden.

This damn cold that the kidlet gave me. Daycare is such a hive of villainous virus and bacteria.

I have to make phone calls today and I really don't want to. I don't like talking on the phone at all.

I have a skin exam today. It has been a year (had to get a new dermatologist in that the old one segued into full-time and more profitable surgery).

I have not seen any new melanomas but it helps to have a pro do the exam. . .

I have been very lazy, just reading a bunch. . .

We're back from New Orleans, and I'm working my way through a bit of a vacation hangover. We had a great time, which only makes the hangover worse. I only have a short week at work, though, which helps, and then it's about another nine weeks (7 weeks teaching/2 weeks for state exams) until summer break! Jon's back at work today, poor fellow, but he really seemed to love NOLA. My kind of city, he says. I think he sampled a half dozen different Sazaracs.

Highlights were, of course, the food (ham biscuits at Mother's--my favorite; beignets at Cafe Du Monde--yum; oysters Rockefeller at Antoine's--Jon's favorite; dinners at Commander's Palace, Desire, and Redfish Grill -- more oysters, shrimp and grits, soufflé). Luckily, we managed to walk off some of that food. Strolled Bourbon Street/the Quarter a bunch of times; heard a great concert at Preservation Hall; walked around Jackson Square, along the Mississippi, and St. Louis Cemetery (viewed only through the locked gate, unfortunately, since it was closed -- the dead need their rest); Faulkner House Books--small, but cool, followed by some absinthe; the aquarium (penguin feeding and giant sea turtle!) and casino. The meet-up Wednesday night was fun, too -- it was great seeing everybody, and so sweet of ColdChef to drive all that way.

All-in-all, a great trip (I wasn't sure Jon was coming home! ; ) It's gonna be hard to go to work tomorrow. But in August, we're off to Alaska, with a stopover in Seattle, so I can't be bummed for long!

Alaska, awesome! I want to go there someday!

In a Hyatt in downtown Columbus, OH right now. Everyone is very nice here but I don't want to mention that I'm from Pittsburgh since the Penguins and Blue Jackets are in a heated playoff series right now (and we're winning).

Oooh, that sounds like a wonderful trip, Pips. And Alaska! How exciting - I'd love to go there.

brujitchen, Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig sounds wonderful.

I am done with work travel for a little while now, so being home and catching up on projects and gardening is occupying me.
My echevaria is dropping leaves and I don't know why. But bulbs are coming up and some seeds are sprouting so I am happy.

I love NOLA. You hit the highlights in my view! Also love Alaska, where my brother lives. That is an absolutely enormous state but we are partial esp. to Homer, Anchorage and Denali.

I am preoccupied with the lasting effect of my 3 floats over the past 3 weekends. Sounds woo woo but really makes a difference.

Also preoccupied with a current work assignment and updating ALL the passwords to deal with Heartbleed bug.

Trying not to spend any more energy than I already have on a neurotic, high maintenance, passive aggressive client. I fired them today, and the replied, "Does this mean you're no longer willing to work with us?"

WTF do you think it means?

It is, at least, 70* low humidity, breezy, crystal clear & gorgeous today.

Very jealous of all travels.

jouke, your picture is great.

I have spent the past few days occupied with trying to figure out how to comment here. Finally emailed the mods. I joined a few days ago but kept getting some message (in German!) telling me something like "Komment Verboten!"

Today, I was occupied with freelance work for a bit. Now, I get to work on my own projects. Yay!

Hi hi, all.